The story
c. 337 – 317 BC
The Illyrian highlands, the road to Asia, the field at Euia
Alexander’s niece in the war for his empire
Adea was born around 337 BC into the oldest blood in Macedon. Her mother Cynane was a daughter of Philip II by an Illyrian princess, raised in the Illyrian way to fight — the sources credit her with killing an Illyrian queen in battle with her own hand. Her father was Amyntas IV, the boy-king Philip had pushed aside. Cynane brought her daughter up the same way she had been brought up: to the sword before the loom.
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, his empire was held in the names of two kings who could not rule it — his infant son and his incapable half-brother, Philip III Arrhidaeus. Cynane took her daughter to Asia to marry the half-brother. The regent had her killed on the road to stop it, and the army, outraged at the murder of Philip’s daughter, forced the wedding through. Adea became Queen Eurydice over her mother’s body. Within a year or two she was standing before the troops at Triparadisus, a teenager, turning veteran soldiers against the regent Antipater.
In 317 BC she raised an army in her husband’s name and marched against Olympias, Alexander’s mother, who was coming home from Epirus. The armies met at Euia. No blow was struck: her Macedonians would not fight the mother of Alexander and went over to her. Eurydice was walled up, sent a sword, a noose and hemlock, and hanged herself with her own girdle, dry-eyed, praying that Olympias would get the same gifts. Within the year, she did.
“I trained for the blade — they knelt to a name.”
Vol. XX is the answer record to Vol. XV, Olympias — the same field, from the side that lost it. The music is stripped to guitars, drums and a women’s war-cry, a war-machine built for a charge that never came. The Truth & Legend page marks what the record says and what the album adds.
Album in active production. 2 of 8 tracks released. The remaining 6 drop through the rest of the cycle.