First Iolaus-centric episode. Hercules appears only in the first and final scenes.
The plot is largely based on the novel The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) by Anthony Hope. Hope did not invent the king's-double-takes-his-place genre, which had previously been used by Alexandre Dumas in The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) and Mark Twain in The Prince and the Pauper (1881), among others. The Xenaverse had previously spoofed the same novel in Warrior... Princess (1996) a month earlier.
The list of past kings of Attica includes Xenophobius, Agoraphobius, and Arachnophobius. These names respectively mean the fears of foreigners, open spaces, and spiders.
This is an example of a recurring Xenaverse theme, where one of the big four (Hercules, Iolaus, Xena, Gabrielle) impersonates royalty.
Niobe speaks disparagingly of King Orestes' brother as "that cretin Minos." This is a clever pun on Minos, a king of the Cretans who figures prominently in ancient myths.