(NOTE: Trailblazing English is used in this monologue.)
TRIGGER WARNING: This monologue contains allusions to sexual violence.
Character: Helen of Troy (Queen of Sparta)
Setting: Before the ruined palace of Ancient Troy
Background: After the death of Paris, Helen casts herself as his unwilling captive in an attempt to curb the hostility that Hecuba and the remaining Trojans harbor against her.
HELEN
Oh, Hecuba, do you still tell yourself
I came to Troy willingly with your son?
I was Queen in Sparta! — What am I here?
Paris lied to me. He insisted Aphrodite had
given me to him as a prize for his choosing her
the most beautiful deity on Olympus! —
That I would incur her wrath if I didn’t go with him. —
That she would turn me into a monster more hideous
than Medusa! As if the Divine Feminine would submit
to being judged by any male — let alone a mortal one!
Paris was ambitious. He was not the Heir to Troy.
He would never possess the most beautiful city in the world,
so he concocted a lie to possess the world’s most beautiful wenn.
Goddes prove such easy scapegoats for humin trespasses!
When I was a girl, I was told Zeus was my father. —
That he had come to my mortal mother in the form of a swan,
and, as a result, I had been hatched from an egg.
I now believe only these absurd stories are hatched!
But on that night ten years ago, in my youth and ignorance,
I was too frightened to protest.
Yes, I left with Paris — but unwillingly! Does that make me evil?
I was his captive! And once I had arrived here — to a country
where I was surrounded by Trojans who distained me —
What difference would objecting have made?
Agamemnon captured your own daughter, Hecuba.
He’s taken Cassandra back to the Greece camp — unwillingly!
What difference would it make now if she protested?
To Prosterity I will be known as Helen of Troy!
The face that launched a thousand ships! —
That drove men to lose their reason! —
That caused them to drop to their knees before me!
What great power I will have possessed in Ages to Come!
But for now, Hecuba, these men, Trojan or Greek,
will do to me, to Cassandra — to the rest of you —
what they will!
And the only thing that we can mitigate — maybe —
is whether they come to us with compassion or contempt.
© Justy Fairfield 2008, 2022
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