Throughout all of his life, Paris had lived with the virtue expected of him by Priam. He had vowed to himself that he would make him proud, be the sort of man he should. He had felt the weight of those expectations when he misbehaved as a child, or when he was scolded during a war council meeting.

No longer was he that child, that had waited idle for Priam's approval. He had taken it, earned it. He liked to think that he was exactly as he was intended to be, and he had followed the gods plan for him, seen it through to the end for the moment. He was Paris of Troy. He would not squander that.

Most people knew him to be an affable young man with an intelligent mind and an even smarter, more gilded tongue. He was of a gentler disposition, and always very polite to the older, wiser matrons of the court whom were always attempting to thrust their beautiful young daughters into his waiting arms.

He knew it was a power play. But he would smile politely on and pretend as though he did not to save them face.

No... Nowadays his only crime was to fall in love. And yet it was his greatest sin.

He should have known then that going to Helen would be the straw that broke the camel's back. His only crime was that he could not see past his love, his devotion. He was young, virile. His heart could not be tamed so easily as a mere warning. Her smile, her voice... it beckoned him to her cruelly, even now as his country was besieged.

The war on Troy lay on his shoulders.

The burning torch of his mother's memories had indeed been he himself. And yet, all he could do, all he could sorrowfully do was regret, and live with the sins that he had so brazenly committed in the name of love. Troy burned not by his hand but by his path, great swaths of burning,

burning,

burning.

The smoke encroached on the horizon and for the first time he could only weep bitterly. A young man's mind is never so easily swayed as when he is madly in love. And yet it was the most ruinous thing there exists.

Paris stood, looking down over the kingdom that, perhaps, would become ruin on his word. All he seemed to do was think, nowadays.