IWSG: What's in an ending?

 

    Since I've had this post sitting around 3/4 finished since like the 10th of April, and since it's about writing, I figure I may as well use it for this month's ISWG post.

    Instead of talking about the month's suggested question (the answer to that being mostly that I'm afraid of people actually reading anything I wrote, but simultaneously kind of afraid of them not reading it, too), I'm going to talk about endings.

    Or, more accurately, what is it that I look for in an ending?

    I ask because, well...where to start?

    Okay, so in my previous post I mentioned a fantasy novel I had bought on a whim earlier, a book I had decided would be up next from my "to read" pile.

    That book was fantasy in the sense of "historical setting but folklore is real."  So nothing strictly speaking invented for the novel, that kind of thing.

    When I finished reading it, I found the ending had left a bad taste in my mouth (in my mind?) but I'm not even sure why.

    It wasn't a bad ending by any conventional definition:  the heroes were triumphant, they didn't die, and their loved ones didn't die.  So, it should have been satisfying, yes?

    And yet, for some reason, it wasn't.  Not for me.  And I don't know why.

    I can identify a few things that may have been factors:

1. There is a sword in the novel.  It comes up early on and is brought up periodically throughout to ensure the reader hasn't forgotten its existence, then in the final climactic confrontation it's revealed to be the legendary sword itself!  Problem:  because this novel was based in real world folklore, said legendary sword is a very famous one from actual folklore and so I clocked it literally as soon as it was first mentioned.  Where it had been found signaled it as absolutely that sword and no other.  So what was probably(?) intended to be at least a little surprising was instead a "ho hum" moment because it was so incredibly obvious.
2. There's a fake-out moment (more than just a moment, really; it's maybe a chapter and a half long) before the final climax where our first-person narrator makes it sound like she's killed one of her companions.  That leaves a nasty feeling behind even when you're relatively sure she's lying.  I don't like that nasty feeling, and it definitely soured me on the entire thing, despite that it did turn out that she had not killed her friend.
3. The ending is very "restoration of the status quo" despite that the status quo in question was definitely not nice.  Obviously, as it was a historical setting (+folklore being real) the author was not free to change up the status quo beyond maybe changing things in that one village, which was made clear not to be the case.  But it just...it definitely left me feeling like "why didn't they accomplish more?"  Even if there really wasn't much more they could have accomplished.

    Following soon on the heels of that, I finished playing the Dragon Quest III remake...and was left feeling very underwhelmed by the ending.  Admittedly, Dragon Quest as a whole is not as story-intensive as some other JRPG series are (though the stories did become richer and more central to the experience as the series went on) and the endings are often pretty lackluster, but something about that particular ending left me particularly not satisfied.  Again, I can't even put my finger on what about it I was unsatisfied with.  Though the player character's lack of a homecoming didn't help...and the post-credits scene lost any punch it was supposed to have because although I was positive I had heard the name mentioned at the very end before, I have no idea quite where or who he was.  (Logically, you would expect them to be setting up that he's the big bad of IV, only I'm pretty dang sure that was not the name of the guy who was manipulating Psarro, so...also, after the scene it went "To be continued in" the HD remake of the first two games, so...are they saying that III somehow took place before I and II?  I am confused by that logic...but I just checked on the Dragon Quest wiki, and yes, that's what they're saying, which is very strange to me, but the end of Dragon Quest VI also seemed to be claiming that it was before IV and V, so...that's weird, but...)

    Anyway, so double whammy of "endings that left me unsatisfied without actually being bad" in short order.  (I was similarly dissatisfied with the ending of Zenshu, but in that case I know exactly why.  Though it still wasn't a bad ending, per se.  But that was a week or so earlier anyway.)

    Net result, it has me wondering if I am applying a double standard.  Am I being harder on the endings of works written by others than I am on my own endings?

    Thinking about it logically...I should analyze my own endings and see how they fit the criteria I feel like I gathered in looking at why that novel and Dragon Quest III left me feeling less than pleased.

    Setting aside fanfic for the moment, since there are always aspects there that are trying to tie together canon material with material of my own invention and thus making endings trickier to arrange, I'm going to look at series of books I'm 3/7 of the way through rewriting.  But since this is now an IWSG post and a few people will actually read it, I'll be more vague than I was originally going to be.

1. Heroes triumph, divine status quo is upheld, mortal status quo is not (though as of the ending it's not clear how much of a shake-up it will be, and it's later books that illuminate that)
2. Heroes triumph, divine status quo is upheld, mortal status quo is improved
3. Heroes triumph, divine status quo is upheld, mortal status quo is partially upheld and partially improved
4. From here on, I haven't done the rewrites (I'm working on the final research for book 4 now, in fact), so the endings aren't set yet.  Heroes triumph, divine status quo upheld.  The mortal status quo feels like it wasn't particularly even involved in this book.  In large part because my ancient Greek heroes were visiting Babylon, and I didn't have enough information about Late Bronze Age Babylon and its culture (plus I hadn't readjusted the chronology, so I thought they would be visiting in a period when Babylon was under Assyrian control, which was going to get heckin' awkward to write about without way more information than I had available to me).  Even with the new research I've done, I feel like I won't be able to connect events much to what's going on among the actual human beings because the current version is so disconnected that even in the new version the rest of humanity won't too be much impacted by the heroes winning the day.  (Aside from, you know, not getting exterminated by the machinations of the villains.)
5. There's a lot about the ending of this one that I don't even remember.  (I wrote the originals in 2014...and last reread the old drafts in 2020...)  I know the heroes triumph and that the divine status quo is mostly upheld (the villains of the series are trying to off the Olympian gods, ya see, so that comes up a lot), but I can't recall if there's any impact on the status quo of the mortal world at all.  I feel like this one, too, is a bit divorced from human society, though not as much so as the previous book.  They travel a lot in this one, too, but the travel isn't as responsible as in book 4, since their travel is mostly to Egypt and Crete, and I was able to research Egypt a lot more easily at the time, and I'm following the myths to treat Crete at this period as being basically the same as mainland Greece (which is probably not actually the slightest bit archaeologically accurate for this period, but I figured the myths needed to outweigh reality for a myth-based setting).
6. Heroes triumph but at a cost, divine status quo sort of maintained and sort of shaken up, mortal status quo not enormously altered but at least slightly improved.  Sort of.  (I mean, an inheritance issue that could have led to warfare and/or fratricide/sororicide is settled peacefully.  That's something, right?)
7. Heroes ultimately (if only barely) triumph, and the divine status quo is as protected as it can get when you realize that the gods are powered/created by human belief and the Late Bronze Age has about a generation left before its impending collapse.  (And yes, that's actually a minor plot point in the novels.  Or maybe more of a talking point a few times.  It comes up, anyway.)  Again, this one as I recall it is not enormously connected to the actions of other people, in part because they're really going all over the place in this one; they hit a large number of places, including stuff much further north where I had pretty much zero clue what the culture in the region would be at that time.  (I still don't fully know, even though I've done a little more research since then.)  There is at least a little improvement of the mortal status quo--if only for a small slice of it--though, so that's something?

    Looking at all of those, I feel like only the first three would meet my current standards.  Though of course books 4-7 are kind of more "part of a series" than the first three are.  Or rather...how do I explain?  Book 3's ending is where the heroes learn that they have a powerful enemy who's been involved with everything that they've had to deal with up until now.  Book 4 starts out with them actively trying to learn more about this enemy, and that continues right up until they finally deal with said enemy in the climax of book 7.  Because of all that, it's kind of like...the endings don't fully matter as much until reaching the ending of book 7?  Which doesn't seem right, but that's definitely how my brain perceives it no matter what.  (Maybe it's the side-effect of growing up watching the Star Wars movies constantly, and The Empire Strikes Back is the only one with an unsatisfying ending...)

    Obviously, since I haven't yet started the rewriting process for books 4-7, I can do what little is available to me to fix the parts of the endings that aren't up to my current standings for an ending, but...for some of them that might require more restructuring than I really want to put into the process.  Less like a new draft and more like a fully new novel, you know?  I'd like to get the rest of the series finished and released (in what minimal sense the first three count as released, anyway) sooner rather than later, and having to do that much reworking would definitely delay me a lot.

    I guess what most gets to me about this is that I'm not actually sure how much it matters.  Or rather, I don't actually know what other people look for in an ending.  Would most people be annoyed by getting through a novel and finding that the heroes' victory didn't do anything to change the status quo of the world around them?  (Since this is the Late Bronze Age, said status quo is definitely not pleasant, but there's not much I can do about that, y'know?  I'm not as confined by historical reality as the novel that set me onto thinking about all this, but I'm still bound to the larger aspects.)

