Read the excerpts from " The Royal House of Thebes " and " The Story of a Warrior Queen ."Ismene weeping came from the palace to stand with her sister. "I helped do it," she said. But Antigone would not have that. "She had no share in it," she told Creon. And she bade her sister say no more. "Your choice was to live," she said, "mine to die."–"The Royal House of Thebes"When the Roman soldiers burst in upon them, they found the great queen dead, with her daughters in her arms.She had poisoned both herself and them, rather than that they should fall again into the hands of the Romans.–"The Story of a Warrior Queen"
Both excerpts portray women who face death rather than submit to a fate they reject. Antigone chooses to die and protects Ismene by insisting her sister was not involved; the warrior queen poisons herself and her daughters to keep them from being captured. These acts make them tragic heroines, not villains or sages. The best choice is “the tragic heroine.”
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