of a fully armed Achilles pursuing or butchering a naked, boyish Troilus". Colleen McCullough is another author who incorporates both the medieval Achilles' seeking Troilus out in battle and the ancient butchery at the altar. Her The Song of Troy includes two characters, Troilos and Ilios, who are Priam's youngest children – both with prophecies attached and both specifically named for the city's founders. They are eight and seven respectively when Paris leaves for Greece and somewhere in their late teens when killed. Troilos is made Priam's heir after Hector's death, against the boy's will. Odysseus's spies learn of the prophecy that Troy will not fall if Troilos comes of age. Achilles therefore seeks him out in the next battle and kills him with a spear-cast to his throat. In a reference to the medieval concept of Troilus as the second Hector, Automedon observes that "with a few more years added, he might have made another Hektor." Ilios is the last son of Priam to die, killed at the altar in front of his parents by Neoptolemos. Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Firebrand features an even younger Troilus, just twelve when he becomes Hector's charioteer. (His brother wants to keep a protective eye on him now he is ready for war.) Troilus helps kill Patroclus. Although he manages to escape the immediate aftermath of Hector's death, he is wounded. After the Trojans witness Achilles' treatment of Hector's body, Troilus insists on rejoining the battle despite his wounds and Hecuba's attempts to stop him. Achilles kills him with an arrow. The mourning Hecuba comments that he did not want to live because he blamed himself for Hector's death. Reinventing the love story A feature already present in the treatments of the love story by Chaucer, Henryson, Shakespeare and Dryden is the repeated reinvention of its conclusion. Boitani sees this as a continuing struggle by authors to find a satisfying resolution to the love triangle. The major difficulty is the emotional dissatisfaction resulting from how the tale, as originally invented by Benoît, is embedded into the pre-existing narrative of the Trojan War with its demands for the characters to meet their traditional fates. This narrative has Troilus, the sympathetic protagonist of the love story, killed by Achilles, a character totally disconnected from the love triangle, Diomedes survive to return to Greece victorious, and Cressida disappear from consideration as soon as it is known