Written
By: Katelyn Abbott
Author’s
Summary: A daughter of Zeus and Leda and the sister of Castor and Pollux. Helen
is the Queen of Sparta and she is then a princess of Troy. This is a second
person perspective about the most beautiful woman in the world. This is mostly
influenced by Amanda Elyot’s The Memoirs
of Helen of Troy although I was also inspired by Caroline B. Cooney’s Goddess of Yesterday and Adele Geras’s Troy.
Your name always will be eternally
connected to the two great nations of Sparta and Troy.
You are the face that launched a
thousand ships. Your beauty made fifty thousand men attack Troy and battle
against the Trojans on the battlefield in a war that lasted for ten long years.
You caused tens of thousands of men to die bloody deaths and Troy to be
destroyed. You are the Lady of Sorrows.
You will be known as Helen of Troy for
generations to come.
But for right
now you are just Princess Helen of Sparta.
Your childhood is abruptly brief, but
filled with sweetness. Your maids-in-waiting busy themselves with their duties
of giving you your food to eat during your meals and helping you to dress in
your clothes. They cautiously follow you around everywhere you go to keep you company.
You are close to your father black-haired and brown-eyed King Tyndareus and your mother
blonde-haired and blue-eyed Queen Leda. You do accept your brothers black-haired
and brown-eyed Castor and blond-haired and blue-eyed Pollux for who they are,
care about them, and deeply love them and they end up being your best friends.
They gladly keep you safe from harm and you take comfort in knowing that they are your
protectors.
Clytemnestra
does not accept you for who you are, cares nothing for you, and despises you by
the time you are both old enough to play because of your beauty and the
comparisons others make of her dusky prettiness to your golden perfection. She
envies you for your blonde curls as golden as the sun, your eyes as blue as the
sky, and your complexion as fair as ivory while her hair is as black as ebony,
her eyes as brown as obsidian, and her complexion as dark as olives.
Clytemnestra is the eldest sister and she feels entitled to the attention you
receive, but you feel it is unfair of her to do so as you are unable to help
the way you both look.
Clytemnestra
and you are both educated side by side together in the application of
cosmetics, the arrangement of flora, dance, drawing, the genealogy of your
lineage ten generations back, how to honor the gods and goddesses and keep the
old ways, music, and needle arts. Your sister realizes that you are a slow
learner and she seems to relish in your failures of not mastering your lessons
of the practical skills as skillfully as she does. She has few opportunities to
prove herself to be your superior and she makes the most out of every one of
them.
You are
often the victim of an angry glare, a cruel name, or a hostile insult from your
sister Clytemnestra and the other girls who are your playmates. Cruelly they
ostracize you from their games. Clytemnestra does let you join in their games
from time to time, but her invitations to play often lead to her finding ways
of causing you physical pain. Your other sisters black-haired and blue-eyed
Philonoe and Phoebe and brown-haired and blue-eyed Timandra end up not
accepting you for who you are, caring nothing for you, and despising you for
they follow what Clytemnestra does in everything that they do.
The only
girl who does not shun your company aside from your one girl friend Polyxo and
your maids-in-waiting is your blonde-haired and blue-eyed cousin Penelope. She
is a clever girl with a grave dignity in her and she can be content to sit for
hours at her loom without saying a word. She does not mind you watching her weave
at her loom while she works and you enjoy the silence of her company.
The
servants whisper about you. You pretend that you do not see the servants stare
at you in awe and hear them whisper about you as you grow, but you do. Each
word that they say reaches your tender ears.
“She is
the most beautiful child that I have ever seen, “one servant would declare,
“with a clever mind, a delightful charm, elegance, and grace in her.”
“She is
the child of Zeus himself,” another servant would exclaim.
“We are
privileged by the gods to have one such as her walk among us,” a third servant
would proclaim.
You hear
the story about your unusual birth from the pieces of gossip you overhear from
them. You believed that King Tyndareus of Sparta was your biological father,
but they claim that he is not. Queen Leda, your lovely mother, was ravished by
Zeus the King of the Gods himself in the form of a swan. She produced two eggs
from the seduction of this union: from one egg your brother Castor and your
sister Clytemnestra, the children of King Tyndareus, were born, and from the
other egg your brother Pollux and you, the children of Zeus, were born.
Since
you are the daughter of Zeus the gods have granted you honor of the privilege
as being the most beautiful girl and one day woman in the world. You barely
notice your beauty as you grow. You can see for yourself that you are
beautiful, but you do not pay much attention to your looks. You enjoy the
attention and the endless praise you receive from adults, but you would rather
be hunting and practicing arms with your brothers, riding your horse, or
swimming in the sea than combing your hair, doing experiments with different
creams, powders, and rogues, or gazing at your reflection in the mirror like
other noblewomen do.
Theseus, the aging brown-haired and blue-eyed king of
Athens and the son of Poseidon, kidnaps you from your home in Sparta as you are
dancing in the temple of Artemis with the help of his best friend Pirithous
when you are twelve years old. He claims to accept you for who you are, care
about you, and deeply love you and he desires to marry you. Theseus ends up
setting up his silvery-haired and blue-eyed mother Aethra to be your guardian
and they take you to Aphidna where Theseus intends to keep you until he gets
back from the underworld in helping Pirithous steal Persephone from Hades to
marry you.
Theseus seizes you one night and takes you to his bed.
