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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/troy_fall_of_a_city_titlecard.JPG]]
2''Troy: Fall of a City'' is a British-American {{miniseries}} filmed in South Africa based on the Trojan War and the love affair between Paris and Helen, played by Louis Hunter and Bella Dayne respectively. The show tells the story of the 10 year siege of Troy, set in the 13th century BC. The series was commissioned by BBC One and is a co-production between BBC One and Creator/{{Netflix}}, with BBC One airing the show on 17 February 2018 in the United Kingdom, and Netflix streaming the show internationally outside the UK.
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4!General Tropes:
5* AdaptationalBadass: Sort of, if you apply badass to mean someone with power. In the original Iliad, Pandaros (Pandarus) is a Trojan archer and his only real role is being goaded by Athena into shooting at Menelaus and dissolving the temporary truce after Paris and Menelaus’ duel. Here, however, he is an important lord in the Trojan court.
6* AdaptationalDiversity: Due to ColourBlindCasting, Achilles, Patroclus, Aeneas, Pandarus, Zeus and Athena are all portrayed by black actors (mixed race[[note]]From the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coloureds Cape Coloured]] group in South Africa[[/note]] in Athena's case), Achilles and Patroclus are unambiguously bisexual rather than AmbiguouslyBi this time around and Artemis is portrayed by a black actress with albinism.
7* AdaptationalHeroism: While still not a saint, Paris is far more likeable than the original thanks to undergoing CharacterDevelopment. [[spoiler: The original Paris would not have attempted suicide to save Troy.]]
8* AdaptationalSexuality: Despite popular belief, Achilles and Patroclus were at the most AmbiguouslyBi in the Iliad. The miniseries goes ahead and just makes them unambiguously bisexual.
9* AdaptationalVillainy:
10** Unlike the original story, the series goes out of its way to portray the Greeks as villains, ignoring the fact that they are the wronged party, through emphasizing misdeeds they committed and portraying those mostly omitted in adaptations (like Odysseus murdering Hector's infant son, albeit reluctantly at Agamemnon's command). Meanwhile, it omits the misdeeds committed by the Trojans, such as Hector's pointless sacrifice of his army and his constant looting of the corpses of his enemies.
11** Helen elopes with Paris at least partially out of personal ambition rather than being tricked by Aphrodite. Women in Troy have far more power than in Greece and she wants this for herself. A case of TruthInTelevision since Hittite women could rise to positions of power.
12* AdaptedOut: While this adaptation is more faithful than most, several characters are not present on both sides, such as Teucer, Neoptolemus, Memnon and others.
13* AmazonBrigade: The Amazons, naturally, are a group of warrior women that fight on the Trojans' side.
14* AncientGrome: Mixed references to Artemis (Greek) and Diana (Roman) as goddesses of the hunt and moon, as well as the omission of Selene (Greek goddess of the moon) suggest a muddled understanding of Greco-Roman mythology.
15* AntiVillain: Odysseus doesn't like the atrocities his fellow Greeks end up committing, but he's forced to comply out of loyalty. His [[CombatPragmatist occasionally harsh tactics]] are also motivated by a desire to end the war quickly, so he can go back to Ithaca.
16* AscendedExtra: Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, appears and even has a secondary role. Aeneas also has a more prominent role and the series shows his survival.
17* BattleHaltingDuel: Between Hector and Patroclus, and also discussed by Achilles.
18* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: [[spoiler:Queen Hecuba prefers to cut her wrists than let herself be taken as a slave by the Greeks]].
19* BlackVikings: Many of the Trojan and Greek characters are portrayed by black actors, which wasn't true in reality of these peoples (although, of course, it's fictional to begin with). In fairness, being Mediterranean peoples, historical Greeks and Trojans would have had a definitively darker hue of skin compared to the white actors portraying them too, who are mostly of British or Irish stock.
20* CassandraTruth: Not only [[TropeNamer Cassandra]], but priest Litos as well know bringing Paris back was a huge mistake.
21* ChildSoldier: Due to desperation, at one point Hector calls any boys or men above fourteen and below forty to fight. Nine-year-old Evander attempts to lie about his age in order to be allowed to fight, and his fifteen-year-old brother Hesion joins the fight himself. At one point, Hector sees a bloodied boy die in front of him.
22* ColorblindCasting:
23** While Zeus, Athena and Artemis are all portrayed by black actors other relations of Zeus such as Aphrodite (either his daughter or aunt depending on the version), Helen (his daughter) and Hermes (his son) are all played by white actors.
24** Similarly while Achilles and his first cousin once removed Patroclus are both played by black actors, his paternal uncle's son Ajax, someone more closely related to him than Patroclus, is played by a white actor.
25* CombatByChampion: Menelaus challenges Paris to one, and unsurprisingly he beats the tar out of the prince. He would've killed him there and then had Paris not fled at the last moment.
