Press ESC to skip cutscene
At Chaeronea, amid the bodies skewered by pikes and mangled by swords, the city-states of Greece had their hopes of independence trampled into the mud.
Philip could finally turn his gaze eastwards, to his long-held ambition of plundering the rich Persian empire.
His hopes, however, were suddenly and brutally snuffed out.
An assassin's blade, jammed fiercely between Philip's ribs... The lion of Macedon bled out in the dust, a fate he had brought upon so many others.
And so it came to pass that Alexander, merely 20 summers of age, ascended to the throne of Macedon.
The nobles swore him fealty — some gladly, some reluctantly; some out of duty and some out of calculation.
Some were never given the choice, struck down on the new king's orders before they could cause trouble. Assassination, you see, was something of a staple of Macedonian politics.
Equally routine was the propensity of Macedon's northern neighbours to invade whenever a king died, like jackals converging on a fresh carcass when a lion has moved away.
The gleaming diadem of royalty set freshly upon his brow, Alexander marched north, where the first true test of his reign awaited.