Then you find yourself pregnant with Theseus’s baby. You give birth to a beautiful
baby girl with your blonde hair and your blue eyes, but the cleverness in her
gaze and the strength of Hercules in her grip are from her father Theseus who
you accept you for who she is, care about, and deeply love from the moment
Aethra places her in your arms. You name your child Iphigenia and you pray that
she will live up to her name to be the mother of a strong race.
Your brothers Castor and Pollux
raze Aphidna and rescue you and seize Aethra and Pirithous’s sister Thisadie
who they capture to be your personal slaves in revenge against Theseus and
Pirithous. They are shocked to see that you have had a daughter by Theseus, but
they say nothing against you. They take you back to Sparta with your daughter
Iphigenia who Father and Mother insist you give to Clytemnestra, your already married
sister, to raise as her own daughter so you can still pretend to be a virgin.
This is your first taste of how your beauty affects men. It will not be your
last.
Suddenly you are old enough to marry
and your beauty has been heard of by everyone in Greece. Dozens of suitors come
from every corner of Greece to Sparta to seek your hand in marriage. Father
does entertain, feed, and lodge all of your suitors and the attendants they
bring with them. Your suitors end up bringing many rich gifts with them,
compete against each other in chariot races, and display their physical
strength in sporting events.
You are excited for Father will
permit you to choose your own husband unlike many other noblewomen do among
your forty-five suitors. Fresh blood such as these men have in them entices
you. Who should you choose? You know that you want someone who is handsome, but
he must also have intelligence, courage, determination, and strength of
character for the man who marries you will inherit the throne of Sparta from
Father.
Ajax, the son of Teleamon, is a huge
ox of a man with a brain no larger than a pomegranate seed and he is much too
brutal and cruel for your liking, but his half-brother Teucer seems much more
pleasant to you though there is nothing truly remarkable about him. Antilochus,
the son of Nestor, and Diomedes, the son of Tydeus, both catch your attention
as both are handsome and have intelligence, courage, and determination in them.
Idomeneus never smiles and is too thin-lipped. Lycomedes is too old. Menestheus
who Castor and Pollux both favor is too smug. Odysseus is too brilliant and
cunning. Patroclus is a friendly and gentle youth, but he has no making of a
king in him. Philoctetes has little need for human contact.
In the end you chose Menelaus, the
brother of your sister Clytemnestra’s husband russet-haired and stormy
blue-eyed Agamemnon the High King of Mycenae, as your husband by placing a
wreath over his head. Red-haired, grayish blue-eyed, and stocky, he is handsome
and intelligent, a courageous and determined warrior, and the wealthiest of
your suitors. He is shocked when you choose him and stutters in surprise.
As the future queen of Sparta the
Spartan people will look to you for guidance and wisdom, even for leadership.
You want someone who will be a good king and a leader to the Spartan people.
You think that Menelaus will be one.
You accept Menelaus for who he is,
care about him, and develop a deep friendship with him, but your marriage to
him is not based on love. You cannot make yourself love him. You do not deny
that Menelaus is a good man for he is gentle, honorable, kind, and pays
attention to your needs and your problems, but he does not incite lust or
passion in you for him. You end up finding happiness in your marriage to him
though and you give birth to five children to him—one daughter Hermione and
four sons Aethiolas, Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus—who you accept for
who they are, care about, and love more than anything. Your sons Aethiolas,
Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus have black hair and brown eyes while
your daughter Hermione has red hair and grayish blue eyes.
Hermione is a red-head and she has
grayish blue eyes just like Menelaus does. She looks like him. You mean to find
any trace of yourself in your daughter in vain for the red hair, the grayish
blue eyes, and the freckled skin particularly across the arms; chest, face, and
throat are pure Menelaus. Menelaus is pleased with this miniature female image
of himself, but you are not.
You hate that none of your children
by Menelaus look like you at all unlike the way your daughter Iphigenia, your
firstborn, does.
Sometimes your sister Clytemnestra
would visit Menelaus and you at the palace of Sparta with her husband Agamemnon
and her children Iphigenia, Electra, Chrysothemis, and Orestes. These are
visits you dread. You must endure making hours of polite conversation with
Clytemnestra. You listen to her go on and on about how much she accepts your
daughter Iphigenia for who she is, cares about her, and deeply loves her as her
own child, how beautiful, intelligent, charming, and delightfully sweet she is,
how extremely fast she learns her lessons of being able to read and write and
do figures along with mastering the practical arts, and how skillful she is at
weaving. Sometimes she mentions that Electra and Chrysothemis are doing fine
and that Orestes is going up to be a strong boy the way Agamemnon wants him to
do so, but the conversations are mostly about Iphigenia. You think that these
conversations with Clytemnestra with her snide remarks about how sad it is that
you cannot raise Iphigenia on your own are her way of hurting you now that you
are adults even though you both have become wives and mothers. These
conversations make you unable to accept Clytemnestra for who she is, care
nothing for her, and despise her for you did wish to raise Iphigenia yourself,
but your parents said that you were not permitted to and you wish to strangle
your sister for it every time she reminds you of it.
Years abruptly pass by. Your beauty
increases rather than diminish over time. Men adore you. The gods and goddesses
bless you. Women curse you and despise you for the way you drive men insane
with desire for you.
But you never pay them
any attention. Your children are your life and your days are spent weaving at
your loom from sunrise to sunset. You end up feeling content in your life with
your husband Menelaus and your children, but you also feel as though something
is missing in it. So you suffer in silence as you try to think about what is missing
in your life. Then one day that something or –rather someone—has come for you.