    Even more importantly, are readers going to get frustrated that the endings become less satisfying after the heroes become aware of the larger flow of events and the actions of the mysterious villain behind it all?  I mean, to be clear, this is not an "I'll get you next time, Gadget!" situation with the same enemy just running off at the end of the book to come back working some new evil in the next novel.  There are smaller villains they defeat each time (though I think in the current draft both 5 and 6 have the same sub-villain, who had left a lesser (but also physically much larger) sub-villain to be the final boss of book 5) so it's at least got that much satisfaction, but...gnh.

    I'm not sure there is any real answer to this.

    I'm also not sure how many people have actually read any of the first three, or how many people are going to read the remaining four whenever they're made available.  And I guess it shouldn't even matter, since I'm making the books available for free on itch.io and AO3, so it's not like I'm trying to sell copies or anything.  I guess I just don't want to disappoint anyone who might read them, you know?

    I know one thing that probably turns people off who do encounter the books is the fact that the heroes are striving to protect the Olympian gods when a lot of modern works tend to want to get rid of them  or at least change them since they were not, in fact, very nice, and did a lot of genuinely horrible things.  But that's a very modern perspective on the Olympian gods.  The people of ancient Greece did not think of them that way.  Of course, we don't fully know how they did think of them, since they didn't write down their cultic practices, and thus the versions of the gods reflected in the myths are not actually the same versions that they actively worshiped.  (This is especially the case for Hera.)  Of course, in the end, I'm not trying to write about the actual religion versions of the Greek gods, but the mythological version, but that still comes down to the same thing, doesn't it?  If I want to use the Heroic Age setting and not completely betray the epic poetry that this is supposed to be building off of (though my writing is nowhere near good enough to be mentioned in the same conversation as masterworks that have survived more than two thousand years!), then the heroes have to believe in and want to win the support of the gods, and if they ever disrespect the gods, they have to suffer because of it.  Because that's what happens in the myths:  you tick off a god, you suffer and probably die.  (Unless you're Agamemnon, then when you tick off a god, you get hundreds or thousands of your own men killed (and/or your daughter) and you just sit there and survive it like a monster.)

    So that's something I could in theory change that might make my works more palatable to more people, but I don't want to do that, because that's not what I'm going for.

    I should probably write something else where I'm free to have characters tell the gods "get lost!" when they do the awful stuff they're known for.  (I should write a visual novel where Zeus finally gets his for all his skirt-chasing.  That would be epic.)

    ...I feel like I have wandered way off my original topic of "endings."

    Given that I am very bad at them, somehow that seems appropriate.

A to Z: Zenais!

 

    I am so excited for today's post!  Not because it represents the successful conclusion of the challenge, but because it's about Zenais!  😁

    She's a character I added to the new draft of The Martial Maenads, and I am super-proud of her.  (Even if she is rather blatantly, erm, inspired by someone else's character...)

    But first, a little background on the situation in which Atalanta and Ariadne meet her.  They've been sent to Thrace to deal with the threat of Bromalios, an imposter god claiming to be equal parts Dionysos and Ares.  (Hence the title of the novel, lol!)  After they're accepted into the cult's headquarters--which is more the ancient version of a cult than the modern version, I hasten to add--the girls find they're required to be given lessons in "dance" and song in order to be capable enough to be properly initiated into the cult itself.  And one of the "dance" instructors is Zenais, granddaughter of Heracles.  (Her name essentially means "daughter of Zeus," though in this context it's obviously not strictly literal.  (She is genuinely the great-granddaughter of Zeus, though!  Because these are novels in which the Greek gods are very real...))

A to Z: Teukros and Tekmessa

 

    Technically, I was also considering Thetis, but I decided I had slightly more interesting content for Teukros.  So, starting from the top:  Teukros (better known by his Roman name, Teucer) is the son of Telamon by a concubine.  In the Iliad, the identity of that concubine is not specified, nor are her Trojan origins mentioned (though they can still be surmised even there), but in all later works his mother is specifically Hesione, elder sister of King Priam.  (Which actually makes for one of the spots in the mythic chronology of Troy that feels off.  But that would take several posts to go into in any depth, so I'll leave it for some other time.)   The name Teukros proves his Trojan ancestry pretty efficiently, because Teukros was also the name of one of the mythic founders of Troy, hence that "Teucrian" is one of the words used to describe people or things as being in some manner Trojan.

    Although Teukros features prominently in Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?, there's also nothing particularly exceptional about him there; he pretty much just follows the standard "devoted brother of Aias" routine that's set out in the original myths.  Which is not to say that he deviates from that in the Atalanta and Ariadne books!  Far from it!  It's just that being set almost twenty years after the war's end, I get to portray an older Teukros, king of a prosperous realm (and particularly wealthy and powerful because he controls copper mines that were so important to making bronze for weapons and armor!), father of a teenage daughter, and proud uncle who had raised Eurysakes to be his father's equal in just about every way.  (Which is only deviating from the myths in that there he would not have gotten to raise his nephew in the original version.)

            “Certainly, [the events in Egypt that were just under discussion] happened long enough ago that the princess wouldn’t know anything about it,” the king added, with a chuckle that made his nephew blush.
            “What, another fiancée?” Atalanta asked, laughing.
            “Of course not,” Eurysakes answered instantly.  It was quite possibly the fastest speech that Ariadne had ever heard from him.  “Egyptian royalty can only marry Egyptian royalty.”
            “That’s the only thing stopping her, from what I’ve heard,” King Teukros confided in the girls, making Eurysakes’ blush grow deeper.
            “I’d never have guessed you were so popular with women,” Ariadne teased him.
            “It’s not that,” he insisted, somewhat weakly.
            “I fail to see what else it could be,” the king laughed.  “You have a gift with the ladies that your father lacked.  Probably because your face looks so like your mother’s.”
            At the moment, Eurysakes’ face looked more like a pomegranate, it had turned so dark.  Ariadne actually started to feel a little sorry for him, so she decided to change the subject.

    Just being devoted and loving doesn't mean he can't do a little teasing. 😉  However, there's actually not much I can quote about Teukros in the present of the novels, because his sole appearance is so deeply mired in the overarching plot of the series that his scenes wouldn't make any sense out of context. 😅  So I'll just talk about the prologue to book five, since I omitted it from the post on Patroclos.

A to Z: Perfect Patroclos

 

    Today's choice is going to be particularly obvious to anyone who knows me well, as I am a self-described Patroclos fangirl.  I actually have a surprisingly varied selection of works I could talk about, too.

    On top of the prologues of the Atalanta and Ariadne books (the prologues are always set in and around the war), there's Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?, the failed yandere visual novel I talked about with Deidameia, the play "Pyrrha," the visual novel set in the 1980s I talked about as the origin of Grant Nemo, the failed sci-fi novel I talked about (in the same post about Grant), and all its incomplete spin-offs.  There's also Ilios, my 2011 NaNoWriMo project, but...it's problematic.  😅  In the interests of not stressing myself out, gonna limit myself to just a few sources.

    One of my favorite parts of Better General is that Achilles has a madness meter (though it's a hidden stat), and for the most part the way you increase his madness meter is to separate him from Patroclos.  This can lead to him butchering you, or even the whole camp if the final blow to his sanity is Patroclos' death.  So there is actually a lot of material in there about them (though it's never enough!) and they can have some pretty romantic endings if they both survive the war...

Enraged at having had his concubine taken away, Achilleus left the war in the ninth year.  By the time the Achaian fleet returned to Hellas, Achilleus and his Myrmidons had unified the Hellenic people by conquering them all while the majority of their warriors and kings were still at Troy.  (This saved his descendent the trouble of having to do so nearly a thousand years later.)  Though Achilleus took several wives over the course of his long reign as King of Hellas, he had no children other than Pyrrhos, the boy he had fathered while he was hiding in disguise as a woman on Scyros; it was often said that his wives never conceived because he so rarely went in to them, preferring to spend his nights--like his days--with his faithful Patroclos.  The only serious threat to Achilleus' reign was the arrival of the Heracleidai, who attempted to take Hellas for themselves, but he was able to muster the survivors, sons and grandsons of his allies from Troy (even those who had initially fought against him) to work together to fight them off.  When he eventually died, his bones were enshrined in the same vessel as those of Patroclos.  Pyrrhos inherited his throne.

    ...or...

Outraged that you felt he was ruled by his desires, Achilleus returned to Phthia in a fit of anger, along with Patroclos, who had to spend days of intimate private time to convince Achilleus to spend even one evening in the company of other people, leading the gossip all throughout Thessaly to speculate that Achilleus had no use for anything other than his lover's bed.  Peleus was greatly distressed to see his son behave in such a childish manner, and swore he would not permit Achilleus to inherit Phthia if he did not begin to behave more appropriately, so Achilleus set off to the north with Patroclos to prove himself by conquering Hyperborea.  He never returned.

    ...or...

