Now, to be fair, the war was more than just romance. Paris violated xenia, Menelaus was humiliated as both king and husband, and the oath of Helen's suitors needed to be answered,

Agamemnon didn't raise an army solely for his brother's broken heart.

But pride has limits.

It can get you to declare war, launch the ships, and help you through the first campaign seasons.

But it's harder to explain ten years. Why is Menelaus still here? Why not remarry? Why not cut his losses? Why not let Helen go?

There's the political answer, but there's also the emotional one:

This is for ivy-crowned, loud Dionysus,

Glorious Semele and Zeus’s bright son.

Sleek-haired nymphs took him from his kingly father

Into their arms—devoted foster mothers

In Nysa’s hollows. As his parent wished it,

He grew, the gods’ peer, in a fragrant grotto—

They raised him so the world could sing his glory.

Later, festooned with laurel leaves and ivy,

He wandered forest places, and the nymphs came

Behind him, while the endless woods reechoed.

Welcome now, Dionysus, with your grape-wealth.

Bring us in joy to see this season next year,

The ending to the intro of Emily Wilson's translation of the the Iliad goes hard. Yes, this is a wall of text post, but its worth your time. The whole intro builds to this moment:

"But over the past century, in the wake of the two world wars and amid shifting attitudes towards masculinity and heroism, The Iliad has received renewed attention. Recent interpretations often view The Iliad as a poem less of glory than of mourning. In its attentiveness to the visual as well as auditory qualities of the world, The Iliad can feel entirely at home in our own image-focused media landscape. Twenty-first-century readers and listeners may see the inequalities in the poem’s social worlds with particular clarity. The emotional intensity of the poem’s representation of conflict feels in tune with the anguish and partisanship of our era. We are now in a period of crisis not for a specific nation but for humanity, inhabiting a planet that is becoming less and less habitable. A new kind of heartbreak can be felt in The Iliad’s representation of a city in its last days, of triumphs and defeats and struggles and speeches that take place in a city that will soon be burned to the ground, in a landscape that will soon be flooded by all the rivers, in a world where soon, no people will live at all, and there will be no more stories and no more names. You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time."

Our differences make us stronger! Each woman is unique and it's amazing! We are sisters, not enemies, women should support each other, because only together we can make this world better (Fun fact: each shipgirl wears a dress of her favorite color)

This celebration is very important for me. Feminism helped me to accept myself, recover from inner misogyny, and become a better person. Something tells me our grandmothers didn't fight for prohibition of education, abortions, and other basic human rights for women in 2020s. We should pick up where they left off. Feminism is still needed (in 21st century dammit)