Your destiny is eternally linked with his as
he is your greatest desire.
You accept Prince Paris of Troy for who he is, care about
him, and deeply fall in love with him from the first time you see him.
Breathless at the sight of him you believe your heart has been punctured by an
arrow of Eros. You claim later that it is a divine madness cast upon you by
Aphrodite the goddess of love and beauty that drives you insane with desire for
him when your husband Menelaus has left you alone to entertain the Trojan
guests on your own to go to his grandfather Catreus’s funeral at Crete, but you
desire him from the first time you see him standing in the Great Hall of the
Spartan palace with Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, talking to Menelaus.
Excited by this foreign Trojan prince you feel as though
your entire whole body is on fire from lust for him.
His beauty abruptly captivates you. Blond hair the color
of spun gold and curly, blue eyes the color of summer skies, a completely
straight nose, definite even white teeth, fine lips as rosy as a child’s lips,
a gorgeous clean shaven face, muscles glistening and sliding over strong bones,
and a perfect body with no scars on it. You can see for yourself that you are
gazing upon Apollo incarnate. Prince Paris is clearly handsome, intelligent,
charming, definitely well-mannered, eager to please, and polite. You are
delighted that you have finally found what that something was missing in your
life. He is your equal in every sense of the word.
Paris ends up kneeling before you as Menelaus sits on his
throne and you sit beside your husband in your chair and grabbing a hold of
your knees in homage. “I have been able to hear stories of your beauty, your
clever mind, your deep charm, your elegance, and your grace, my queen,” he
says. “It is said that you are a white swan. A crown of glory. A star fallen
from heaven. I was told that in your presence I would stumble. Those who have
had the privilege of resting their eyes upon you discover that never again are
they able to rest, for their trembling hearts forever think of none but you. O,
Helen, Aphrodite, blessed goddess of love and beauty, has led me to your feet.”
Eagerly you watch him as he marvels
the men and women of Sparta with his skills as an archer and a hunter when he
goes hunting with Menelaus and his skill as a runner when he takes part in
games. You would gladly give into your desires, but you cannot as you dare not
do it while Menelaus is watching you. Menelaus does not see your desire for
Paris and he thinks nothing of it as Paris bestows gifts upon you, carelessly
whispers to you, drinks from your bowl, and ends up feeding you from his own
plate. You nearly panic when Paris dares to write “I Love Helen!” on the
banquet table, but Menelaus does not notice it. He will not believe that his
guests would act dishonorably to their hosts.
Poor
fool.
You long for him. You are meant for him like Hades is
meant to be King of the Underworld, Poseidon is meant to be King of the Sea,
and Zeus is meant to be King of the Gods. You need him.
Prince
Paris of Troy.
Menelaus would gladly give you anything that you desire.
He longs to please you in every way that he can, but not in this. He would
never give him to you.
But you are not afraid
and you beginning to think of doing the unimaginable. You come to spend time
with Paris alone. You do not do anything wrong at first, but then you end up
feasting on cold roast meats and olives in the open air with him, ride horses with
him through the mountain trails, and swim naked in the cool waters of the
Eurotas with him. Finally you make love to him in the scared grove.
Lovemaking with Paris is different
than anything you have experienced with Theseus or Menelaus. His kisses alone
end up bringing you to the brink of ecstasy and his fingers flutter like
swallow’s wings across you breasts and your throat as he explores their
contours as each impression from his soft mouth creates a delicious burning as
though they were imprints of gently warmed wax.
Your lips and tongues ferociously honor each atomy of each other’s
bodies. Paris goes to enter you making his sex remind you what it means to be a
woman and to give and receive the greatest bounty of mortals. Lovemaking with
Paris is exciting and you finally have the lust and passion you have been
craving for so long with Paris as your lover. You start to think that the gods
and goddesses have granted you with everything that you have ever wanted in a
lover.
The fact that the gods
and goddesses have granted you with everything that you have ever wanted in
your entire whole life would frighten an ordinary woman, but you have gotten
used to your half-divinity long ago. You are the Queen of Sparta. When you are
a queen you come to have a certain wisdom and dignity in you that no ordinary
woman could ever hope to understand.
Menelaus leaves to go to
his grandfather Catreus’s funeral at Crete along with his brother Agamemnon as
it is only fitting for the both of them to be present during the funeral rites
and games. He says for you to look after his affairs and the household and to
see to the royal Trojan guests. He tells you to treat them with all the
hospitability that he would have accorded them if he had been able to remain
for the duration of their stay in Sparta.
You are scared of Paris
leaving Sparta. He will sail soon from Sparta back to his home in Troy. You
will never see him again when he leaves to return to his home in Troy.
Your home has always
been in Sparta and you have been content here, but you have never been at complete
peace with yourself here in Sparta. Between the two choices you have both are
based on difficulty to choose from one of them. You cannot abandon your husband
Menelaus and your children, forfeit your crown, and leave behind your beloved
country, your cherished brothers, and your dear parents to go away to Troy with
a foreign prince, but if you decide to remain in Sparta you surely will be a
heartless woman and trapped in an existence of modest and passionless comportment
in a loveless royal marriage with Menelaus. Paris ends up only taking several
minutes for him to get you to decide to go with him. You pack your possessions
into a wooden chest full of your beautiful robes, your cosmetics, your jewels,
your shawls, and your vials of perfume and pick Aethra, Astyanassa, Clymene,
Electra, and Thisadie from among your attendants to accompany you to Troy to
attend to your daily needs. You say a sad farewell to your children
Hermione, Aethiolas, Maraphius,
Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus
as you will have to leave them behind; though you love them so does Menelaus
and they look nothing like you unlike Iphigenia.
