Greek myth - Hera and Zeus IV
Feb. 20th, 2021 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Something I've been vaguely thinking about for a while, and which I vaguely incorporated into my Femslash February fic that's a Rule 63!AU for Ganymede and Zeus, is Zeus and Hera's relationship dynamic, and how it would honestly be worse if you Rule 63 them.
Now, regular Zeus and Hera are a product of the culture and time they come from, of cultural attitudes and sexual mores, which is reflected in not just their relationship, but their personalities. If you flip them completely, you just get the regular situation between them, nothing new there.
If you flip them while allowing them to keep what we do have of their personalities, even when these are at least partially coloured by gendered societal expectations and sexual mores, you get something more interesting.
Now you have a male Hera who, contrary to all cultural expectation, is monogamous but still in possession of all of female Hera's (righteous) anger over being cheated on. You also have a male Hera with far more licence to do whatever the fuck he wants in retaliation for his wife's cheating, and here is where it gets depressing.
Even if you put aside any threats of domestic violence (Zeus, for example, threatens violence both to Hera and others, but never goes through with it), Hera's favourite methods of retaliation are madness, transformations, and death, and some of these because the women need to survive to at least give birth to the children. There's no need for any such meta-textual consideration to be paid when Zeus is the one pregnant. Hera can instantly punish any mortal man or god Zeus has slept with (see, for example, Zeus killing Iasion for sleeping with Demeter, this is basically what has a high likelihood of repeatedly happening). I figure Zeus is often going to be handing babies over to their grandparents or uncles instead of their fathers.
Or, if Hera doesn't lash out any more times in this version of mythic reality than she does in regular mythic reality (which isn't actually a lot, only, like, 9-11 times), I figure Zeus herself would bear the brunt more often - probably Zeus would get repeatedly locked up? As a way to try and contain her.
As for female Zeus, again, contrary to all cultural expectation, she has a libido and wants to sleep with anyone she wishes to. In that, she would be much like Demeter. They'd probably have a lot in common, here! The problem is just that female Zeus is a woman, she is married, and as a woman, and a married woman, she has no similar freedoms as when she is male. An ancient Greek married woman was supposed, contrary to the man, to be faithful and chaste, which Zeus very clearly is not.
Why marry at all, then, you say? If we let Zeus still be the youngest/oldest, and the one who gets hidden away, she's grown up with a sense of freedom and responsibility, and she would probably want to keep as much power for herself as she can... and if that means marrying the king of the gods (because it's not like Zeus was in the running for one third of the realm or the overall kingship, as a woman), then by Heaven and Earth she will. She just probably feels she should be able to do what she wants, when the married men can do so. You don't need to keep this order of things, Hera could well now be the youngest son and hidden away on Crete, because Zeus can still be much like Demeter, but personally I like the idea better of keeping the general flow of the early myths/Zeus' birth and the general birth order.
Thinking of the children from Zeus, either Metis is now a river god instead of an Oceanid, or she's still female and we go with the version where Zeus alone engenders Athena - just with no head chopping in this version, unless that's kept for the extra wtf when Zeus as a woman very much can give birth to Athena the normal way, but perhaps, because she was created from Zeus alone, she still comes from her head? Which would still piss Hera off and off he goes to have Hephaistos, things proceed as normal there.
I'd honestly only switch Hera and Zeus in terms of gender/sex here, so Persephone will get the distinction of being a magical f/f preg baby, because by god, why not? Demeter is Zeus' only experience with a woman until Ganymede (because I'd keep this a same-sex relationship, even outside of the specific context of my femslash february fic). Persephone can of course not be given away by Zeus in this version, so Hera is her closest male relative - Hades undoubtedly goes to Hera, and since I don't see why Hera can't keep her "deity of marriage" title (because Zeus is considered one of the deities of marriage in regular Ancient Greek religion), he has double the "reason" and "rights" to give Persephone away. Only difference is that you probably get two pissed off mothers. Maybe Zeus refuses to let shit rain on top of Demeter's famine/refusing to let things grow. (Honestly though, Zeus would probably not be upset at Hades specifically as the groom, just, like Demeter, that she wasn't informed.)
Among the mortal women who would now be men that Zeus sleeps with, the only one who really presents a problem is Semele, because of the necessity of Dionysos' double-birth. You could borrow the "getting ripped apart after being born" method, and Zeus sticking whatever surviving piece back inside and baking a new baby Dionysos from that, which would work nicely and easily allow Semele to be male. If we keep closer to the basics and ignore Orphic variations, Dionysos could always be our second miracle f/f preg baby (I mean, why not), and you still get the saving of infant Dionysos from Semele's burning corpse after Hera tricks Semele into asking Zeus to come to her as she does while having sex with her husband.