Achilleus returned to Phthia after the war's end, with many ordinary slaves, but no concubine to keep his bed warm.  Peleus set about trying to find a bride for his son, but Achilleus consistently rejected them all, and by the time Peleus died of old age, it was clear even to him that his son refused to take a wife because he wanted no one who could come between him and Patroclos.  Once his father was gone, Achilleus sent to Scyros for the son he had fathered there, and made him his heir.  When they eventually died, Achilleus and Patroclos were buried in the same grave.

    ...and a fairly romantic one if Achilles dies and Patroclos lives...

Patroclos remained behind when the rest of the Achaian army sailed back to Hellas.  He continued to tend to Achilleus' tomb until his own death, at which time a friendly local obeyed his wishes and placed his bones inside the tomb along with Achilleus'.

    But maybe what's most interesting is what can happen when the Trojan army is rampaging through the Achaian camp in the ninth year if you forced Achilles to be the first to disembark on the Trojan shores, and thus got him killed on day one.

A to Z: Odysseus, Obviously

 

    Honestly, who else, right?  I mean, he's already come up quite a bit as-is.  And I actually have a whole lot more to say about how I've written him, despite that I actually don't like the character.  (What with him being a serial adulterer who claims to be a devoted husband, etc.)

    So, there are three main works I can go to for talking about how I've written Odysseus.  (Unless I want to also talk about the version of Odysseus that is Grant, lol.)  But I can't really go all-out anymore on any of these posts, because it turned out that there was enough "timed pressure" element to April A-to-Z to trigger my heart palpitations.  😭  So, gonna be lighter from here on out.  (Also doing the bulk on my phone and only grabbing the quotes on PC.  Somehow my heart doesn't flip out as much when I'm on the phone.)

    So, those three works are Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?, The Martial Maenads (which I had hoped would be released by now, but it turned out that I got so involved in writing these posts that I've barely worked on finalizing it for release 😰), and book six of the Atalanta and Ariadne series.

    Going in that order, Odysseus naturally gets a lot of unique text in Better General, for example the bit I mentioned about Aineias when I was talking about Idomeneus.  But perhaps the most unusual and truly unique sequence is his feud with Palamedes.

    In the actual myths, as is well-known, Odysseus was in some respects responsible for the Trojan War, because it was his idea that all of Helen's suitors should swear an oath to fight to reclaim her for her husband should anyone steal her away.  Also generally pretty well known is that when the time came, Odysseus did not want to obey the oath that had been his own idea, and tried to get out of it by feigning madness, hitching up a horse and an ox to a plow and then plowing his own garden, only to have the person who came to get him prove that he was faking it by placing Odysseus' infant son in front of the plow.  The man who thus exposed Odysseus' act and forced him to join the Trojan War was Palamedes, and naturally enough the traditional myths established that Odysseus took lethal revenge on Palamedes during the long war.  (Though other traditions held that Palamedes survived, and some even claimed the Trojan Horse was his idea, rather than Odysseus'.)

    The thing is, there are actually a few couple ways that Odysseus was said to have done away with Palamedes....so, since I was working in an interactive medium, I figured "why not do both?"

A to Z: Medeia

    It may look like a typo, but it's not.  Many of the Greek names that are typically transliterated as ending in -ia or -ea actually end in -eia in the original Greek.  (eg Deidameia, Iphigeneia, Penthesileia, etc.)  That may thus leave you wondering why I chose to use a spelling that will make people do a double-take and/or think I've misspelled it?

    Well.

    That's because.

    Um.

    I could say that it was to free her of the negative associations people have with the Medea spelling.  (Like my decision to spell her aunt's name Kirke instead of Circe.)

    I could say that.  But it wouldn't, strictly speaking, be true.

    I think, at the heart of it, I went with the -eia spellings across the board because it's hard to draw a line of "here's as far as I go in trying to use the original Greek spellings."  I tried to be even more accurate in Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon?, to the extent of using "Achilleus" and "Alexandros," but even my own fingers kept rebelling against those more-accurate spellings, so I pretty much had to not try using those again.  But as to the others, like the -eia spellings...for one reason or another, I decided to adopt them.

    Anyway, that's all beside the point.  Medea's story is pretty well-known...or at least, one version of it is.

    She was the daughter of King Aietes of Colchis, and when Jason came to steal away the Golden Fleece, she helped him out of love (or the illusion/delusion of love, anyway) and helped him escape, even going so far as to murder one of her brothers in some versions.  {Jason should technically be Iason, but again, my fingers rebel if I try it...}  Then after they get back to Iolcos, the pair--or Medea alone--trick Pelias and his daughters, leading to Pelias' death.  They're exiled for murder, and King Creon of Corinth purified Jason of the murder, then promptly starts trying to set up Jason with his daughter.  Realizing she's being thrown over, Medea murders Creon, his daughter, and even her own sons by Jason, and flies off in a chariot pulled by dragons, then goes around being blamed for any number of other unpleasant events across the Mediterranean.

    Well.  Part of that is the case in all versions.  The part about helping Jason obtain and escape with the Golden Fleece.  Pretty much everything else is not.

A to Z: Korythos

 

    I know I've already presented some Greek mythological characters as being quite obscure, but no one takes the cake for being an obscure mythological figure more than Korythos, son of Alexander and Oinone.

    Alexander (better known as Paris) of Troy, son of King Priam and Queen Hecabe, actually already had a wife before he went off to make Helen of Sparta his own.  Her name was Oinone (also spelled Oenone), and she was a nymph, daughter of the River Cebren.  Oinone comes up periodically in the ancient literature--Ovid wrote about her a couple of times--but their son Korythos is a particularly infrequently mentioned figure.  (He is so obscure he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page, instead being on one of those list pages that talks about multiple minor characters who share a name.)

    His limited mentions in myth are rare, and follow a basic formula:  he's sent to Troy during the war by his mother (either to help his father or to break up his relationship with Helen) where he falls in love with Helen (or she with him) and is killed by his jealous father, who doesn't even know who he is.  That's the extent of it.  No impact on anything else, he just goes to town and dies, ceasing to be relevant.  (Or rather, he was never relevant to begin with.)

    What that means, of course, is that if you take a version of the myth where he didn't show up in Troy to be killed by his own father, then he's still out there somewhere when the war is over!  (Or that he never existed, but that's boring.)

    So, when I was writing the first draft of what is now titled Scions of Troy, I decided who better to put on the Trojan throne than Korythos?  He's a blank slate for me to work with!  😆

A to Z: Idomeneus

 

    Hmm.  You know, I bet I did an earlier April A-to-Z entry on Idomeneus.  (It's hard to come up with I-names, after all!)  Oh well.  This one is categorically different, as a good chunk of it will be talking about something I hadn't written yet the last time I took part in this challenge!  😆

    So.  Basics.  Idomeneus is the king of Crete at the time of the Trojan War.  He's a grandson of King Minos, and a cousin of Agamemnon and Menelaos.  He's a pretty tough warrior, but not quite in the top tier.  Frequently accompanied into battle by his nephew Meriones, who is particularly accomplished as an archer as well as with a spear.

    The main place he stands out in the Iliad is during the battle when the Trojans are burning the Achaian camp, when he pretty much stomps all over Deiphobos (who is both frightened of him and trying to dismiss him as irrelevant at the same time), only to be wounded by Aineias, who at least respected him as an opponent.

    As to what happened to him after the war, let's go straight to the quotes for that, because today I want to focus on my interactive fiction game Are You A Better General Than Agamemnon? in which you play a random, generic king no one's ever heard of, who is for who-knows-what-reason offered the reins of the Achaian army when Agamemnon suddenly drops out right as the fleet is about to sail from Aulis.  There are ten decision points for each of the ten years (though some of them lead to further decisions within the decision point), and I'm sorry to say a lot of them actually don't matter in the least.  😰  (Even sorrier to say that by the time you get to the last two or three years, the game is buggy as heck.  It was doing all sorts of strange stuff like forgetting Achilles was alive and sending Odysseus on missions when he'd been sent back to Ithaca in disgrace. 😰  I had to replay the whole game to get quotes for this post, 'cause trying to extract them from the Twine program files is really awkward considering how much code some of the text is buried under.)  Anyway!  I tried my best, back when I was making the game, to give a lot of alternate possibilities for individual events, leading to some very different outcomes...meaning that when the war is successfully won, the game gives you a long scroll telling you what happened to each character in your playthrough, and what happened to them when Agamemnon was running the show.  And this is what that said about Idomeneus' original fate:

         Under Agamemnon, Idomeneus returned home safely, but traditions vary as to what happened next: some say he made a foolish promise to sacrifice whatever first greeted him (which ended up, of course, being his child), others say that his wife betrayed him and he had to flee, and others say he ruled on in peace. Whatever the truth of his fate was, more than a thousand years later, the locals would point out a building they said was his tomb at Knossos.