26* DeathByAdaptation: PlayedWith regarding Astyanax's. Some tales say Odysseus kills him [[spoiler: which happens in the finale]], others that it was actually Neoptolemus (Achilles's son), but some say he stays alive and follows his mother, before founding a new Troy as an adult with Ascanius (Aeneas's son). [[spoiler:Hecuba]] kills herself here rather than be {{made a slave}}, as her fate was in the original story.
27* DemotedToExtra: Ajax and Nestor have far less important roles compared to the original story.
28* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:Odysseus is forced by Agamemnon to kill Astyanax, Hector and Andromache's baby son, by throwing him off the walls of Troy.]]
29* DidYouActuallyBelieve: Menelaus' reaction when the Greek army arrives to ransack Troy even though Helen promised to leave with him if he lets Paris and the remaining Trojans live.
30* DivineRaceLift: Zeus is portrayed by a black actor, while normally of course he's shown looking Greek, though due to ColourBlindCasting, this only extends to a small portion of his relations.
31* DivineIntervention: The goddesses are shown giving their blessings to their respective champions, but as Zeus puts it, they can favor mortals, but they can't change their fates.
32* DownerEnding: The Trojans are massacred, the survivors enslaved. Achilles and Patroclus are dead. Odysseus, the only surviving Greek to have held on to any semblance of morality, is [[spoiler:forced to murder a baby]]. And the series ends with the remaining Greeks simply sailing away while the Gods wander through the ruins.
33* DramaticIrony: When the Greeks arrive at Troy, Agamemnon confidently declares they'll take the city in a couple of days, since, after all, the gods must repay his sacrifice of his own daughter. Viewers who know anything about the Trojan War know how wrong he is.
34* EnemyMine: The Amazons don't like the Trojans very much, but they hate Greeks even more.
35* {{Fingore}}: During his fight with Achilles, Hector is defeated when the former strikes at his sword hand, cutting off his fingers in doing so.
36* FreudianExcuse: Andromache is initially hostile toward Helen mainly because Helen is a mother, who left her daughter behind when she fled, while Andromache herself is trying unsuccessfully to conceive. The fact that Helen abandoned a role that Andromache is desperately trying to assume feeds her resentment.
37* GetOut: In the second episode, the two sides attempt negotiations. The Trojans know Paris screwed up and are willing to make concessions to the Greeks, as they don't actually ''want'' to have a war...but the economic demands the Greeks make are so insulting that the Trojans, even the ones who wanted to give Helen back, categorically reject them and order the Greeks out.
38* HeroicSuicide: Paris throws himself off a cliff to avert a prophecy which says he'll doom Troy (he's also distraught at his adopted father's death, which helps). The Amazons revived him though, but Aphrodite says it still counts since he was temporarily in the underworld. [[spoiler: Obviously not, given the ending.]]
39* HumanSacrifice:
40** Agamemnon is forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis in order to allow his army to set sail.
41** Paris' [[spoiler: attempted suicide]] can be seen that way as well.
42* IncestSubtext: Agamemnon, though never expressly said, is implied to take Chryseis as his slave because she reminds him of his dead daughter Iphigenia. However, when she refuses to play the role, he quickly moves on to treating her as just another SexSlave. Disgusting.
43* InformedFlaw: Throughout the series, we are told what a horrible person Menelaus is and how he does not deserve Helen. Yet we never see any evidence of this. Instead, we are presented with a reasonable man, whose wife cheats on him and betrays him at every turn.
44* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Interestingly, Agamemnon does this at the start of his arc -- after he sacrifices his daughter for the sake of the war, it becomes clear that he is then willing to do anything, commit any atrocity, in order to justify that, and drag the rest of the world down to his level.
45* LoopholeAbuse: [[spoiler:Menelaus promises on his honor that he'll let Paris and the remaining Trojans live if Helen willingly returns to him. When the other Greeks come to destroy the city anyway and Helen calls Menelaus a liar, he responds that he no longer has any honor to swear on.]]
46* MakingLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces:
47** Paris and his lover have sex in a field.
48** Achilles and Patrocles have sex with Briseis on the beach, plus each other.
49* ManlyGay: Or rather, Manly Bisexual. Achilles and to a lesser extent Patrocles are fearsome warriors, along with being lovers. The two also have a threesome with Briseis on the beach.
50* TheMole: Xanthius, Odysseus’ spy inside Troy.
51* MsFanservice: Helen is very beautiful and goes topless multiple times while having sex with Paris or washing herself.
52* ObfuscatingInsanity: When messengers arrive in Ithaca to bring Odysseus to war, he tries to make himself look insane, by sowing a field with salt and attempting to plow it. Unfortunately, the messengers see through it, and call his bluff by placing his infant son in his way, forcing him to stop.
