Tradition
At first, I was willing to love her like my own daughter. You must understand, I had thought Paris dead, and in the joy of being reunited with him, I did not take thought for anything besides lost time. I wanted him to know that exposing him was not our choice, that it was not what we had wanted: we had felt that the exigencies of state required it. Now, on the ship to Greece, I know that this was my sin—Hector and Deiphobus were good enough never to say it, but I'm sure they resented me for all the attention I lavished on Paris. I know that Lykaon and Polites did; they said so with abandon.
My boys: gone forever, because of her.
She had pretty manners and a pretty face; it was easy to be charmed by her. Priam, much to my chagrin, was a little under her spell, even when he could not be bothered to spare a thought for his own daughters; Cassandra may have been mad, but it was obvious that she was suffering. He ordered her silenced or locked up, yet Helen he indulged. I was not jealous—it was obvious that there was nothing in it, that he saw her merely as another daughter—but she had so little beneath the surface.
Towards the end, we were being starved slowly, by her husband, and she complained that the vegetables were not as crisp and fresh as when she came to Troy! I don't think that she meant anything by it, at least not anything malicious; it was mere thoughtlessness. By the time the last festival rolled around, she still seemed to have no awareness that anything had changed. We could hardly afford to do even the bare minimum for the goddess, let alone set aside pretty things for her.
Theano was, as ever, tactful about it. I can't say the same for the other girls; Cassandra stewed and ranted, and unfortunately Andromache was going through an angry period after Hector's death. I remember that she drew herself up very straight and said, "Well, whatever you are, you're not a goddess!" Perhaps this was wrong of me, but I did feel awfully smug when Helen sputtered and tried feebly to explain that that wasn't what she'd meant.
Tyrian purple no longer even came into Troy, for the love of all the gods!
At least we did right by Athena in that last year. I have always tried to be a pious woman, and I wouldn't have it said that I stinted any goddess. I had to break into my dowry money—some of it had remained untouched through all the years—to buy a few goods on the black market. We may have been at war, but I was not about to let tradition slide. It does count for something, and one could even argue that I had the greater obligation to uphold tradition on account of my station.
I'm afraid that in that last year, we simply didn't have room for Helen to walk in the procession that brought the robe to Athena. Andromache was a war widow, and Chryseis had been through so much in the Greek camp. Of course Helen was mourning Paris, too—he had just died. I had to keep a stiff upper lip about the whole thing, at least in public, and bowed out of the procession; in private, I suggested that she do the same. She hadn't been eating well—none of us had, but she had had no appetite—and it would have been embarrassing as well as unlucky if she'd fainted.
"After all," I said, "Theano and I have already filled the last couple of places. Surely Andromache and Chryseis deserve the honor."
And Helen had to concede that they did.