    Yeah, not terribly exciting.  (Strange side note:  those same locals also claimed his nephew Meriones was buried in the same tomb.  I'm not sure why.)  That level of variation in post-war fates is strangely not unusual.  A lot of the others who fought in the Trojan War had both "happily ever after" and "ran fleeing from an adulterous wife" endings.  Large numbers of the latter ended up in Italy, for whatever reason. 🤷🏻‍♀️

    Anyway, the difficulty of writing about someone like Idomeneus is that he hasn't got all that much personality in the original work.  (By which I mean the Iliad, of course.  Most other ancient works that mention Idomeneus are mythographic works that don't go into detail about anyone's personality.)  Still, since he's one of the bigger players, he comes up pretty frequently in the game.

    The first major event involving him is almost immediately after the Achaian fleet lands on the Trojan shore.  At that time, in the original myth, Menelaos and Odysseus went to the city to make one last try at diplomacy.  It, needless to say, did not work.  😅  Anyway, in the game, you choose who accompanies Menelaos on the expedition, and Idomeneus is one of the options.  This is the first part of what happens if you select him...

        As Menelaos and Idomeneus prepare to depart, you call Agamemnon's herald Talthybios over and instruct him to attend upon them in their errand. He swears to report to you immediately upon his return to the camp and faithfully relate everything that should happen in the city.
         They are gone overnight--as you were expecting, given how long it would take them to reach Ilios on foot from camp--and it is late in the day when Talthybios finally returns to your tent.
         "We have returned from the city, Lord Creon," the herald informs you.
         "So I can see. I do not hear any jubilation in the camp, so I assume the mission did not succeed?"
         "Indeed not, my lord. We arrived at the city gates shortly before nightfall, and were admitted into the home of Antenor, one of King Priam's trusted advisors. First thing in the morning, he accompanied us to see the king, and Menelaos stated his case, requesting the return of his wife, and promising to do without the gold that was stolen along with her, in recompense for the lives taken on the beach. Idomeneus also spoke, as Menelaos' kinsman, and [as] he who had been host to the funeral games that had given Alexandros the opportunity to thus rob Menelaos of gold and wife. His words were measured, just and wise, and I was certain they would sway the Trojan court to agree to Menelaos' requests." He sighs sadly. "We were sent back to the home of Antenor to await Priam's decision. Much time later, Antenor returned, full of worry. He reported to us that Alexandros arrived in the council chamber with Helen at his side, and that the prince's honeyed words convinced the Trojan elders to turn on us with a murderous attack. Antenor came to warn us and help us escape the city alive."
         "And?" you prompt, when he does not seem to want to continue.

    Thus far, aside from Idomeneus' contribution, this follows what happened in the actual myth.  But--even though this is still super early in the game--there are actually two possible outcomes to these events.  In most cases, this would be the result of sending Idomeneus along with Menelaos:

         "Idomeneus said that he felt a measure of blame for what Alexandros had done. If he had followed what his deceased uncle would likely have desired, and not invited the sons of Aerope to his funeral games, then Helen could not have been stolen away. So he did not wish to run, but to stay and fight. Menelaos did not want to see his kinsman risk his life, and they argued long enough that we could hear the approaching princes in the street. Antenor urged us to flee at once, and Idomeneus insisted that Menelaos and I leave, while he remained to delay the enemy, promising he would escape on his own as soon as he was able. Alas, though we waited long in hiding outside the city walls, he did not emerge. Antenor sent word by one of his children that Prince Hector, though grievously wounded by Idomeneus, succeeded in killing the Cretan king."

    However!  The first (proper) decision you make in the game is who to have be the first man to disembark when the fleet arrives.  (Due to the fact that Thetis had warned/commanded Achilles not to disembark first, as the first to disembark would be the first to die.)  If you order Achilles or Aias of Salamis to disembark first, they're still the first to die, but they take Hector with them!  In which case, the result of sending Idomeneus with Menelaos is drastically altered...

         "Idomeneus said that he felt a measure of blame for what Alexandros had done. If he had followed what his deceased uncle would likely have desired, and not invited the sons of Aerope to his funeral games, then Helen could not have been stolen away. So he did not wish to run, but to stay and fight. Menelaos did not want to see his kinsman risk his life, and they argued long enough that we could hear the approaching princes in the street. Antenor urged us to flee at once, and Idomeneus insisted that Menelaos and I leave, while he remained to delay the enemy, promising he would escape on his own as soon as he was able. After we waited in hiding quite a long while, Idomeneus finally emerged from the city, supported by one of Antenor's sons. He is badly wounded, but he proudly reported that he had killed Deiphobos, the second most powerful of Priam's sons."

    To be honest, until I replayed it to get these quotes, I had forgotten just how much variation I had managed to put in this game.  I really need to give it a proper glow-up at some point.  (And make it actually keep track of troop numbers and rations and such so that the smaller decisions will actually matter...)

A to Z: Hermione and Her Household

    So, today I'll be talking about my take on yet another traditional Greek mythological figure:  Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaos of Sparta.  Also her husband, her son and a bit about her mother.  (Technically, I toyed with choosing Helen for today, but...the two most unique and interesting things I've done with her are in the unfinished reincarnation-and-giant-robots piece that I mentioned in talking about Grant, and some of the late spoilers in book six of The God Killers, which definitely won't be out for a couple years (possibly more than a couple at the rate I'm going) so...talking about those two would be awkward at best.  Though it's still awkward since Hermione is also only in book six.  But at least her material isn't a spoiler.)

    Anyway.  Hermione is probably not numbered among the best-known women in Greek myths.  (More likely the opposite, in fact...)  However, the antiquity of her character is undeniable:  in the Odyssey, Telemachos arrives in Sparta just at the end of the wedding feast as Hermione is on her way to Phthia to marry Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, so she's mentioned in one of the oldest of the Greek texts.

    Some basic backstory on Hermione in the original myths:  she was just a small child when her mother was taken to Troy.  (I've seen six and nine given as her exact age, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️)  Like Sparta itself, she was left in the care of her not-actually-grandfather Tyndareos, the previous king of Sparta, during the war.  (Since Helen's father was actually Zeus, not her mother's husband...)  That much is always the case.  As is that she had two husbands, one of whom is Neoptolemos, to whom she was promised in the final days of the war, to reward the boy for coming to finish the fight his father had started.  But how that second marriage came about varies wildly in ancient sources, sometimes from the same author.  (Euripides has some enormous variations in his plays touching on Hermione.  Also those touching on Helen, for that matter...)

    Her other husband, you see, is her double-cousin Orestes.  (He being the son of her father's brother Agamemnon and her mother's sister Clytemnestra.)  Why anyone would think that was a good pairing is beyond me.  (In fact, I have Menelaos being rather put out that his grandson is technically also his grand-nephew.)

            “We shall finally be able to proceed once my nephew arrives,” Menelaos said, nodding.  Then he winced.  “I mean, son-in-law….”  He let out a wordless cry of aggravation.  “This is why I wanted her to marry Neoptolemos!” the king shouted.  “I don’t know what my brother was thinking, wanting his son to marry my daughter…”

    In the ancient texts, there are two primary versions regarding how, when and why Hermione wound up marrying Orestes.  Either she married him while her father was away at the war (either at the command of Tyndareos or because of a prior engagement her father had set up, or even at the will of one or both of the couple actually getting married (gasp!)) or she marries him after Neoptolemos' death (though even in the former scenario, she still ends up with Orestes even if she was with him before Neoptolemos).  In fact, sometimes competition over her is the reason Neoptolemos is killed.  You see, Orestes is usually said to be the one to have slain Neoptolemos, sometimes acting alone, sometimes acting with the aid of the people of Delphi, and sometimes acting as a vessel for Apollo (in just the way Apollo used Paris/Alexander to kill Achilles).  Though sometimes Neoptolemos is killed without Orestes' involvement, either by Apollo acting alone or by the people of Delphi unaided, or by Apollo aiding the people of Delphi.

    With so much variation in the ancient sources, I obviously had to make some decisions about which would be the case in my own novels!

A to Z: Ganymede and Grant

    This is a weird one.  I was torn between these two characters for today's post, and decided to do both, in part because I don't have a huge amount to say about either of them.  (Also, I like the way their names sound together like that.  🤣)

    So.  Ganymede is not who you're thinking of.  Probably.

    See, the Ganymede I'm talking about today is a very important member of the Trojan court when Atalanta, Ariadne and Eurysakes arrive in Scions of Troy.  He's very handsome, but very mysterious.  He's also quite ambitious, and doesn't seem to get along well with the king.

    He doesn't make a very good first impression on our young trio (or maybe I should say they don't make a very good impression on him?).