The seas are calm as you
sail in Paris’s ship with its figurehead of Aphrodite with Paris back to Troy.
Poseidon must have granted you a safe voyage on the sea. You enjoy the sunlight
and the smell of the seas and finally embrace your new title: Helen of Troy.
You whisper the name, “Helen of Troy”
to yourself in pure happiness and Paris whispers it back to you sharing in your
joy.
Paris sits with you on
the deck. Together you watch the waves of the sea hit against the side of the
ship. The only thing you want right now is to be in Paris’s embrace and feel
his kisses on your lips.
Troy is a beautiful city just as the bards claim. Clearly
it is full of a bustling agora selling fresh fruits and vegetables, grain,
jewelry made out of gold and precious stones, meat, nuts, olive oil, rare wood
from Africa, silks from Asia, spices from Arriba, and wine, crowed streets,
grand white-washed and well-spaced dwellings, lush gardens, and magnificent
shrines and temples to the gods and goddesses. King Priam’s court does seem to an exotic one
where men and women alike wore brocaded and embroidered robes of brightly
colored silk, embellished themselves with extravagantly wrought golden jewelry,
and smelled of amber, hyacinth, and musk. You have never seen such riches
and such splendor before. Sparta looks like nothing compared to this. You seem
to be at home here. This is where you belong.
King Priam appears to be very welcoming towards you. Both
of your reputations precede the both of you. Clearly you are Helen, a daughter
of Zeus and the most beautiful woman in the world, while white-haired and
blue-eyed King Priam, the King of Troy, is the husband of silvery black-haired
and blue-eyed Queen Hecuba and the father of fifty sons and twelve daughters.
You will do as the crown jewel of his vast collection of magnificent treasures.
Queen Hecuba is a motherly figure to you and promises to
help you prepare for your wedding to Paris. Prince Hector is a brilliant,
courageous, and determined warrior and a good and honorable man although he
seems to be troubled by your arrival to Troy as he constantly runs his hands
through his dark brown hair and there is a sad look in his dark brown eyes. He
knows that Menelaus will return to the palace of Sparta to find you gone and he
will seek the help of his brother Agamemnon to follow after you to Troy to get
you back bringing the armies of the High King of Mycenae with them.
However he accepts his brother Paris for who he is, cares
about him, and loves him. He is a good brother to Paris and loyal to him. He
will never send you away back to your husband Menelaus now that you have made
Paris happy.
Paris’s other forty-eight brothers are respectful to you
and his sisters are sweet to you except for one.
Cassandra attacks you as soon as she sees you by ripping
off your golden veil and seizing your hair to tug at it. Brown hair kept in
curls escapes the golden clasps keeping her hair up and tears come to her brown
eyes. You can see that she is beautiful and the stories about her being the
second most beautiful women in world do seem to be true. Cassandra declares,
“Helen is a blight sent to us from the gods! She is a curse who will cause
bloodshed, chaos, and death to come to Troy!
She will destroy all of us! Send her away now or the noise of her name
will shatter our gates! Turn her away! ”
Cassandra ends up frightening you with her words. She
rants that you are the cause of the destruction of Troy and that you bring
death, fire, grief, illness, and starvation in your wake. She shouts that the
city will burn, the riches and splendid treasures of Troy captured, the men
killed, the women raped and seized into slavery, and the children thrown to
their deaths from the walls of Troy.
Stories say that Apollo himself had once accepted
Cassandra for who she was, cared about her, and deeply fell in love with her
because of her beauty, her intelligence, her charm, and her desirability and he
ended up granting her the gift of prophecy in an effort to get her to be his
lover, but he had cursed her to never be believed by anyone after she rejected
his love and scorned him. They say that the Trojan princess is mad. Though you
should not believe the prophetess for a few moments you have a feeling of
dread inside of yourself that you cannot shake off that trouble for Troy is not
far away and you are the reason it comes.
Nobody pays Cassandra any attention. King Priam orders her to be
removed from the Great Hall and guards seize Cassandra by the arms of her white
priestess robes of Apollo. They take her out of the room, but she still screams
out her prophecies of doom for Troy because of you and the screams are stuck in
your mind. Then Paris is there to see if you are alright from where she had
attacked you at and you soon forget about Cassandra.
King Priam gives Paris and you
a proper wedding feast. You are happy to live in the fine house Paris had
commissioned by the finest artisans and laborers in Troy at the summit of the
citadel with its courtyard containing beautiful statues, a birdbath, and a
fountain and full of flowers, intricately tiled and lavishly frescoed greet
hall, and sleeping rooms. In your new marriage to Paris you have a
blonde-haired and blue-eyed daughter named Helen who is your spitting image
just like Iphigenia is and four brown-haired and blue-eyed sons named Aganus,
Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus who you accept for who they are, care about, and
deeply love. You never let a day pass where Paris and you do not set aside the
time to pleasure each other in lovemaking tasting every sensual delight you can
devise. Your heart shatters when you hear that your beautiful, intelligent, charming,
and sweet firstborn daughter Iphigenia is nearly sacrificed upon the altar by
Agamemnon in return for favorable wins, but you take solace in knowing that she
disappeared and a deer in her place was killed so the gods and goddesses must
have taken her to safety somewhere that is peaceful for she has committed no
great sin in her young life.
The Greek army arrives. They bring all of the comforts of
home with them including an assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables, bread,
meat, and wine; brazen and gold mixing cauldrons, fleeces, finely woven
blankets, furniture, goblets, horses and their lightweight chariots, livestock,
and slave women for the pleasure of the Greek chieftains in their tents. The Greek ships cover every inch of the
beach. During the day the two armies of the Greeks and the Trojans fling
calling of names and dreadful insults at one another before the day begins when
they will fling spears at one another.
“When we have been able to break down the walls of Troy,”
the troops of the Greek armies shout to the Trojans, “we will rape the faithful
wives of the Trojan soldiers and seize them into slavery. The Trojan princesses
will pay for Paris breaking the sacred bonds of guest friendship that he made
by dining with Menelaus between Menelaus and him!”
“Your bowels will spill forth into the sea for the eels
to devour!” the Trojan troops of soldiers taunt back. “We will feast after our
easy and swift victory against you, but you will not as you will be dead and
enduring your journey to the boatman on your way to the underworld. Trojan
vultures will feast upon the eyes of your dead corpses!”
Trojan women cry and the Trojan men are deeply silent
while the royal Trojan family is eerily calm and composed. The walls of Troy
have never been breached before. The gods and goddesses favor the Trojans and
will grant them good luck in victory. Surely the noble Prince Hector will lead
the Trojan army into battle where they will crush and destroy these Greek
invaders.
Time goes by. Paris is
here for you always accepting you for who you are, caring about you, loving
you, respecting you, and understanding you. He reminds you that Menelaus will
never steal you back from him for you two belong together. You see your former
husband Menelaus sometimes on the battlefield as he battles against the Trojans
from the city walls by the Gorgon-emblazoned shield he carries. Sometimes he
sees you watching the battles on the battlefield from the city walls and his
grayish blue eyes stare up at you in rage. He says something to you, but you
are never able to hear his words over the clash of swords of the soldiers and
the cries and groans of the dying.
You see your former
suitors on the battlefield. Ajax. Antilochus.
Ascalaphus. Blanirus. Clytius. Diomedes. Elephenor. Idomeneus. Machaon.
Nierus. Odysseus. Patroclus. Peneleos. Stheneleus. Tlepolemus. Teucer. You
wonder if they are fighting for you, Helen,
or the glory of war and how they can get their hands on more goods, more lands,
more power, and more slaves.
Then you remember that
they are fighting for Menelaus since they swore under the Oath of Horse that
they would come to the aid of anyone who was chosen by you to be your husband
and defend him against whoever should quarrel with him in his marriage. You
sigh. That was Odysseus’s doing. You watch him on the battlefield fighting against
the Trojans and you wonder your lovely cousin Penelope, who is his wife and the
mother of his son Telemachus, is doing over their separation. The oracles
predict that this war between the Greeks and the Trojans will go on for ten
years and Penelope will not see her husband again for twenty years.
Paris comes up with a solution to put an end to
the misery and pain that the war between the Greeks and Trojans has made people
suffer. He decides to challenge Menelaus to a duel between the two of them and
the winner of it will end up getting you. You get into a weeping spell. How can
Paris hope to win against as fierce a warrior as Menelaus is? Paris hugs you
and kisses away your tears utterly unaware of how skilled a warrior Menelaus
really is. He is the second son and he was not trained to fight in warfare like
Hector and his other brothers were. You are sure that he will not win against
Menelaus.
Then as soon as Menelaus and Paris fight against
each other in their duel and Menelaus goes to deliver the killing blow against
Paris, Paris disappears into thin air.
Aphrodite had whisked him away back to safety in
Troy. She saved her favorite. That means that in a way she saved you too for
you are unable to survive without Paris and your children by him still have
their father.
The other Trojan men call him names and declare
that he is a coward. Cassandra ends up screaming for him to be given to
Menelaus to finish off and that you
should be handed back to Menelaus as well. Other Trojan women hear her and join
in her shouts for the two of your deaths for the Trojans have come to be unable
to accept you both for who you are, care nothing for you, and despise you as
they blame the both of you for the war. You stare out over the horizon of the
battlefield on the city walls to see the rivers of blood from the deaths of
tens of Greek and Trojan men and the guilt you feel for bringing this to Troy
starts to swallow you whole. This guilt will never leave you. Cassandra was
right as you have brought ruin and suffering to Troy. You wish to hang yourself
with your veil or stab yourself to death with a sharp knife when the guilt is
too much for you to bear, but you do not.
Then suddenly luck for
Troy runs out.
Prince Hector kills
Patroclus by a mistake thinking that he was Achilles and then he is killed by
mighty blonde-haired and blue-eyed Achilles in revenge for the death of his
beloved cousin.
Achilles drags Prince Hector’s bloody corpse across the
battlefield with his chariot. King Priam and Queen Hecuba cry and dreadfully
watch in eerily silence as their favorite son and their former heir apparent is
denied his proper funeral rites. His spirit will end up lingering on the shores
of the river Styx and he will be forbidden from moving on. Achilles has given
him that worse fate imaginable in this world. You are horrified as the
suffering of the dead is the most brutal and cruelest punishment a person can
receive and you know that no one deserves it especially not Prince Hector.
