Danae
As many of you following this blog--okay, three of you--know, my next novel follows Danae, the mother of Perseus.
If you're a fan of the 1981 Clash of the Titans film (don't get me started on the pathetic 2010 remake), Danae (played by Vida Taylor) is the unfortunate princess of Argos who, at the beginning of the film, is put into the chest with her baby and tossed out to sea by her paranoid dad, King Acrisius.
Acrisius = this asshole:
The film never gets into it, but the reason Acrisius isn't exactly throwing a baby shower for young Perseus has to do with a rather dire prophecy that says Acrisius will never have sons, but will one day be killed by the son of his daughter Danae. So he locks her in a tower (or an underground chamber of bronze, depending on the story), where no men can get at her, and she has only a woman to bring her food and water, and do her laundry, and scrub the toilet, etc. No intercourse, no grandson, no gruesome death. What could possibly go wrong here?
Zeus, that's what.
And not just any old Zeus, but Zeus played by the late Laurence Olivier. THAT Zeus, who appears to the virginal young Danae as a shower of gold. Make all the golden showers jokes you want, the Greeks took this shit seriously. Since we don't have any other details--aside from one ancient writer who states that Danae at least got some sexual pleasure from her encounter with sunbeams and liquid gold--we can only assume that the conception of Perseus was a good old-fashioned precursor to the Immaculate Conception.
What I want to know, and what's crucial to Danae's narrative at this point, is how old she is at this point. The question of Danae's age is actually very important, because years later when Perseus is grown enough to have his adventures, she's still beautiful enough to attract the unsolicited attentions of Polydektes, douchebag king of Seriphos. Theoretically, Danae could have been as young as twelve when she became pregnant.
Not that her age matters in the Clash of the Titans universe, because by the time baby Perseus grows into Harry Hamlin, his mother is dead. Even in the remake, she's dead. As in, literally dead in the water:
And what about her time in that chest? Perseus would have been too young to process what was going on, but talk about the claustrophobic horrors of being buried alive for poor Danae! I imagine the woman had nightmares for the rest of her life.