In Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Telemachus travels to Sparta to meet Menelaus and Helen. As he leaves, Helen stops him and whispers a message for his mother, Penelope: “Tell her I’m sorry. I’m sorry for Troy and for everything that has happened in my name.” Would Sita apologise to the wives of the Vanaras?

Let us step back and understand the background –

Paris, prince of Troy, took Helen, the wife of Menelaus, to Troy. Menelaus, king of Sparta, sought to bring her back. What followed was a devastating war between two kingdoms. Troy was besieged for ten years, and eventually destroyed.

Odysseus, the king of Ithica helped Menelaus in the long war. 10 years, after the war, and Odysseus hadn’t yet returned home. His son, Telemachus, sets out to find news of his father. He reaches Sparta, where he meets Menelaus and Helen—and where Nolan gives Helen this moment of apology.

Now why was the war fought in the first place? Was it for one woman – Helen?

Paris had committed multiple violations:

1. He had violated the institution of marriage.
   He had taken the wife of another man, violating the sanctity of the marital bond.
2. He had violated the obligations of hospitality.
   He had entered Menelaus’s household as a guest, yet instead of honouring the relationship between host and guest, he had abused that trust and brought harm upon his host.
3. He had dishonoured a royal household.
   He had not merely wronged an individual; he had violated the honour of a king and brought injury to a royal household and its kingdom.

Paris’s act of taking away Helen was not merely a romantic one, it was a personal, social, religious, ethical, moral and political offence.

Thus the demand for Helen’s return was a demand for restoration of order.

War may still be a terrible thing. Thousands died. Troy was destroyed. But within the epic’s moral framework, the war needs to be understood as a necessary evil—a response to a serious violation of the accepted social order.

And this is why Helen’s apology feels unjust. Helen was not responsible for the war. She did not command the armies nor did she not destroy Troy. She was, in fact, herself a victim.

Homer’s Helen in the original epic, does not apologise for the war. She says that she wishes she had died rather than followed Paris and describes herself as having been led away from her homeland, child, marriage bed and husband.

To make Helen apologise for everything that happened is to place upon the victim the moral burden of actions taken by others – the crime as well as the punishment.

And this is exactly what is done when some ask: Why did Rama have to fight a war for one woman? Why did thousands of Vanaras have to die because of Sita?

This framing is deeply unfair.

Sita did not abduct herself nor did she command the war.

The war that followed arose from violations of dharma.

Be it Helen, or Sita– they were unfortunate victims of abduction, yet, fortunate enough to have a Menelaus or a Rama– who stood up to fight against the injustice to restore order.

If we must ask who was responsible for setting these wars in motion, who could have avoided them, and who should have answered for the suffering that followed – it is Paris and Ravana – who violated the lady’s maryada and the moral & social orders.