53* OffingTheOffspring: Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to appease Artemis, though he's distraught at doing so.
54* OhCrap:
55** As the priest of Artemis offers up sacrifices to appease her wrath, he closes his eyes to pray, and almost visibly craps himself when he opens them, to see the Goddess of the Hunt herself standing right in front of him, looking ''very'' pissed off.
56** The reaction of the Trojans when they learn that Agamemnon has sacrificed his daughter to get the Greek fleet to Troy. Up until then they thought they could negotiate, but once they learn he's done that they realize just how determined the Greeks are.
57%% commented out as Administrivia/ZeroContextExample * OneManArmy: Achilles, duh.
58* OohMeAccentsSlipping: It's occasionally difficult to tell what accent Australian Louis Hunter is going for.
59* PapaWolf: This is how Diomedes confirms Odysseus is only pretending to be insane, by putting his son Telemachus in front of the plowing path. Odysseus immediately gets him out of the way and punches Diomedes.
60* PetTheDog: Figuratively and literally with Xanthius, making him not completely unlikable despite being TheMole.
61** His relationship with his literal dog.
62** Additionally, his interactions with young Evander.
63* RaceLift: Achilles, Zeus, Patroklos, Aeneas, Pandarus and Athena. They're usually depicted as ethnically Greek and Asiatic respectively, but are portrayed by black actors in the series, with Athena mixed race.[[note]]From the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coloureds Cape Coloured]] group in South Africa.[[/note]]
64** Unfortunately this also results in the majority of Trojans being portrayed as usual by white actors, while Troy is in Asia- a fact that Menelaus’ episode 2 line, “We will bring the rage of the gods down on your Asiatic heads!” makes it clear the series is in fact aware of.
65* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Achilles goes into one when he thinks the Trojans have violated the twelve-day truce. He would have killed Priam himself [[spoiler:had Paris not shot him in the AchillesHeel, giving his father the chance to fatally injure him]].
66* SadlyMythtaken: A brief one, but Zeus is shown to be accompanied by a vulture, rather than an eagle.
67* SenselessSacrifice:
68** Helen ultimately agrees to leave with the Greeks in exchange for them to leave Paris and the rest of Troy in peace. The Greeks have no intention of respecting that wish.
69** Agamemnon [[spoiler: kills his own daughter]] in exchange for a favourable wind to carry the Greek ships to Troy. Considering that the war lasts for ten years, he could just have waited for the wind to turn.
70* SequelHook: The last two shots of the final episode are of Aeneas gathering survivors, and Odysseus departing on his ship, setting up potential following seasons for Literature/TheOdyssey and Literature/TheAeneid. The writers have stated that there will probably be a Season 2 covering the Odyssey.
71* SparedByTheAdaptation: Ajax is shown still alive at the end of the series, whereas in a post-Iliad episode of the Trojan War he killed himself.
72* AThreesomeIsHot: Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis have a very hot and romantic three-way on the beach.
73* TookALevelInJerkass: Menelaus starts out as a pretty reasonable and understanding king. However, as the war goes on, Menelaus' attitude gets increasingly worse, and by the end he is just as, if not more, sadistic, cruel, and bloodthirsty as Agamemnon.
74* TookALevelInKindness: For the first few episodes, Paris is a selfish, immature, man-child who starts the war because he's horny and then runs away from any real responsibility. However, after his duel with Menelaus, he goes on a spiritual journey that results in him becoming much more serious, focused, and dutiful.
75* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Hector to Priam and Hecuba when he calls them out on their deception that [[spoiler: they left Paris to die, locked Cassandra away and lied about it to the whole city.]]
76* TragicVillain: Agamemnon is portrayed here as a man forced to do heinous things to lead his men into war, and it drives him over the edge.
77* TrojanHorse: Of course. Interestingly, this adaptation presents the Trojans as less credulous than usual -- they dismantle the horse almost completely to check that there are no nasty surprises; it just so happens that they leave the head, where Odysseus and Menelaus are apparently hiding, alone. Additionally, the rest of the horse was stuffed with grain, something the Trojans really needed at this point.
78* TruerToTheText: When compared to ''Film/{{Troy}}'', the series follows the events on the Trojan Cycle more faithfully.
79* WorldsBestWarrior: Achilles, obviously. Despite the fact that this adaptation keeps the Gods and mysticism as part of the story, Achilles is eventually shown to not be in any way invulnerable -- he's just so skilled in combat that nobody can stand against him.
80* WorthyOpponent: Achilles likes to seek these out -- but has come to see the outcome as inevitable, because he's just that good.
81* WouldHurtAChild: Odysseus very reluctantly drops Hector and Andromache's infant son from the walls of Troy to his death, at Agamemnon's order. Andromache curses him for this.

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