Roxana

Roxana was a Bactrian noblewoman and wife of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s death, she and her son Alexander IV became pawns in the violent dynastic struggles among the Successors.

In Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, his rivalry with Hephaestion, Alexander's marriage to Roxana and the king's final illness turn imperial expansion into a story of love, cultural conflict and loss. In Mary Renault’s Funeral Games, Perdiccas attempts to preserve the empire under the nominal kingship of Philip III and the unborn child of Roxana, while generals, infantry leaders and royal women compete to control the settlement. Other novels featuring Roxana include Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s The Ends of the Earth, Robert Fabbri’s To the Strongest, Robert Fabbri’s An Empty Throne, and Robert Fabbri’s The Three Paradises.

In non-fiction, Roxana is discussed in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander and Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20. In Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander, the executions of Philotas and Parmenion, the killing of Cleitus, the conspiracy involving Callisthenes, Alexander’s marriage to Roxana and the death of Hephaestion reveal a command fractured by fear and rivalry.