         The herald led them across the agora to the palace, where a number of well-dressed Trojan men were waiting for them.  “Are these the visitors from Cypros?” the wealthiest-looking of them asked, addressing the herald.  The man speaking was quite the prettiest man that Atalanta had ever seen, which made her wonder if that meant he was King Korythos himself.  And yet, he didn’t seem to be any better dressed than her former master, even though surely the king of Troy should be wealthier than the king of a little port town like Methymna.  He didn’t even have a diadem, but maybe kings didn’t wear those except for special occasions?  (Atalanta had rarely seen her master outside of major religious ceremonies, after all.)  And yet, how many girlishly pretty men could there be in a single court?
         “Indeed they are, my lord,” the herald replied, with a slight bow.
         “Hmm.  Well, one of them certainly matches expectations,” he commented, his critical gaze settling on Eurysakes for a moment, before moving on to Atalanta and Ariadne, prompting a disapproving look on the man’s face.  “As to the other two…”  He frowned, and shook his head.  “It would not be proper to present them in such a begrimed manner to his majesty.”  So he really wasn’t King Korythos, then…
         “You’re quite right, my lord Ganymede,” another man standing near him said in a foul, toadying manner.
         “Ganymede?!” both Atalanta and Ariadne chorused at once in their shock.
         “It’s an old family name,” the man told them, with a smile that struck Atalanta as being rather vain.  “I assure you, I’m not the one you’ve heard of.”
         “I should hope not,” Ariadne chuckled.  “Zeus the thunderer would surely be much aggrieved to be without his cup-bearer.”
         The man called Ganymede laughed, but he seemed angry rather than amused.  “Zelotes!” he snapped.
         “Yes, my lord?” the sycophant at his elbow oozed, bowing deeply, even though his lord wasn’t looking at the gesture.
         “Take these three boys into the palace and see that they’re thoroughly washed before they’re presented to the king.  Washed and perfumed,” he added, waving a hand in front of his face as if in objection to their stink.   Personally, Atalanta thought they didn’t smell badly at all, especially considering that they had walked for two days straight before reaching the campsite last night.

A to Z: Ever-Enduring Eurysakes

    So, Eurysakes is both complicated and pretty simple.

    His character is the simple part;  he speaks slowly like his father did, he's big and tough and dependable like his father was, and he's vulnerable because when he was still a tiny child, his father died in a manner that ruined his formerly perfect reputation.  Where he becomes complicated is the fact that he's an actual character from Greek myth who I have gotten totally wrong. 😰

    You see, Eurysakes is the son of Aias of Salamis (better known by his Roman name, Ajax, which I hate because it sounds like a cleaning product) and his concubine Tekmessa.  Eurysakes is mentioned briefly in the excellent Sophocles tragedy Aias, as Aias leaves his shield with his tiny son (about three or four years old) before his death.  (The name Eurysakes, in fact, means "broad shield."  Because Aias was also known by the epithet "of the towering shield" as his enormous shield was one of his distinguishing features in battle, and helped him earn one of his other epithets, "the bulwark of the Achaians.")  That play is one of the only surviving works that even mentions Eurysakes.  The only other mention of him I'm aware of off-hand is in Plutarch, which I'll get to below.  (Oh, and a passing mention in Pausanias.)

    Now, most of the Greek myths are done by the time the Trojan War ends, but there are still a few stories that take place after the war, and even some after the Odyssey.  These mostly have to do with the fallout from the war in one way or another--the Orestes cycle, for example--though there's also the Heraclidae, the myth of invading Dorians that the Greeks used to explain why the society of the Heroic Age was so different from their own.  One of the tales of the fallout of the war is that of the return of the Salaminian contingent and the reaction of King Telamon to the news that his near-perfect son Aias is dead, and to the ignominious manner of his death.

    (Trigger warning:  to continue discussing this, I have to talk about how Aias died in the myths.  Therefore, I need to put a "read more" tag here for self-harm.)

A to Z: Dejected Deidameia

    So, today I'm talking about a straight-up character from Greek myths:  Deidameia of Scyros.  (Often transliterated as Deidamia.)  The eldest and most beautiful of the daughters of King Lycomedes, Deidameia is the mother of Neoptolemos by Achilles, who of course abandoned her to sail off to the war in Troy.

    And, surprisingly, there's not a huge amount about her in the original material that's constant beyond that.

    But there are some potentially triggering matters discussed in this post--because they're part of some tellings of the original myth--so I'm going to end the main page preview of this post after this paragraph.  I don't go into any details, but do briefly mention sensitive subjects, so if you have any concerns, maybe don't click on the "read more" link.

A to Z: Belligerent Bromalios

 

    So, this one is both similar to yesterday's and also different.  Bromalios, like Atalanta and Ariadne, is from my series of roughly Young Adult-level novels, The God Killers, taking place about a generation after the Trojan War.  Unlike the two of them, however, he's not directly named after a pre-existing mythological figure.

    He's also the villain of book three, The Martial Maenads, which is not quite released yet.  (Hopefully I'll get it out this month...)  Because of that, I don't want to say too much about him, yet I also want to make a decent post of this, so let's see what I can accomplish on that score.

    It takes awhile for the heroic trio--Atalanta, Ariadne and Eurysakes--to learn about Bromalios' existence.  They have to go to Aiaia to get Kirke's aid in breaking a curse for reasons that take several chapters to explain in the book.  (Kirke is better known by the alternate transliteration of her name, Circe, but given all the baggage that spelling has (including a Wonder Woman villain) I opted to transliterate the kappas as the letter K rather than the letter C.)  This is the first thing that's said about Bromalios after they've reached Kirke:

    “There is a man among the Bistones in Thrace who is preventing the proper worship of both Ares and Dionysos all throughout the region,” Kirke informed them.  Beside Ariadne, Atalanta shuddered at the mention of Thrace, and Ariadne couldn’t blame her.  “You three will go and put a stop to him in whatever manner is required.  When my father [Helios] reports that this is done, then I will break the curse.”
    “Why do you care about how they are worshipped?” Eurysakes asked, his eyes narrowing.  “And only in Thrace?”
    Kirke laughed.  “Maybe I don’t care.  Maybe it just seems like a suitably annoying challenge for you.  Or maybe I wouldn’t mind having two handsome gods owe me a favor.”
    Personally, Ariadne could have gone her whole life quite happily without ever having been told that Ares was handsome.  Some things she just didn’t need or want to know.

    Of course, the mention of the Bistones in Thrace triggers a lot of different thoughts in our leads!  In addition to the fact that they've recently heard a dramatic recounting (part) of the tale of Heracles going to Thrace to recover the man-eating mares of Diomedes, King of the Bistones, there was also this incident before the girls ran away from Methymna on Lesbos:

         The early part of the feast was calming enough. The bard was singing of the twelve tasks of Heracles, and after some rather tasteless and bawdy discussion of Heracles’ equally prodigious labors with the ladies, the mood suddenly turned more serious.  “Speaking of the Bistones, though,” the Aiolian guest said, “have you heard the most recent rumors out of Thrace, sire?”
         “Thrace?”  The master frowned, and caressed his beard with his fingers. “I have not heard anything of any note.”  He looked around at the other men of the court, but they all echoed his sentiments.  “What are these rumors?”
          “They say that there is a cult among the Bistones that worships some vicious barbarian god,” the Aiolian replied.  “A god so cruel that it demands human sacrifice, which the Bistones show no hesitation in performing with great frequency.”

    And also this one:

         At the conclusion of the feast, it was Ariadne who asked the eunuch bard for one more private meeting in the gardens, but this time she had no interest in learning new songs.  “Tell me more about these rumors your master mentioned,” she said as soon as they were alone.  “The ones out of Thrace.”
         “I haven’t heard much more than what he said at the feast,” he said, shaking his head.  “But we heard them from some people who fled Thrace in fear of the Bistones and their new king.  I believe their fear.  Even if the tales of human sacrifice aren’t true, there is some terror in the land of the Bistones again, with no Heracles present to purge it.”

    And this one:

         “You really need to stop panicking,” Ariadne said, sitting down on her bunk.  “If you keep burbling nonsense like that in front of other people, they’ll think you’re a coward.”
         “I’m not panicking,” Atalanta insisted.  “It’s just—even Kawiya told me I needed to get used to being parted from you!  But I won’t!  I can’t!  I—I—what would I do without you?!”
         Ariadne let out a miserable sigh.  “If the master’s guest has his way, probably get sacrificed by a Thracian cult.”
         Atalanta’s lower lip started to tremble.  She had been expecting—hoping—Ariadne would deny that part…

    While I'm pretty sure even in the original draft I had always had a threat of human sacrifice in Thrace as part of why they ran away, when I did the rewrite I was able to lay out early hints that more closely fit the actual reality they would meet in book three.

    Their arrival in Thrace is indirect, landing on the island of Thasos, just off the coast of Thrace itself.  The island is a Phoenician territory at the time, giving the girls a bit of a language barrier, since they don't speak Phoenician, and even the well-traveled Eurysakes only knows some Phoenician.  (Thasos is a real place, naturally, and everything I read about it said that it was the site of a Phoenician colony and gold mine in the Late Bronze Age.)