You run to his brown-haired and brown-eyed wife
Andromache who is screaming and trembling as she clutches their infant son Astyanax in
her arms with their eldest son Laodamas standing beside her. You reach for her,
but she pushes you away. “No!” she shouts at you with tears in her eyes that
fall down from the cheeks of her beautiful face. “Who do you assume you are?
Bringer of death to good men! Cold-hearted unfaithful shrew! Trollop! Whore!
Why do you dare come to comfort me now? Why did you ever come here to charm men
into a war that they can never win and never survive in? Hector wanted you! I know
that he wanted you!”
You kneel before her and
say soothingly, “Beloved sister…. clearly well-known for your brilliance, your
calmness, your dignity, your endurance, and your faithfulness….wife of the best
man who ever trod this Trojan plain, stop. Hector accepted you for who you are,
cared about you, and deeply loved you. It was only you that he longed for. No
one else, but you in this world. Now you are his widow. You must mourn him
fittingly. Only he was the father of your children and for both of your sons
Astyanax and Laodama’s sakes you must stop your weeping and try to hold it in
your heart. You must be brave. Hector
would expect it of you.” You hold onto her arm and lead her children and her
away from the sickening scene.
The Fates see that Achilles is punished for his
vile actions. Paris kills Achilles. The mightiest warrior of Greece dies under
your husband’s carefully shot arrow that connects to his most vulnerable spot
which is his heel with the guidance of Apollo.
Just when you think your
heart is full of enough suffering and turmoil, it shatters. Paris dies from a
mortal wound after Philoctetes shoots him with Heracles’ famous bow and
poisoned arrows. You end up sobbing from your enormous grief at his funeral and
you think about throwing yourself on the flames of his funeral pyre to join him
in the Land of the Dead, but someone stops you. That someone is black-haired
and green-eyed Prince Deiphobus, another son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba and
Hector and Paris’s brother. He takes you by force against your own will to be
his own wife.
His touch to you is not
comforting. It disgusts you. You have ended up seeing the way that he looks at
you when Paris was not by your side. He seems to not accept you for who you
are, care nothing for you, and despise you and he thinks that you are a
glorified and sweet-smelling whore ripe for the taking, but he wants to possess
you like all other men do. You know what he wants from you as he beats you,
calls you names, and degradingly has his way with you against your protests for
him to stop. He has no sympathy for you.
Then your heart shatters even more after your
daughter Helen and your four sons Aganus, Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus are
crushed to death in their beds by a roof caving in on them weeks after the
death of Paris.
You are so cold,
detached, and emotionally numb that you no longer feel anything. You let
Deiphobus have his way with you now whenever he wishes to do so. You no longer
have it in you to fight against him.
Then one day the Trojan
beach is empty of Greek ships.
The Greeks are gone.
They have given up and left to return to their homes in Greece. In the place of
their ships is a large magnificent wooden horse. It is a gift meant to be an
offering to the goddess Athena.
You are finally safe.
The Trojans celebrate
with dancing, feasting, and singing in pure ecstasy. They have defeated the
Greeks and the war between the Greeks and the Trojans has ended after ten long
years. Even you have to smile. You are finally safe and Menelaus is gone for
good just like Paris had promised you that he would be and you can be happy
with your second husband and your children by him here in Troy.
Paris. Helen. Aganus. Bunomus. Corythus. Idaeus.
Your heart sinks in deep despair and endless grief, but you say
nothing and stand there watching the Trojans celebrate their victory over the
Greeks.
Your husband Paris is dead. Your children Helen, Aganus, Bunomus,
Corythus, and Idaeus ended up being crushed to death when the roof caved in on
them in their beds. They are gone. They are not coming back to you.
The celebrations of the
Trojans cheer you up, but it does not make you feel complete. Even though you
know your husband Paris and your children Helen, Aganus, Bunomus, Corythus, and
Idaeus are dead, you feel like they are there with you at that moment. They
will give up hiding from you any moment now and Paris will hug you and kiss you
and promise to make Deiphobus suffer for the way that he has been treating you.
However Paris and Helen,
Aganus, Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus never stop hiding from you.
It hurts for you to
smile, but you have to. The Trojan people want you do to so. You are the prize
they have won in their victory against the Greeks.
The Trojans’ victory
against the Greeks feels false. You go hollow of emotion. You hope that some
god or goddess will see you and take pity on you by striking you down where you
stand.
Then you see Cassandra
with an axe in one of her hands and a burning torch in her other hand run up to
the magnificent wooden horse in an attempt to destroy it herself. You remember
how she had warned the Trojan people not to take the magnificent wooden horse
inside the city of Troy as there were armed Greek warriors hiding inside of it
waiting for the right moment to come out of it and destroy Troy, but the Trojan
people had shunned her words with cruel names and degrading taunts. The Trojans
seize her and take the ax and burning torch out of her hands as Cassandra
shouts for them to let go of her. They send her away from them with tears in
her eyes and turn back to celebrating their victory against the Greeks.
Cassandra stares at you
for a moment and you see the same sorrow and turmoil you feel in the depths of
the elegant Trojan princess’s brown eyes. You should comfort the friendly and
gentle girl, who has become something of a sister over the last ten years, but
she runs away and starts to run back toward the Trojan palace before you can do
so. The terror that was in Cassandra’s eyes makes you think that maybe she is
right about there being armed Greek warriors inside of the magnificent wooden
horse and surely the Greeks will spare no one especially you once they begin to
take down Troy from the inside out.