Now, regular Zeus and Hera are a product of the culture and time they come from, of cultural attitudes and sexual mores, which is reflected in not just their relationship, but their personalities. If you flip them completely, you just get the regular situation between them, nothing new there.
If you flip them while allowing them to keep what we do have of their personalities, even when these are at least partially coloured by gendered societal expectations and sexual mores, you get something more interesting.
Now you have a male Hera who, contrary to all cultural expectation, is monogamous but still in possession of all of female Hera's (righteous) anger over being cheated on. You also have a male Hera with far more licence to do whatever the fuck he wants in retaliation for his wife's cheating, and here is where it gets depressing.
Even if you put aside any threats of domestic violence (Zeus, for example, threatens violence both to Hera and others, but never goes through with it), Hera's favourite methods of retaliation are madness, transformations, and death, and some of these because the women need to survive to at least give birth to the children. There's no need for any such meta-textual consideration to be paid when Zeus is the one pregnant. Hera can instantly punish any mortal man or god Zeus has slept with (see, for example, Zeus killing Iasion for sleeping with Demeter, this is basically what has a high likelihood of repeatedly happening). I figure Zeus is often going to be handing babies over to their grandparents or uncles instead of their fathers.
Or, if Hera doesn't lash out any more times in this version of mythic reality than she does in regular mythic reality (which isn't actually a lot, only, like, 9-11 times), I figure Zeus herself would bear the brunt more often - probably Zeus would get repeatedly locked up? As a way to try and contain her.
As for female Zeus, again, contrary to all cultural expectation, she has a libido and wants to sleep with anyone she wishes to. In that, she would be much like Demeter. They'd probably have a lot in common, here! The problem is just that female Zeus is a woman, she is married, and as a woman, and a married woman, she has no similar freedoms as when she is male. An ancient Greek married woman was supposed, contrary to the man, to be faithful and chaste, which Zeus very clearly is not.
Why marry at all, then, you say? If we let Zeus still be the youngest/oldest, and the one who gets hidden away, she's grown up with a sense of freedom and responsibility, and she would probably want to keep as much power for herself as she can... and if that means marrying the king of the gods (because it's not like Zeus was in the running for one third of the realm or the overall kingship, as a woman), then by Heaven and Earth she will. She just probably feels she should be able to do what she wants, when the married men can do so. You don't need to keep this order of things, Hera could well now be the youngest son and hidden away on Crete, because Zeus can still be much like Demeter, but personally I like the idea better of keeping the general flow of the early myths/Zeus' birth and the general birth order.
Thinking of the children from Zeus, either Metis is now a river god instead of an Oceanid, or she's still female and we go with the version where Zeus alone engenders Athena - just with no head chopping in this version, unless that's kept for the extra wtf when Zeus as a woman very much can give birth to Athena the normal way, but perhaps, because she was created from Zeus alone, she still comes from her head? Which would still piss Hera off and off he goes to have Hephaistos, things proceed as normal there.
I'd honestly only switch Hera and Zeus in terms of gender/sex here, so Persephone will get the distinction of being a magical f/f preg baby, because by god, why not? Demeter is Zeus' only experience with a woman until Ganymede (because I'd keep this a same-sex relationship, even outside of the specific context of my femslash february fic). Persephone can of course not be given away by Zeus in this version, so Hera is her closest male relative - Hades undoubtedly goes to Hera, and since I don't see why Hera can't keep her "deity of marriage" title (because Zeus is considered one of the deities of marriage in regular Ancient Greek religion), he has double the "reason" and "rights" to give Persephone away. Only difference is that you probably get two pissed off mothers. Maybe Zeus refuses to let shit rain on top of Demeter's famine/refusing to let things grow. (Honestly though, Zeus would probably not be upset at Hades specifically as the groom, just, like Demeter, that she wasn't informed.)
Among the mortal women who would now be men that Zeus sleeps with, the only one who really presents a problem is Semele, because of the necessity of Dionysos' double-birth. You could borrow the "getting ripped apart after being born" method, and Zeus sticking whatever surviving piece back inside and baking a new baby Dionysos from that, which would work nicely and easily allow Semele to be male. If we keep closer to the basics and ignore Orphic variations, Dionysos could always be our second miracle f/f preg baby (I mean, why not), and you still get the saving of infant Dionysos from Semele's burning corpse after Hera tricks Semele into asking Zeus to come to her as she does while having sex with her husband.