    None of the men on the docks looked at all surprised to see an Achaian ship arriving, but they were greatly surprised when the first ones to disembark from the ship were two horses!  In fact, they seemed quite panicked by the horses until Atalanta hurried to take charge of them.  “What are they so afraid of?” Atalanta asked, as her cousins joined her.  “You’d think they’d never seen a horse before!”  The Phoenicians were no longer panicking, but they were still jabbering away and staring at the horses in abject fear.
    Eurysakes frowned.  “It sounds like…”  He stopped again without finishing his thought.
    “Like what?” Ariadne prompted.
    “They think the horses will eat them,” he said.
    “What?  But…”  Atalanta shook her head.  “I mean, that made sense in Athens, after [spoiler deleted], but here?  I don’t get it!”
    “Given that those events happened just on the other side of a thin strait from here, their fear makes a little more sense,” Ariadne said, “but only a little, considering it must have been about a hundred years ago.”
    “More like fifty years ago,” a voice suddenly said from behind Atalanta’s elbow.  She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Ampelios had followed them off the boat.  “Heracles came here to deal with the man-eating mares of Diomedes about fifty years ago.”  He paused, looking thoughtful.  “Or maybe it was more like sixty?  Well, much less than a hundred, anyway.”
    “Still, none of these men were alive at the time,” Ariadne pointed out, waving a hand in the direction of the terrified Phoenician sailors.  Most of them didn’t look like they could be out of their third decade.

[snip]

    Ampelios returned to them, looking worried.  “They said that the Bistones are being more aggressive now than they were even in the time of Diomedes, more than doubling their land just in the last two years or so.  And…well, they don’t have any proof that anything unnatural is going on, but the Bistones have changed their emblem to one of a horse’s head with red teeth, so everyone here is afraid that they are once again raising man-eating mares, and that they’ll conquer Thasos next, seeking to gain control of the island’s gold mines.”

    After that, they journey onwards into Thrace, and eventually come across a temple...

    They soon came across what had plainly begun as a temple to Ares.  It was not particularly large or ornate, but it had two nearly identical statues in front, which had originally been statues of Ares, both depicting him raising his spear above his head—one in the left hand and the other in the right—as if to urge his troops on into battle.  The statues had been altered, however:  the armor had been repainted to look as if it was a leopard’s skin, ivy had been twined around the spears, snakeskins had been added to the base of the helmet, and a strange symbol was now painted on the shields.
    “Apart from the painting on the shields, I’d say they were trying to turn the statues into maenads,” Atalanta commented.  “Is that symbol one of those letter things?” she asked.
    “No, it’s not a letter.  It might be a pictogram, but if it is, it’s not one I’m familiar with,” Ariadne said, peering at it.  “It’s probably the crest we were told about:  a horse’s head with red teeth.”  Though if so, it was very crudely drawn…

    ...and inside they meet a priest who asks them if they've come to join in the worship of "the most holy and powerful Bromalios."  In the discussion that follows, the Trojan War is mentioned, as is the time that Diomedes of Argos (not to be confused with Diomedes of the Bistones) wounded Ares as that god was fighting on the side of the Trojans.  (This incident was in the section of the Iliad often known as the Deeds of Diomedes.)  To the girls' surprise, the priest replies that his god Bromalios couldn't exist if that had not happened:

    “It is quite simple, my child.  You see, the god Ares could not survive his wound, so grievous it was,” the priest explained, “and his brother god Dionysos was equally wounded in saving him.  They fled here to the land of the Bistones, and sought a cure from Queen Herais, who was Ares’ own granddaughter, and had learned many healing elixirs in her time serving as a maenad of Dionysos.  But even she could not save them, and their essences entered into her womb, and combined there to form our most holy god Bromalios.”
    “That doesn’t make much sense,” Ariadne said, frowning.  The very notion made her want to retch for about fifteen different reasons.  “I’ve never heard any rumors of the gods being killed, especially not by mortals!  And wouldn’t that make your god only about seventeen or eighteen years old?”
    “No, this was in the early years of the war,” the priest assured her, “so he was born of that mortal woman some twenty-six years ago.”
    “That can’t be right!” Atalanta exclaimed.  “Eurysakes said that happened in the ninth year of the war!”
    “As a priest of Bromalios, I know his age to a moment,” the priest said, glaring at Atalanta with narrowed eyes.

    (Needless to say, the priest's version of events is incorrect, and Atalanta was right about when Diomedes injured Ares.  Also, Ares did not need rescuing, and especially not by Dionysos (who was mentioned in the Iliad, but never actually appeared), so that part of his tale is also a fabrication by the cult of Bromalios.)

    I don't want to use any more quoted passages from my not-yet-released book, but obviously they do in fact go on to meet Bromalios and the reader learns a great deal about him.  He's unlike the earlier two villains in a very basic respect that I actually can't even share because it would be a total spoiler. 😰  I mean, I don't know if anyone reading this is going to want to read the book, but if they do then if I said any of that, it would spoil this one, and kinda spoil the previous books as well.  I suppose one difference I can admit to that isn't a spoiler is that I feel like his motivations and thought processes feel a little more "real" than those of the previous two villains.

    Oh, another thing I can spoil is that unlike the previous villains, he's actually hoping to score with Atalanta; well, he wants to make her his bride, so there's a certain political cache as the primary goal, but the desire is absolutely there.  That's actually very unusual for this series:  usually the villains just want to off the heroes and be done with it straight away.  There is another villain who wants to see Atalanta give birth to a child, but he doesn't want to be the father (or even if he did in the original draft, he won't by the time I'm done rewriting that book) and it's entirely about her bloodline not about her, if that makes any sense.  It's kind of funny, actually, because most of the people who want to try forcing Atalanta to get married are technically good guys:  there's actually a line early in book three about how Atalanta feels she can't return to Aiolia ever again because of the four thrones and three political marriages people have been trying to foist on her as the daughter of Achilles.

    I feel like I haven't actually been able to say much about him because it's all spoilers.  😭  Which is a pity, because I feel like Bromalios is actually one of the best villains I've written.  He's not a villain with a sympathetic side, but he does have his own code of ethics which he adheres to, and his goals are, as I said above, very realistic.

A to Z: Atalanta and Ariadne

 

    I haven't done this challenge in quite a few years now (I'd have to go digging around on my old Wordpress blog to see which years I did, and I don't feel like bothering 😅) so I may be a bit rusty with it, but I'm going to try my best!

    You may be thinking, based on the title of the post, that you know who I'm about to talk about.  But actually you don't.  (Unless you're one of a very tiny number of people.  Which is unlikely.)

    Because I'm not talking about the famed huntress Atalanta, nor about Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos who helped Theseus through the labyrinth.  Nope, I'm talking about two original characters of mine who were named after those two.

    Allow me to take you back in time all the way to 2014.

    (Yeah, you were probably expecting a much older date there, huh?)

    I was pondering, as often I do, a miniscule part of a familiar tale and wondering about the details that might have happened around it.

    Specifically, on that particular occasion I was thinking about the time, late in the Trojan War, that Achilles was briefly exiled for having slain Thersites because Thersites was mocking Achilles for mourning the Amazon queen he had just killed.

    All murderers in the Greek heroic age had to be exiled, lest the stain of their murder cause plagues and other disasters, and then they needed to be purified by a king before they could safely return home.  Well, the Greek army at Troy didn't want to take any risks of Achilles being away for long, so they sent a king (specifically, Odysseus) with him to purify him so he could immediately turn right back around and return to the war with as little time lost as possible.  They made their way to the nearest non-enemy city they could reach, specifically Methymna on the island of Lesbos, which Achilles had conquered personally much earlier in the war.  (Not that that's saying much:  Achilles personally conquered most of the towns within a few days' reach of the Achaian camp!)

    Anyway, in the myth that's all there is to it:  they go there, Odysseus purifies him, and they go back to the war so Achilles can die a few weeks (or possibly days) later.  But--and here's where it got interesting to me--these are two particularly libidinous individuals, even for Greek mythology.  So I found myself wondering what happened while they were on Lesbos, away from all the prying eyes back in the camp.

    Even as I starting thinking that maybe they got a bit too 'friendly' with some of the girls serving them whatever refreshments the surviving locals provided them, I realized I was already naming the daughters they were going to father on said girls.  🤣

    Usually, when I find myself doing that, I accept the inevitable, and that's what I did this time, too:  I sat down to start writing the stories of those girls, Atalanta (the daughter of Achilles) and Ariadne (the daughter of Odysseus).

On the (Mis)Use of Ancient Words in Fiction ~ Or ~ Patroclos is a Warrior, NOT a Healer!!!!!!

     So, part three in my series of textual rants about how people are abusing poor Patroclos in their fanfiction.  (Part one is here, part two is here, if anyone cares.  Though actually part one wasn't as much about Patroclos as about Ancient Greek naming schema...)

