Haman the Agagite rises to be the highest official under King Ahasuerus, and the book of Esther says every servant at the king's gate bows to him except one. Mordecai, a Jew who sits at that gate, will not kneel, and when Haman learns the reason is Mordecai's people rather than the man alone, he decides the insult calls for the destruction of every Jew in the empire, not just the one who gave it. He casts lots, called purim, to choose an auspicious date nearly a year off, then tells the king that a certain scattered people keeps its own laws and obeys none of his, and offers a vast sum into the royal treasury to fund their destruction.
Ahasuerus hands Haman his signet ring without asking which people is meant, and the decree goes out to every province in the empire's own scripts and languages, that on a single day all Jews, young and old, women and children, are to be killed and their property seized. Mordecai and the wider Jewish community respond with mourning and fasting, and Mordecai sends word to Queen Esther, his cousin and ward, that she has to intervene with the king even though appearing before him unsummoned carries a death penalty of its own.