Christina’s Reviews > The Art of Colour: The History of Art in 39 Pigments > Status Update

'Born to the purple' came from Byzantium, where a room in the Great Palace of Constantinople had been built especially for expecting empresses to deliver in. Its walls were covered with a "violet veneer derived from the igneous rock porphyry (meaning 'purple' in Greek)." Children born there were potential heirs, as opposed to ones who were born prior to his reign.