• Writing the story in Patroclus's POV allows us to root for not only their love, but also Achilles himself,
  especially when he becomes brutish (and a dishonorable asshole) in his grief towards the end
• Maintaining that Iphigenia did not go willingly to her sacrifice (Ch. 18), to show how even the side we root for in the war are capable of brutality and are not to be trusted, further emphasizing how Achilles and Patroclus truly only have each other
• Keeping things interesting through intense foreshadowing throughout the book, like
  Patroclus's constant observations of Achilles's pink heels (already in Ch. 1!)
  or
  when Briseis calls Patroclus "Best of men. Best of the Myrmidons." (Ch. 28) after we learn of the new prophecy (Ch. 24)

• "Achilles did not slur my name, as people often did, running it together as if in a hurry to be rid of it (Ch. 5)."
• "I said his name... It blew through me; I was hollow as a reed hung up for the wind to sound" (Ch. 10).
• "Did [Chiron] know, or only guess at Achilles' destiny? As he lay alone in his rose-colored cave, had some glimmer of prophecy come to him? Perhaps he simply assumed: a bitterness of habit, of boy after boy trained for music and medicine, and unleashed for murder" (Ch. 16). I MEAN C'MON A LITERAL ROSE-COLORED CAVE WHERE THEY LIVED OUT THEIR INNOCENT BOYHOOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME
• "The only sound I hear is my own heaving lungs, air pumped into my chest and pushed from it. Hector's spear lifts over me, tipping like a pitcher. And then it falls, a spill of bright silver, towards me" (Ch. 30).
• Hector wearing Achilles's armor and Achilles literally "chasing himself" (Ch. 31) because his hubris led him to chase fame... but also Hector, a killer to him but a hero to Troy. Sounds like someone we know????

'You care more for him in death than in life […] Kill me. It will not bring him back. He was worth ten of you. Ten! And you sent him to his death!' […] He fought to save you, and your darling reputation.
Because he could not bear to see you suffer! […] You have never deserved him. I do not know why he ever loved you. You care only for yourself! […] I hope that Hector kills you.'

'Do you think I do not hope the same?' he asks

• “ACHILLES, it reads. And beside it, PATROCLUS. ‘Go’ she says. ‘He waits for you.’”
• “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
• “He smiled, and his face was like the sun.”
• Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead “I wish he had let you all die.”
• Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.