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Clytemnestra
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Raised as a Spartan princess alongside her sister Helen, Clytemnestra is trained to fight but expected to submit to the marriages and alliances chosen by men. Agamemnon destroys her first family and carries her to Mycenae as his queen. She survives by learning how power moves through palace households, dynastic marriages and rival royal families, while her children give her both vulnerability and a reason to resist.
When Agamemnon sacrifices their daughter Iphigenia before sailing to Troy, Clytemnestra’s grief becomes a deliberate demand for vengeance. During his long absence she rules Mycenae, forms an alliance with Aegisthus and prepares for the king’s return. Casati retells the story behind the Oresteia from the queen’s perspective, presenting a figure traditionally remembered as an adulteress and murderer as a warrior, mother and ruler shaped by repeated political and personal violence.
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