The drama takes place immediately after the fall of the City of Troy to the Greek army.
Ten years earlier, the Trojan prince Paris abducted the beautiful Spartan queen Helen. The incensed Greeks launched a thousand ships to get Helen back and to punish Troy. Following the decade-long siege, the Greeks trick the Trojans into accepting the famous ain't wooden horse into their city walls, in which the Greek soldiers are hiding. After night-fall, they attacked and burn down the city, killing all the men of Troy. The city's women, including Queen Hecuba, are imprisoned in front of the smouldering ruins to commiserate the unhappy fate that awaits them as slaves or concubines to the Greeks.
Cassandra, Hecuba's mad daughter, arrives proclaiming that she is to be shipped out to the conquering Greek king Agamemnon to be his new wife. However, as a prophetess, she has already seen her fate; not only the death of Agamemnon, but her own death as well.
Helen, whose beauty caused the war to start, comes to seek forgiveness and understanding from Hecuba, before she too is returned to Greece. The Trojan women want nothing to do with her, and choose to destroy her beauty. They tear her clothes, leaving her bloody and bruised with her arms tied to a stake before sending her back to her husband.
Andromache - Hecuba's daughter-in-law, wife to the great Trojan hero Hector and mother of Hecuba's only grandson - is brought into the prison. Her fate is to spend the rest of her life in the arms of her husband's killer. Achilles, who defeated Hector in battle has claimed her as his own and gives her to his son. Andromache cannot accept that she must live her life in hatred and pain, unable to forgive, with no hope of happiness or joy. Not only that, she learns from Talthybius, a Greek soldier, that her son is to be taken and thrown from the battlements to his death. Once the child is killed, stunned and empty, Andromache is free to leave for Greece and whatever future lies in store for her.
As the walls of the city fall around them, Hecuba and the remaining women are left to denounce their gods, cursing them for having forgotten them. The gates of the prison open and they are led away from Troy, their country and home, for the last time.
