Er, you have to remember that messenger beheading was not the norm; the reason sources will talk about messenger beheading as a big deal is that it's something that would be very unusual and usually seen as evidence that someone was especially ruthless.

I doubt it. Such stories seem heavily embellished sometimes to make the side the writer supports seem more sympathetic. I remember reading Marco Polo's travel account which goes into the Mongol conquests a great deal, and every encounter of the Mongols with a new city goes like this:

1. Mongols send two emissaries to the city to negotiate a peace.
2. The city promptly kills the emissaries.
3. The Mongols attack, raid and raze the city to the ground.

After the third or fourth time of reading that exact description it becomes a little bit doubtful that this is how it happened...

Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again.