Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 300 belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and Frank Miller.
When his half-brother Cleomenes died, they wanted him to marry Gorgo, his half-brother's daughter. She was as beautiful as Helen must have been, and simply to look at her was to fall half in love. He could not have made a finer match if he had searched all of Sparta for ten years.
He refused.
They called him an imbecile. He told them nothing.
The whisper went around that he was mad, as Cleomenes had been. His half-brothers came around to talk to him, and they called him brainsick and a cretin for rejecting a girl like Gorgo. He said nothing.
Gorgo said nothing. She only looked at him, a single flashing look of her dark eyes that stripped him to the bone and almost—almost—conquered even his will, before she turned silently away and, not once looking back, married Dorieus.
The council of elders had him brought before them and charged him for dereliction of his duty as a Spartan to marry and produce sons. He told them that he certainly did intend to marry and he certainly did intend to produce sons. He was just waiting for his wife to get there.
Though they questioned and interrogated him, that was all he would say. When they finally let him go, it was more out of confusion than anything else.