Roxana of Bactria

[close] Roxana (Greek: Ρωξάνη; Avestan: Raoxshna; Persian: روشنک‎, "luminous beauty"; Persian: رکسانا, رخسانا‎ Rokhsāna; sometimes Roxanne, Roxanna, Roxandra and Roxane, was a Bactrian princess and a wife of Alexander the Great. She was born earlier than the year 343 BC, though the precise date remains uncertain, and died in ca. 310 BC.
Roxana was the daughter of a minor Bactrian baron named Oxyartes of Balkh in Bactria (around modern-day Balkh province of Afghanistan), and married Alexander the Great at a young age, after he visited the fortress of Sogdian Rock. In 327 BC Alexander married Roxana despite the strong opposition from all his companions and generals.
After Alexander's sudden death at Babylon in 323 BC, she bore him a posthumous son called Alexander. Also, after Alexander's death, Roxana murdered Alexander's other widow, Stateira II, as well as either Stateira's sister Drypteis or Parysatis II (Alexander's third wife).
Roxana and her son were protected by Alexander's mother, Olympias, in Macedonia, but her assassination in 316 BC allowed Cassander to seek kingship. Since Alexander IV was the legitimate heir to the Alexandrian empire, Cassander ordered him and Roxana to be killed ca. 310 BC.