Andromache is presented as an exemplary wife and mother and, despite the fact that she was married to three different men, an exemplary widow as well. She is featured in three extant works of Greek literature--The Iliad and two plays by Euripides, The Trojan Women and Andromache--and her character and the details of her story are fairly consistent throughout her three appearances. A comparison of the treatment of the character of Andromache in these three works demonstrates how this basic model of the virtuous woman could be adapted to somewhat different functions without losing the essential qualities that appear to have been associated with her name.
Andromache was first married to Hector (son of Priam and Hecuba, the king and queen of Troy) and their infant son was named Astyanax. After Hector's death and the destruction of Troy their son was killed by the conquerors and Andromache was awarded as a prize of war to Neoptolemos, the son of Achilles, the slayer of Hector. In Phthia, in Thessaly, she bore a son named Molossus and, following the murder of Neoptolemos, she married Helenus, Hector's brother. Helenus inherited Neoptolemos' kingdom and it was promised that Andromache's son Molossus would begin a new line of kings there.
These basic facts of Andromache's life are spread out through the three works. In the Iliad she makes her first appearance in one of the most unusual scenes in the epic poem when, in Book VI, Hector finds her on the battlements of Troy watching the fighting. Their rare domestic moment is brief and eventually she makes her second appearance as the chief mourner at the funeral of Hector which closes The Iliad in Book XXIV. In The Trojan Women she is one of the widowed noblewomen, led by Hecuba, who await their fate and grieve over the gods' failure to help Troy. In this play she is shown receiving the news that she will be married off to Neoptolemos and the shocking, but not wholly unexpected,...