Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and heir to the House of Atreus, who led the Achaian armies to Troy during the Trojan War. Clytemnestra becomes enraged with her husband after he sacrifices their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, at Aulis as a means of appeasing the goddess Artemis. This leads Clytemnestra to return to Mycenae, and employ the help of Aegisthus – who soon becomes her lover – in orchestrating her revenge. She soon kills Agamemnon, along with his war prize Cassandra, and from here begins her rule over the Mycenaean kingdom.

Often depicted within the Agamemnon myth as ruthless and without guilt, Tóibín infuses Clytemnestra’s characterization with first-person accounts of feeling, thus making her choice to commit regicide nuanced and complex. Though convinced that she is performing an act of justice in murdering the man who murdered her daughter, she simultaneously realizes the gravity...