Of all the great tragedies in world literature that are still performed and read, those of Racine are commonly presented as deliberately logical structures, pieces of intricate dramatic clockwork in which chance has no place. For many, in addition, the idea that chance is not soluble in the mixture called 'Racinian tragedy'. This chapter argues that, while events do not happen gratuitously, chance, or rather the appearance of chance, does have a significant role to play in these works. It suggests that Racine's tragic dramas would not succeed either as dramas or tragedies unless the spectator implicitly accepted that the outcome was open to contingency. The chapter illustrates the role played by chance in establishing the initial situation than in the exposition of Andromaque. The necessary coexistence of causality with unpredictability that opens the door to the apparent place of chance in Racine's tragedies.