Vexing Fitness

Cause, it’s generally agreed: Hades was a pretty chill dude. He was rich and powerful and grim and kind of a moody manic sometimes, but generally, as long as you stayed on your side of the styx and didn’t much up with him he was content to leave you be. And even if you come crashing down into his realm being a jackass, he was still fair and just, if annoyed. (The story where Heracles bails out one of the guys he had punished for being rude psycho jackasses basically amounts to “leave the lead jackass to rot, but if it means that much take the other brats”)

He’s a very Lawful Neutral figure: The guy behind the desk of the great tax collector in the ancient world. The Greeks had a healthy respect and fear for him, but as long as you followed the rules and paid the ferry man there wasn’t anything to fear- and really he wasn’t the one responsible for the system…Just the guy enforcing it.

But Persephone.

Persephone.

There was someone you didn’t not want to piss off. There is a reason Hades name is just “The Rich One” and her’s is “The Iron Queen”. She took her job as queen of the underworld very very seriously and she had a mean streak a mile wide. When Orpheus came down to fetch his wife Hades was all for letting them go he was so moved by the man’s music, but Persephone is the one that set the trial knowing that Orpheus couldn’t resist looking- in some versions of the myth after he’s ripped apart by nymphs she seats him in their court to be their musician and it’s implied that was her plan all along- to not only keep one soul but to gain another- capable of great music to please her husband. When the whole thing with Adonis went down, she threatened the stability of all the world to tip the scales in her favor. According to Homer when men wanted to call curses down on the souls of the departed they invoked her name.

The Greeks where terrified of her. Aside from her priests no one was allowed to speak her name legally (with Hades and the others it was just social tabbo) for fear of drawing her attention. To them- she was the Goddess of Life AND Death, Summer and Winter. She command power over men’s lives and their deaths. You did not mess with her.

1/2 of me: why?