    One warning about this post:  I'll be talking about a lot of different works (albeit briefly) and will be changing spellings accordingly.  If I'm talking about a work in Greek or the character in general, I will use my standard spelling of Patroclos, but if I'm talking about a work in Latin or an English-language work that spells it thus, I'll be using the Romanized Patroclus.  (One exception is that there's one work I'm not sure how they spelled it, so I'm using my standard...'cause they might actually have used Patroklos, only I can't remember for certain...)  I apologize if this seems confusing.

    Over the millennia, there have been a lot of changes to Patroclos' role in the story of the Trojan War.  We don't know what the story was like before the Iliad was composed, but from the way the epic never bothers explaining who he is or why he's following Achilles around so devotedly, we can assume that prior to its composition, their relationship was well-established, and the audience would already know that they were friends, comrades-in-arms and lovers.  (Well, given the variations caused by oral tradition, it's actually safer to say that many held them to be lovers, rather than that all did.  But the way the intimacy of their relationship was treated, it was clear that the poet expected people to already be aware of it.)

    In late antiquity, two anti-heroic versions of the Trojan War story were floated about, purporting to be first-hand accounts by Dictys of Crete and Dares of Phrygia; in addition to changing the story to make everyone seem worse, these stories confused or conflated various figures who had similar names (e.g. Atreus and Catreus, Peleus and Pelias), making it clear that not all the changes to the tale were purposeful.  In these, Patroclos played almost no role, and in fact died almost immediately in one of them.  And he's not even mentioned in Vergil's Aeneid (which only makes sense, really).  And why do I bring this up?  Well, because eventually the ancient Greek language was pretty much lost in Europe, so throughout the Middle Ages and most of the Renaissance, these Latin versions of the Trojan War story (which did, admittedly, also include a highly-truncated version of the Iliad, about 1/16th the length of the real thing) became the only ones known.

    So for all the Medieval and Renaissance tales of the Trojan War--Bocaccio, Chaucer, etc.--Patroclos essentially doesn't exist.  Around Shakespeare's time, Ancient Greek was becoming known again, and there was even a translation of the Iliad into English, thus Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, while mostly based on the Medieval version adapted out of Dictys and Dares, was able to reintroduce Patroclus as a major player and Achilles' true love (despite much moaning and groaning about Polyxena).  But Shakespeare made other changes to the character.  His Patroclus was a teenage boy (probably played by the boy who usually played the female leads) and not only didn't fight (being too young) but didn't even want to fight.  (Though he still met his traditional end on Hector's blade, of course.)

    Shakespeare's version of Patroclus--despite that his Troilus and Cressida was ignored for centuries, only reemerging onto stages in the 20th century--at some point became viewed as the dominant version, being called upon by any hack writer who didn't want to deal with the real story as told in the Iliad.  (See, for example, that ghastly movie Troy.  Well, no, don't see it:  just look it up on Wikipedia or something.)

    The Patroclos in the Iliad is radically different from Shakespeare's timid boy:  he is older than Achilles, he's brave, he's kind, and when he's rampaging across the battlefield in Achilles' armor and cutting down Trojans left and right everyone knows exactly who he is and they are still terrified of him.  (In fact, when Apollo disguises himself as a regular Trojan and goes to fetch Hector to have him face Patroclos, he tells him that it's Patroclos who is running rampant, and Hector's reaction is basically "yes, only I can deal with this deadly foe" not any mockery of an insignificant opponent.)

    But what does any of this have to do with the misuse of ancient words in fiction?

    Well, I'm getting to that.

    You see, not all modern authors are willing to work with Shakespeare's teenage boy version.  He'd have been sorely out of place in the video game that was a Canadian-made spin-off of Koei's Dynasty Warriors franchise.  (I think it was called, like, Warriors:  Legends of Troy or something like that.  I'm sure about the first word and the last, just not the ones in the middle... 😅)  I haven't played the game, but I did watch some footage of it years ago (when I was working on a paper on the changing portrayals of the Trojan War heroes over time), and its Patroclos was just as buff and dangerous as any other player character.  (Too buff, honestly; the characters were kind of grotesque, as I recall.  Like, they looked like they'd all overdosed on steroids.)  The version of Patroclus in the very recent game Hades is probably the best, most accurate version of the character I've ever encountered in a modern work.  (Yes, they changed his ethnicity, but there aren't actually any ancient descriptions of him that specify his ethnicity.  No reason his family a few generations back couldn't have moved to Greece from Africa.  I think it happened a lot more back then than people now expect.)

    Literature seems to have been less kind to Patroclos than video games, weirdly enough.  Most of the (unintended) abuse of the character I've encountered on AO3 has been entirely caused by fans of a single modern novel, Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles.

    And why do I call it abuse?

    Because it turned a warrior into a healer.

    Seriously, some of these fanfic works have claimed he never even went onto the battlefield, just waiting in the camp for Achilles to return.

    That is the most appalling nonsense!  (I can only hope that comes from the fic writer and not the novelist, but I fear the opposite is true.)  Every man in the Greek camp--with the possible exception of the priest Calchas--went out to battle.  Even the aged Nestor, who was too old to fight, still went onto the field for every battle!  Let's be real, here:  the Greek army was having too much trouble procuring food for it to have useless hangers-on in the camp who didn't fight.  (Uh...especially in light of all the women they had enslaved, who obviously didn't do any fighting, but still had to eat...and all the children those poor women were being forced to bear...)

    The closest to professional healers that the Greek army had were Machaon and Podaleirios, the sons of Asclepios.  But they still went out and fought.  (Machaon, in fact, died in battle, either to Penthesileia or to Eurypylos of Mysia, depending on the version you're looking at.)

    Now, yes, it's true that Patroclos had some knowledge of field medicine, and in the Iliad he helps a bit with some of the wounded before persuading Achilles to let him join the fight, but they've all been fighting for nine years at that point!  Every soldier would have needed to know a bit about field medicine just to ensure his own survival.  And all the more so for an attendant like Patroclos, who would need to be able to help his lord if the need arose.  (Okay, not so likely given Achilles' natural skills and supernatural armor (his first set of armor was also made by Hephaistos) but still!)  Furthermore, in pretty much all known traditions, Achilles was trained as a child by Cheiron, who was known for his knowledge of healing (he had, in fact, trained Asclepios himself), and who had surely taught the boy at least enough medicine to be able to deal with injuries on the battlefield.  Whether or not Patroclos was trained alongside Achilles (and there is ancient precedent for that being the case), Patroclos would have learned some of the techniques from Achilles if he hadn't learned them with Achilles, because Achilles is going to want to make sure his lover knows how to save his own life if necessary.

    So, where did Miller's healer-only version come from?

    Well, in that we get to the title of this post, and the misuse of ancient words.

    Because the word for Patroclos' position is θεράπων (therapon), a word often used in the fanfictions that have gotten me so worked up about this.  Obviously, someone (presumably Miller?) looked at that and said "well, it looks so much like therapy that it must be related!"

    And yeah, it probably is related, in the sense of it having come from the same root word as θεράπευσις, meaning "treatment, attention."

    But θεράπων does not mean anything related to healing!

    In the Homeric context, it has traditionally been translated as "squire," and its most standard definition is "comrade-in-arms, but of inferior rank."  Other definitions include "attendant," "servant" and even "worshipper."  But not one of its definitions has even the slightest thing to do with healing.  (You can check out the dictionary entries for θεράπων at the Perseus Project:  here, here and here.)

    This is not only just plain wrong, it was also purposefully wrong on Miller's part.  She had to have done enough research to have known that the word did not mean that, and she used it that way anyway.  In consequence, its misuse has been spread like a virus throughout the Trojan War-related fandoms on AO3.

    I cannot express emphatically enough just how much that pisses me off.

    I'm not even going to try (the fact that I've spent this long ranting about it is probably a good indicator of just how angry I am, obviously), as the whole point of this was to try and purge the anger from me, not to wallow in it.

    The worst part is that--whether this comes from Miller's novel or from the people writing derivative works on AO3--by making him a passive healer, they've imposed an artificial heteronormative dynamic on a homosexual relationship:  the Patroclus of those fanfiction works is forced into a feminized position, allowing those writers to essentially write a straight relationship despite that they're writing about two men.  Now, yes, not all of them do that, even when they embrace the "sitting passively in camp" aspect.  (My sample size is small, since I quickly got too fed up to read any more of them, so I can't guess at percentages either way.)  But the fact that any of them do it is already cause for alarm as well as fury.  And yes, Shakespeare's Patroclus was a relatively passive character in a submissive role in the relationship, but he was not so much feminized as not-yet-masculinized, as man/boy relationships were not uncommon in Shakespeare's day.  (Shakespeare himself wrote more than one love sonnet addressed to a boy, which if they were in his own voice (rather than works written on commission for someone else) indicate that he was likely bisexual, but due to the culture in which he lived, that bisexuality would have found expression only with boys, not adult men.)

    Hopefully, this has concluded my series of rants about the ghastly things people are doing to my poor favorite on AO3.  (Aside from my overwhelming fury that they keep putting their fics that are 100% contrary to the Iliad in the Iliad fandom!  Anything that lists Miller's novel as its fandom is automatically not compliant with the Iliad, and therefore shouldn't list it!)

    *ahem*

    Yes, so, as I was saying, hopefully I'm done with this ranting, and will post more positive, interesting things in the future.  (I always have lots of things to say about Greek mythology, after all...)

    In closing, though, I just want to encourage everyone to actually read the Iliad if they're interested in the Trojan War.  Some of the battles can get a bit gruesome (though tame by modern standards, I suppose) and the catalog of ships is pretty dull unless you're into ancient power structures and/or geography, but the characters are fascinating, the dialog is often very entertaining (the snipes at Alexander/Paris esp.), and the pathos of loss is genuinely heart-wrenching.  And Patroclos is just 💓.

On Exiles and Princes

     Well, my attempt to blog daily died a very quick and miserable death, but I am still going to try to purge in (web)print my deep-seated frustrations at the way people on AO3 frequently treat certain subjects in Greek mythology.

    And today my topic is specifically in reaction to the hideous trend (which seems at this point to be present in almost all AO3 works dealing with the character) of claiming that Patroclos was a prince before being exiled for murder as a child.

    This is wrong in every way, except the part about him being exiled.

    Patroclos' father was never a king.  Making him a king reveals multiple very deep errors.

    Firstly, it means mistaking the kingdoms of the Late Bronze Age for the city-states of the Iron Age, in that at some point someone said "Well, gee, we don't know who the king of Opus was, so why not make it Patroclus' father?"  Well, guess what?  There was no king of Opus!  You know why?  Because Opus was the palatial center of Locris.  (There is, in fact, no city named Locris.  It is the name of the region/kingdom only.  Thus making a character into the king of Opus is rather like making someone into the President of Washington DC or the Prime Minister of London.)  The king there was Oileus.  He is a very well established mythic character, and his son, the lesser Aias, was such an important character in the Trojan War that he caused the deaths of more of the Greek army than all the Trojans combined did.

    Second, it misunderstands the role and nature of royalty in the culture.  Exiled princes in the Greek Heroic Age did not become nobodies, mere attendants, as Patroclos did.  Exiled princes typically ended up marrying a daughter of their host and then inheriting his kingdom (or at least part of it).  This is how Peleus, Telamon, Teukros and many others came to their thrones, and how Jason would have become king of Corinth if the city hadn't been burned down, taking his prospective bride and her father along with it.  Royal titles were not simply titles:  royalty were believed to be naturally different and superior to the rest of the population.  An exiled prince remained a prince.  (And if you honestly think people have changed in this regard, look at how people react to the British royal family these days.  I can't remember the last time I went to the grocery store and didn't see at least one article on the magazines at the checkout line about the royal family, esp. Prince Harry.  And this country rejected the monarchy almost 250 years ago!)  To have an exiled prince become nobody special means you don't understand the culture you're using as the setting of your story.  (And if you doubt that Patroclos was considered a nobody among the nobility at the Trojan War, let me remind you that he did not have his own hut.  He had to share with Achilles.  Or rather, Achilles let him stay with him in his hut.  If he had been important--as an exiled prince was by definition--he would have had his own hut.  Teukros had his own hut, even though he was not only the son of an enslaved concubine, but the concubine in question was Trojan!  (In fact, in all post-Homeric sources, she is specified to be King Priam's sister Hesione.))

    The third point is more an assumption on my part regarding why people want to make him a prince, and I'm not sure if it comes from the fanfic authors or their solitary source for this mutant version.  Because even without having read it, I know where they're getting this "Prince of Opus" malarkey from.  They're getting it from Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles, which I once contemplated reading and now I'm very, very glad I didn't, because I can see it would have driven me completely mad very quickly.  (For more reasons than I'll get into in today's post...)  So, I'm not sure if it was Miller or if it's the fanfic authors, but I get the feeling someone at some point is/was thinking "well, he's a better match for Achilles if they're both princes!"  Like that's somehow an improvement.

    It's not.  It weakens their relationship.

    Like, by a lot.  Making a prince--a prince who is all but irresistible, according to some authors, and could therefore have just about anyone he wanted, no matter how high their rank--fall in love with another prince is bland.  It's "safe."  But making him fall in love with a man below his station?  An older man, therefore putting him in a position that is--culturally speaking--subordinate to someone who should be far below him?  That is a sign of a truly powerful love, breaking through the boundaries of what is accepted in his society, and one for which he is risking the one thing he normally protects above everything else:  his reputation.  Making him love an equal is so weak that it's pitiful by comparison.

    Admittedly, the ancient Greeks wanted to make them closer to being equals, so that Achilles wasn't "lowering" himself by loving and being loved by someone so much lesser in status.  That was why many ancient authors (dating all the way back to the Hesiodic Catalog of Women) made Menoitios (Patroclos' father) into a brother of Peleus.  (At least one other ancient author made Menoitios the half-brother of Aiakos, making Patroclos into Peleus' first cousin, which is completely insane, because Patroclos kicks way too much butt to be an old man.  Plus his shade literally has a line to Achilles about how they grew up together, so obviously they can't be more than a few years apart in age.)  But they never went so far as to deny the text of the Iliad, which said very bluntly and directly that Achilles was more important than Patroclos, which would not be the case if Patroclos was also a prince.

    Of course, it also said (in a couple different places) that Patroclos' father moved to Phthia with him when he was exiled, a fact which all those modern authors are steadfastly ignoring, and/or ignorant of.  Because the poet of the Iliad understood the purpose of exiling a murderer, and none of those modern people seem to get it, or if they do, they're ignoring it.

    Exile was not the "punishment" for murder.

    Murderers were exiled for the protection of the community.

    Not because they were expected to kill again (though I'm sure that also played a role in it in many cases!) but because killing someone off the field of battle left the killer polluted.  It was a stain that was actually dangerous to those around him/her.  A murderer was ejected from the community so that they could be purified of that pollution, in order to prevent a plague or other disaster from striking.

    Don't believe me?  Take a look at the first of Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy sometime.  In it, Thebes is suffering from a terrible plague.  Seers are consulted, and it's learned that the reason for the plague is because of an unpurified murderer in the town!  (Worse still, the murderer of their previous king!)  And what does Oedipus promise to do about the murderer?  To banish him from Thebes, of course.

    Because that's what you did with murderers to protect everyone else.

    Then some other king could purify them, and--unless the banishment was specified to be permanent--they could return home and everything would be just fine.  (Y'know, except for the dead person and their family and friends...)  There are a lot of examples of this in surviving myths.  Peleus and Telamon, for example, you know why they were exiled from Aegina?  Because they had murdered their half-brother.  Jason was exiled from Iolcos because of his role in the murder of Pelias.  In Euripides' surviving Hippolytus (he wrote another play about the same subject, which has been lost), the play starts with Theseus in the midst of a one year exile, due to having killed someone.  Queen Penthesileia of the Amazons arrived in Troy in the final year of the war because she had accidentally killed her sister, and was thus in exile to be purified of the death, but she would have gone home again at the end of the war if Achilles hadn't killed her.  Achilles himself, in fact, was briefly exiled from the Achaian camp due to having killed Thersites when the wretch mocked him for mourning the fallen Amazon queen.  (Of course, that was a very carefully arranged exile, as Odysseus accompanied him to the nearest convenient still-standing city to purify him, so they were probably only gone two or three days, tops.  Normally, it wouldn't be quite so heavily planned in advance.)

    So, in other words, there was nothing cruel or unusual about the young Patroclos being exiled from Opus after he accidentally killed a friend in a quarrel.  It was standard procedure, and far from being a heartless father sending his young son out alone in the world, his father uprooted his entire life to accompany the boy.  (Presumably this also meant uprooting the boy's mother and any siblings he might have had, but the subject did not come up in the Iliad.)  The fact that they never returned to Opus likely had nothing to do with being forbidden to do so, but rather to having found a much better situation at Peleus' court than whatever Menoitios' situation was in Opus.  (All known ancient lists of the Argonauts include both Peleus and Menoitios, so even in the versions where they're not brothers, they would at the least be old comrades, so being welcomed with open arms makes complete sense.)

    What bothers me most about the modern authors deciding to turn a devoted father into a cruel one is that I feel like someone (whether Miller or someone in the fanfic community) decided that it was "necessary" in order to give Patroclos' situation more "drama."

    I'm sorry, but if you think his situation needs more drama than it already has, there's something wrong with you.  He's just a child, and he accidentally killed one of his friends.  If you need more drama than that, I suggest you seek therapy.