The Trojan War began in 1281, when Eris, the Goddess of Discord, created a golden apple and said that is would go to the most beautiful goddess, with Hera, Aphrodite and Athena being the contenders. The three goddesses went to Zeus and demanded he decide the winner. Zeus was worried of the consequences of chosing one of the goddesses over the others, and so he ordered Hermes to find someone to judge the goddesses.
Hermes gave the job of deciding to Paris, the prince of the island kingdom of Troy. Each goddess also offered Paris a bribe: Hera offered him rulership of all of Eregost, Athena offered him glory and success in battle and Aphrodite offered him the hand of the most beautiful woman in marriage. Paris decided that Aphrodite was the most beautiful, and so Paris was given Queen Helen, who was already married to Menelaus, the king of Lysan.
Three years before Paris was forced to choose between the three goddesses, Helen's father was trying to find a suitor for his daughter, but was worried that choosing one would guarantee war with the others. That was when Odysseus, a young king from Ithaca, gave Helen's father a solution: He would have each of the suitors swear to protect the marriage of Helen and whoever became her husband. All of the suitors swore to, as did Odysseus. Helen was then given the choice to pick which one of her suitors to marry, and she chose Menelaus.
Three years after this, Helen was abducted by Aphrodite, and given to Paris in Troy, and Menelaus called upon the other suitors to fulfil their oath. Menelaus and his fellow suitors gathered an army known as the Acheaen Army. They also asked for the assistance of the warrior Achilles, as it was prophesied that the Acheaens could not win the war without him. After the Acheaen Army landed on the shores of Troy, they demanded that the city return Helen to Menelaus, which Troy refused to do, kickstarting the war.
On the Acheaen side, their best warriors and strategists were Menelaus, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Diomedes, Ajax the Greater, Ajax the Lesser and Achilles. On the Trojan side, their best warriors were the two princes, Hector and Paris.
After a grueling nine years of battle, progress was being made, Diomedes was blessed by Athena and was cutting a bloody path through the Trojan forces with his spear. Zeus favoured the Trojans and was raining thrunderbolts down upon the Acheaen Army, until Hera, with the help of Hypnos, managed to trick him into falling into a deep sleep. Both Hera and Athena favoured the Acheaens, as Paris picked Aphrodite over them. At seeing Zeus' displays of power, Poseidon saw it as a challenge, and decided to bolster the mights of both Ajax the Greater and Ajax the Lesser. Agamemnon angered a priest of Apollo, leading to Apollo raining golden arrows from the sky upon the Acheaen forces. Achilles demanded that Agamemnon appease the priest, to which Agamemnon finally relented and did as such, but he demanded that he get repaid by Achilles. This disrespect that Agamemnon showed towards Achilles led to Achilles refusing to fight, causing the tide of battle to shift in the favour of the Trojans. This continued until Hector killed Patroclus, Achilles lover, sending Achilles into a rage. Achilles cut a bloody crater through the Trojan forces, slew Hector, tied his corpse to his chariot and rode arround Troy three times to parade the body of Hector to his father, Troy's king. Eventually Achilles' rampage was brought to an end when Apollo took the form of Paris, and shot Achilles with a poisoned arrow in the heel, killing him. Apollo did this as vengeance for the fact that Achilles killed two demi-god sons of Apollo.
After the death of their greatest warrior, Odysseus decided it was time for his greatest plan yet. He had a giant wooden horse built, and had it left infront of the gates of Troy, along with a messenger claiming that the Acheaens had retreated and would not be coming back, and that the horse was sacred to Athena and that bringing it into Troy would bring them good luck, and that damaging the statue in any way would curse the city. The Trojans took the Horse into their city, and celebrated their victory in the war. That night, the entire Acheaen Army burst from the Horse, slaughtering all the soldiers in Troy and burning the city to the ground. Paris was killed by Agamemnon and Menelaus rescued his wife. The city of Troy burnt to the ground, once a prosperous city, deduced to ash.
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