The Ashes of Glory
What Remains After the Fire
Troy was gone. Its mighty walls reduced to rubble, its streets stained with blood, and its people enslaved or slain. The Greeks had won—but at what cost?
The fires of victory could not burn away the curses left behind. Priam was dead, murdered at the altar of Zeus. His queen, Hecuba, once a proud monarch, now stood broken, a slave to her conquerors. Andromache, Hector’s widow, was dragged from the ruins, her young son—Troy’s last hope—thrown from the walls to ensure no heir would rise.
For the victors, triumph turned to tragedy. The gods, angered by the Greeks’ cruelty, wove new fates of suffering:
- Agamemnon returned home to betrayal and death at the hands of his own wife.
- Ajax the Great, haunted by dishonor after the contest for Achilles’ armor, fell into madness and took his own life.
- Odysseus, cursed by Poseidon, would wander the seas for years, longing for home but denied peace.
The war was over, but its shadow stretched far beyond Troy’s walls.
The Fates of the Fallen
The Survivors and the Cursed
- Hecuba, once queen of Troy, was forced to serve the very men who had destroyed her family. In some tales, grief twisted her into madness; in others, the gods transformed her into a howling dog—a creature of sorrow, her voice forever lost to the winds.
- Andromache, the symbol of Troy’s nobility, was taken as a concubine by Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son. Her life became a chain of survival, marked by loss but endured with quiet strength.
- Cassandra, cursed to see the future but never be believed, was claimed as a war prize by Agamemnon. She foresaw his death—and her own—at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, but her warnings fell on deaf ears, as always.
Meanwhile, the gods, once divided by the war, turned their attention elsewhere. But the scars of Troy remained etched in both mortal and divine memory.
The Echoes of Troy
Legends That Never Die
Though Troy burned, its legacy endured.
One man escaped the flames—Aeneas, carrying his father on his back and holding his son’s hand. Guided by fate, he fled the ruined city to journey across distant lands, destined to become the forefather of a new people—the Romans.
For the Greeks, the war’s glory faded, leaving behind only grief, shattered kingdoms, and haunted hearts. The victors became the cursed, their triumphs turned to ash by the gods they had once called allies.
But in songs and stories, Troy lived on. The names of Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, and Helen echoed through time, immortal not by divine power, but by the memories of those who told their tales.
Because in the end, that is the true victory—not in stone or sword, but in legend.
—The End of the Trojan War. But not the end of the story.