Marathe & Steeply: everything reduces to politics — the Troy reading
All the Greek states in addition to the Sparta of Menelaus attacked Troy because Troy controlled the Dardanelles and charged the ruinous tolls for passage through, which the Greeks, who would like very dearly the easy sea passage for trade with the Oriental East, resented with fury. It was for commerce, this war.
Context
Marathe's compulsive political hermeneutic, and the theme's method in miniature: the Trojan War was not about Helen but about the Dardanelles tolls, "for commerce," love merely "the excuse." Steeply's jab — "Everything reduces itself to politics for you guys" — is accurate and is the point: to the Separatist mind every sentimental story (including Tine's grand love) is a screen over a territorial or commercial grievance, exactly as the Reconfiguration is a "gift" over an extortion.