Euripides' Andromache - Characters and their family trees

Trojan war widow Andromache (remember that Achilles had slain Hector before receiving Paris' deadly arrow) is the main character of this twisted family drama: a captive woman who has a child with her husband's killer; the jealousy of a princess who can't give his husband a heir, a grandfather ruined by the killing of the last member of his family, a prince who claims his rights over an already wedded woman ... that's Euripides' Andromache !

The family trees behind Euripides' Andromache

The story
Once Troy had fallen Achilles' son Neoptolemus takes Hector's wife Andromache as a battle price and carries her to his homeland Phthia, where she has to live side by side with his formal wife Hermione, daughter of king and queen of Sparta Menelaus and Helen. Infertile Hermione could give no son to his husband, who later has an offspring with the Trojan prisioner.

Filled with anger and jealousy, Hermione plots the killing of Andromache's son while Neoptolemus is away in Delphi to consult the city's famed oracle. Peleus, father of Achilles and grandfather of Neoptolemus saves the kid from his bloody destiny.

Orestes, son of Clyemnestra and Mycenaen king Agamemnon arrives at the place and carries Hermione away, saying he has rights on her for their families had arranged their marriage (in order to unite the cities of Sparta and Mycenae) prior to the bonding of Hermione and Neoptolemus. As the Spartan princess was fearing for her life, she is taken by Orestes with full consent.

Hermione now has no need to worry for her Phtihan husband: Orestes had sent his people to kill him at Delphi.

The people of this story

Helen: queen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus; the human cause of the Trojan war. Son of Zeus and Leda; sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux (The Dioscuri)

Menelaus: king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon.

Orestes: son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Killed his mother to avenge the murder of his father (read Aeschylus' "The Oresteia").

Neoptolemus: son of Achilles, who helped the Greeks in their battle against Troy.

Andromache: wife of Trojan prince Hector, who was fiercely killed by Achilles in the battlefield.