Alexander’s Marriage Plot: Love, Politics, or Power?

 

Alexander’s Marriage Plot: Love, Politics, or Power?

Date: 324 BCE

Story:
In a grand political gesture, Alexander arranged the mass wedding at Susa, where he and 90 of his top officers married Persian noblewomen.
Alexander took Stateira, daughter of Darius III, as his new bride—even though he was already married to Roxana.
This union was less about love and more about unifying East and West.
But many Macedonians saw it as betrayal.
They were forced to adopt foreign customs and marry women they didn’t know.
Some refused; others complied, only to abandon their wives later.
The event was a spectacle—jewels, silk, incense—but beneath the pageantry was deep discontent.
The Macedonian army resented the king’s push to “become Persian.”
Even his closest generals whispered that Alexander no longer ruled as a Macedonian but as a foreign despot.
The weddings, meant to fuse cultures, instead deepened divisions.

Key Characters:

• Alexander the Great

• Roxana

• Stateira II

• Macedonian generals

• Persian nobility

Reference:

• Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander

• Plutarch, Life of Alexander

• Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica