As much as one can hope for the Labyrinth, and the Minotaur, to be finally bested (particularly if it’s by a well-born and, dare I say, particularly hot young Athenian man), there is a point when looking at a doorway in a stone wall becomes boring. While I’ve been waiting, though, I’ve been thinking. My family hates the Athenians, for reasons I’ve already been through. But the thing is, nobody is quite sure what happened. The story I’ve been told is that when Androgeos went to Athens, it was at the time of the Panathenaic festival. Naturally, because he’s part of this family, he absolutely cleaned up at the games, and defeated all the other contestants. While he was there, he made friends with the sons of Pallas, a man who King Aegeus (Theseus’s dad) thought had designs on his power - and because my dad is the “master of the seas”, and all that, Aegeus thought that Pallas would use his sons’ friendship with Androgeos to get my dad’s aid to overthrow him (Aegeus). And since paranoia seems to be a feature of being a king, Aegeus got Androgeos killed when he was on his way to another festival at Thebes. Like I said before, Dad didn’t take it well At All, which I can completely understand. As well as declaring war on Athens, he prayed to Zeus to bring drought and famine on them - and Zeus, like most of the gods, certainly doesn’t mind causing a bit of destruction. Crops failed throughout all the mainland - but even when all the heads of the city-states prayed for the drought to be broken, Athens alone was still afflicted. When the Athenians asked Zeus how they could lift the drought, Zeus told them to give my dad any recompense he might ask for for the murder of Androgeos - and we all know how it went from there. I guess the drought was broken after that; I stopped paying attention to Athens after they started to atone for what their king did to my brother. But now I’m starting to wonder. That’s only one version of the story - some people say that Aegeus sent him to try and kill the bull of Marathon, and got killed himself, and others say, though not where Dad can hear, that Aegeus had nothing to do with it at all - that he could have just been killed by the jealous competitors he bested. Whatever the story, I can’t blame all Athenians, can I? Surely not. Only the people who actually got him killed are to blame. And even if it was Aegeus who gave the order, Theseus would have had nothing to do with it. Dad might take a bit of convincing, but I’m sure I can manage to argue him around. Surely even he can see that not all Athenians deserve to be eaten - just the ones who were involved in my brother’s death.