Cassandra is right. You
have to do something to stop that from happening. Though what can you do to
stop the entire whole Greek army from trying to destroy Troy? Then it comes to
you.
You abruptly stare at
the magnificent wooden horse for a few moments before you begin to circle
around it. You call out to the armed Greek warriors who may be hiding in it by
name in each of their wives’ voices in an attempt to lure them out. You do not
know if it will work, but it is all you can think of to do. You end up calling
out to the men in their wives’ voices as you circle around the horse three
times before you finally give up. They are not coming out.
You
return to your home and sink to the floor sobbing and trembling. Surely
Menelaus will stab you to death with a knife as soon as he gets the chance.
Maybe you should kill yourself for him and save him the trouble of doing it
himself.
No.
You are not taking the coward’s way out of this. You head to your
bed and cover yourself with a blanket. Closing your eyes you are resigned to
wait for the fall of Troy.
Deiphobus comes to bed later. He is
drunk, entirely happy, and full of good food from the celebration. He ends up
falling asleep and you gather his weapons and hid them from him so that he will
not be able to defend himself when the Greeks come. It will be over soon, but
you wonder if you should just kill himself yourself since you are unable to
accept him for who he is, care nothing for him, and despise him and you end up
feeling that he deserves to die by your hand. He has hurt you in too many
unspeakable ways.
However you do not get the chance to
do so. You can hear the screams starting and the heavy footsteps of the
approaching Greek warriors which startles you and that makes you drop the knife
out of your hand onto the floor. You run out of the house in shock and terror.
You are able to see that everything around you is
on fire and you have been able hear the sounds of children crying, men dying
from the spears and swords of Greek warriors, and the screams of terror of
women. You cannot bear it. You must have been doomed to Tartarus and you are
enduring the eternal misery and pain that you deserve for causing the
destruction of Troy.
You must escape, but where can you go that you
will feel safe again at?
Hours pass by. It is impossible for you to escape
from this nightmare. You just have to live through it since it is your entire
whole fault that this is happening to Troy. You move throughout the city of
Troy as you see that houses are burned to the ground, the men are killed by
Greek soldiers, women and children run and scream through the streets of Troy
looking for a way out, the treasury is sacked, and terrified horses wonder
throughout the streets of Troy.
At last a soldier stops
you and then another soldier seizes you. They must have orders from Menelaus to
search for you for him. There is nothing to gain in resisting them. You let them
lead into you a room and leave you locked in there until morning.
The sun is already high in the sky. Troy has been
burned to the ground and you can still smell the smoke from the flames that
have slowly turned to ashes. The Greek celebrate their victory against the
Trojans by getting drunk on fine Trojan wine and eating good Trojan food. You
end up seeing Odysseus standing guard over the loot from the razed homes, the
ruined temples, and the Trojan palace---such as artifacts of amber and ivory,
beautiful robes, huge feasting tables, jewels, and wine bowls of solid gold
against theft from the Greek soldiers. You ferociously pray that with every
stolen Trojan cup that touches their lips, the liquid, no matter how originally
sweet, would turn bitter on their lips. Neoptolemus has finished off King Priam
at the altar of Zeus. The royal Trojan women have gone to their new masters as
Agamemnon has seized Cassandra to be his new concubine, Neoptolemus took
Andromache along with Cassandra’s twin brother the seer Prince Helenus and her
son Laodama, and Odysseus wound up taking poor old weeping Hecuba while little
Astayanx is thrown from the city walls by the Greek Herald Talthybius and
Princess Polyxena is sacrificed upon Achilles’ tomb to be his bride in the afterlife.
The slain Trojan men’s widows have started to sob and tremble in terror. You
know what will happen to them as they will be taken back as spoils of war by
the Greek warriors to Greece and spend the rest of their lives in slavery and
turmoil. You would like to feel sympathy for them, but you are too numb to feel
anything for anyone.
You had accepted Paris
for who he was, cared about him, and deeply loved him, but your husband is
dead. You ended up being a good mother to your children Helen, Aganus,
Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus from Paris, but they ended up being crushed to
death in their beds when the roof caved in on them. The city that felt like
home to you for ten years is gone. Menelaus will kill you. You pray to the gods
and goddesses that you will die a painless and quick death at your former
husband’s hands. You wish to see Paris and your children with him again and you
think that you might be together with them again in the Elysian Fields.
The Greek soldiers seize
you by the arms and take you to Menelaus. There is no will in you once again to
resist them. Some of the Trojan women
see you and start to call you names and throw degrading insults at you while
others spit at your feet. They start to scream for Menelaus to kill you. They
want to see you die.
You see Cassandra standing next to Agamemnon
who has a hold of the poor girl by the arm with a smug look on his face now
that he has the beauteous Cassandra all to himself. One of her eyes appears to
red and swollen. Bruises and cuts are
all over her body and her lip continually bleeds. You can see for yourself from
the wrinkles in her blue chiton that she did get abducted and brutally raped by
Ajax the Lesser. You do not accept
Agamemnon for who he is, care nothing for him, and despise him for his heinous
crime of luring your daughter Iphigenia to Aulis under the pretext of her
marrying Achilles only to nearly sacrifice her at the altar to Artemis the
goddess of the moon and the hunt in exchange for favorable winds and you desire
to kill him the arrogant, brutal, and cruel demon for it, but you doubt that
the soldiers would let you anywhere near the monster if you were to try it.
Then you are standing
right in front of Menelaus.
He appears not to accept
you for who you are, care nothing for you, and despise you. He has been waiting
ten years for this day. He is clutching the sword in his right hand that will
end your life in a few moments. You do not know what it feels like to die and
you end up realizing that you never want to know.
The soldiers release
their hold on your arms and you are standing in front of a man who desires to
see you dead. The screams of the Trojan women get louder as they shout at
Menelaus to kill you. They want to see you die as painful a death as he can make
it. Menelaus takes a few moments to stare at you with a look of cold fury and
deadly disdain in his eyes. Then he starts to raise the sword towards your
heart.
You can feel your heart
racing. The sound of the sword coming towards your heart scares you. That is
the most terrifying sound you ever heard.
You do not want to die
by being stabbed to death throw the heart with a sword. You ended up wondering
if you even have one anymore. You fear it. You can get him to change his mind
about his method of killing you as he can certainly slit your throat from ear
to ear, but you know that words will not stop him from killing you. You have
ruined Troy and shamed Greece and Menelaus for ten years.
You
were the ruin of Troy. You made Greece suffer because you decided to abandon
your husband Menelaus and your children Hermione, Aethiolas,
Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus to run away
with your lover Paris to Troy. Tens of thousands of men died because of you.
You
should die as you deserve death for
the endless amount of suffering and turmoil you have caused to both Greece and
Troy.
You
are not ready to die. So you use the one weapon that you have left at your
disposal. The body you have has brought you nothing but misery and pain and
caused so much suffering and torment for both the Greeks and the Trojans. This
body is the reason why tens of thousands of men have died for.
The routine will always
be the same: Men
adore you. The gods and goddesses bless you. Women curse you and despise you
for the way you drive men insane with desire for you.
You
silently unclasp the brooches that close your pink chiton at the shoulders and
the silk tumbles down your body baring your breasts to exposure. This makes
Menelaus stop raising his sword towards your heart as he stares in hesitation
at the perfection of your breasts as if he is bewitched by your flawless
beauty. The nearby Greek soldier’s blush
with their cheeks turning crimson in embarrassment of their reactions to the
sight of you naked and do their best to look away from you. You must be as
glorious as a goddess is in the nude.
Menelaus sheathes his
sword and says with in a chocked voice with tears in his eyes, “I still accept
you for who you are, care about you, and deeply love you, Helen. I cannot find
it within myself to kill you. Now dress yourself and return home to Sparta with
me. Surely the children are waiting for you. They have missed you greatly these
past ten years.”
You still wish to live.
There are still other people—your children Hermione, Aethiolas,
Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus who accept you for who you are, care
about you, and deeply love you just as you know your husband Menelaus still
does. They need their mother to be in there for them. Though it is a poor excuse to not suffer the
terrible punishment that you deserve for of the suffering and turmoil you put
both the Greeks and Trojans through it will have to do as it is true.
Hermione, Aethiolas,
Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus are completely different than what you
remember them when you arrive back in Sparta after the eight years Menelaus and
you have spent wandering in Egypt. They have become older. You can see for
yourself that Hermione has grown into a beautiful, intelligent, charming, and
dignified young woman and Aethiolas, Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus
have grown into handsome, brilliant, courageous, and determined young men, but
you do not know them. You end up seeing that this is your own fault.
It is nearly time for
your children to end up getting married and having children of their own. You
remember how it felt like for you to marry all of those years ago and you start
to think about Hermione feels about the marriage Menelaus has arranged for her
to Achilles’s son Neoptolemus. You wonder what your children think of you since
you are the mother that abandoned them to slip away with your lover like a
thief in the night.
You are back in Sparta
once again as the wife of Menelaus, the mother of Hermione, Aethiolas,
Maraphius, Pleisthenes, and Nicostratus, and the Queen of Sparta. It has been
like you never left, but you can see the changes of your home for yourself. Due
to the damage your actions caused your father Tyndareus does not want anything
to do with you and your mother Leda had decided to commit suicide by hanging
herself with her veil out of shame in your disgrace of the family.
Your brothers Castor and Pollux ended up dying in a fight to the death after a
cattle raid with your cousins Idas and Lynceus. You feel ferociously gleeful
after you hear that your sister Clytemnestra has extracted revenge upon
Aganmenon for him murdering her first husband King Tantalus of Pisa who she had
accepted for who he was, cared about, and deeply loved and their infant son
before her eyes, his near sacrifice of Iphigenia, and his never-ending whoring
including his intention to replace her with Cassandra in the royal bed by
murdering him with the help of her lover Aegisthus. You grief that Cassandra
was murdered along with him, but your grief hurts even worse after you hear the
news of Clytemnestra’s murder at the hands of her own son Orestes.
Troy has come to be dust, tens of
thousands of men have died, and Paris is gone separated from you by death
though you have at last come to love Menelaus over the years in your wanderings
with him. Sometimes visitors come to Sparta. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus,
travels to Sparta to ask Menelaus about the fate of his father.
The gods and goddesses
still favor you. They grant you to have a long life and your beauty will remain
the same after old age until the day you die. You spend great deals of time
lavishing your grandson Tisameneus with affection and love without turning him
into a spoiled little boy the way Orestes and Hermione wish you to.
You are going to die as
Helen of Sparta, but in your heart you eternally will be Helen of Troy.
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