Madeline Miller
The book is narrated by Patroclus, the son of King Menoetius. He is presented as a potential suitor to Helen of Troy. He is then obliged to take a blood oath in defense of her marriage to Menelaus. After Patroclus accidentally kills the son of one of his father’s nobles, he is exiled to Phthia, where he meets Achilles, the son of Phthia’s king, Peleus, and the sea nymph Thetis. They become close friends, and Patroclus develops feelings for Achilles. Convinced that a mortal of low status is an unsuitable companion for her son, Thetis attempts to separate the pair by sending Achilles to train under Chiron for what would become three years, though Patroclus ultimately joins Achilles in his training, having run away and caught up to Achilles before he even meets Chiron. As their relationship grows, the Mycenaean king, Agamemnon, calls on the various Achaeans to join his military campaign against Troy, whose prince Paris has kidnapped his brother Menelaus’s wife, Helen. As a prophecy foretells that Achilles will die in Troy after the death of the Trojan prince Hector, Thetis hides Achilles on Skyros in the guise of a woman in the court of King Lycomedes; she forces him to marry Lycomedes’s daughter Deidamia, who later bears Achilles’s son Neoptolemus.
Patroclus follows Achilles to Skyros, where they live until they are discovered by Odysseus and Diomedes. Patroclus is obligated to join the war in Troy as a result of his blood oath, while Achilles joins after vowing that he will never fight Hector in order to avoid his prophesied death. Upon joining the Achaean forces, tensions escalate between Achilles and Agamemnon: first when Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease Artemis and later when Achilles takes the Trojan woman Briseis as a war prize to save her from Agamemnon. However, out of sensitivity, Achilles largely avoids interacting with Briseis directly because he had killed the men in her family, but she and Patroclus develop a close friendship verging on romance, ultimately settling into a devoted sibling relationship.
After nine years, Chryseis is claimed by Agamemnon. Soon after, her father, Chryses, tries to pay for her release, which Agamemnon refuses. Chryses appeals to Apollo, who unleashes a plague that decimates the Achaeans; when Agamemnon refuses Achilles’s demand to return Chryseis, he doubles down by blaming Achilles for the war’s length, by his unwillingness to face and kill Hector. As punishment, he orders that Briseis be taken from Achilles and brought to him, which offends Achilles, who vows to remove himself and his army from the fight until this slight at his honor is repaired.
To precipitate the Greeks’ need for Achilles, Thetis convinces Zeus to tip the war in favor of the Trojans so that the Achaeans will regret having antagonized Achilles, and the Achaeans suffer significant losses. Tensions flare between Achilles and Patroclus when Achilles refuses to accept a private arrangement where Briseis is returned to him, along with valuable gifts. He stubbornly demands a public apology, refusing to come to the aid of the Greeks, who are on the verge of defeat.
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