The actions in Andromache are entirely psychologically motivated. In Phaedra, Racine removes and reintroduces Theseus as the plot requires. In Andromache, Orestes' embassy, which constitutes a similar external stimulus to the action, reveals itself on close examination to be of a different nature. Orestes' appearance in Epirus does not have the arbitrariness of Theseus' entrance into Athens. It is a predictable consequence of Pyrrhus' protection of Astyanax, son of Hector. It was quite plausible for the Greeks to send an embassy to deal with this potential threat to their safety. Orestes' place in that embassy is even less of an accident. He has taken it with the express intention of seeing Hermione again.
The poetic background, as compelling as the mythology in Phaedra, is, however, quite distinct in tone. In the latter play Racine adds depth and universality to an individual tragedy by working within Giraudoux's formula of the real within the unreal, enriching Phaedra's psychological struggle by allusions to the legendary world of the gods. In Andromache, he uses the Trojan War as background, but not only to add breadth and historic intensity to his psychological drama. The Trojan War here has the dreadful immediacy of any war, and the emotional struggle between Andromache and Pyrrhus is the prolongation of a war to the death between two races.
