Purple Ducks Digital Media

It begins with the terrifying nightmare of a young woman, pregnant with her second child. It ends, nearly forty years later, with an old widow, a former queen, crawling amidst the wreckage of her city—her family butchered, an old age of slavery and abasement ahead.

The young woman and the old queen are the same person: Hecuba, queen of Troy. To this day, Hecuba remains one of the great women of Greek drama, supported by a cast of characters whose names are forever enmeshed in our language and culture: Priam, Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Hector ... and more.

Here is a look at a famous war from a different perspective: not from those who took part in the glories of battle, but from a not-so-innocent bystander, deeply affected and ultimately devastated by the horrors wrought upon her family. It is not a happy story, admittedly—but it is not one you will easily forget.