Fic: "Under Autumn Leaves" AU Trickster/Piper, greek mythos

[aprilmaples]

Title: Under Autumn Leaves
Author: aprilmaples
Characters: Trickster, Piper
Prompt: " autumn leaves"
Summary: AU, allusions to Greek Mythos, short snippet, kissing.

Comments

[aprilmaples]

Another way the Persephone myth fits Piper is that romantics have framed her abduction as an actual escape from her mother's custody. In those days, the outrage wasn't that "Hades had taken Persephone without Persephone's permission", it was "Hades had taken Persephone without parental's permission". Some bride-nappings were vile acts that violates consent, that sadly still carries on today, by men with little to offer, but some, especially in the Old Days, were actually done with the consent of the bride who wants to elope with someone she finds charming but had little to offer her parents.

Piper is the oldest child and the only son of the Rathaway, and he ran away from them into the Underworld life of criminals, so Persephone!

...and compared to her contemporaries, Persephone had the happier ending. Excepting Athena, unless she likes being alone and didn't chose it because from her viewpoint,t he alternative was Married To A Jerk. Aphrodite was married off to Hephaestus against her will, specifically because Hephaestus was deformed and ugly and therefore not seen as a threat by others who might war over Aphrodite! Zeus is a famous cheater and creeper - since not only did he cheat on his wife, he did things to women without their permission, which in spite of his forms (for example, as "light"), we would read as /rape/, and then he abandoned them. When Hera had a lover though, Zeus had dangled her from chains, so he was a very horrible person to be married to.

With Persephone and Hades story, many interpretation was that once he took her into his realm, he didn't force himself on her but he courted her with the jewels of the ground, making golden lamp filled with embers when she missed the sun (this was the first version I read) - so that Persephone willingly and knowingly ate some pomegranate seeds so that she might come back.

Homer describes her as the formidable, venerable majestic queen of the shades, her position to Hades was much more equal, compared to Hera's to Zeus.

I chose to believe the version where Persephone ate the pomegrante seeds willingly and knowingly, surely as the personification of spring and life (seeds) she would know the meaning!

In terms of philandering, the only name I could think of in link to Hades is the nympth Minthe. In some versions, she was already sleeping with Hades, and then Hades's heart turned to Persephone, and Minthe was turned into the the mint plant by Demeter when she boast that she was more noble and beautiful than the newly abducted Persephone who Hades shall surely banished. In other versions, Minthe saw Hades passing in his chariot, and then she was going to seduce him before Queen Persephone turned her into the plant.

On Persephone's side, Queen Persephone was one of the goddesses fighting over Adonis's affections with Aphrodite, and quarrel so that Zeus intervened and had Adonis spent some months with Aphrodite, and some months with Persephone! And this arrangement lasted after Adonis died and went to the realm that was half Persephone! I hope Hades don't mind it. There were stories about Hephaestus's jealousy, he caught his wife and Ares in some kind of trap once. But I don't remember any about Hade's jealousy.