Persephone

General Off-Topic Discussion
1

Persephone
or Why I Hate New Age

[rant]If you look at the Wikipedia entry for Persephone, you’re greeted with a New Age re-imagining of the dreaded goddess, because in New Age, everything has to be “empowering” and “give off positive wibes” and all that bullcrap. …so they baked her together with her time and role a maiden of the spring and harvest season (back when she was known as Kore - “the maiden”), and forgotten all about what role she plays in the stories she partakes in after that. The “majestic queen of the underworld, who carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead” is mentioned only briefly.

Persephone (after her herself having been harvested (raped, abducted and forcefully married) by Hades) plays a part in two stories.

In the story of king Sisyphus, he has to explain to Persephone why he should be allowed to leave the underworld: Because he wasn’t properly buried (which he had arranged for before dying). Persephone then allows him to basically return as a ghost, and as this is the story about Sisyphus, this is meant as a testament to how he was able to trick her and escape (as in “cheat and escape death”). …but Sisyphus isn’t known for being the one who outsmarted Persephone. He is known for eternal punishment, because when Persephone found out about this, she was the one who condemned him to rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity.
This story puts Persephone as a goddess who judges who can leave the underworld, and who deserves punishment. Basically she is the gatekeeper to what dead goes where, and it is her that you have to plead before when you die. She’s the coldhearted, uncaring reason why loved ones doesn’t return to life. She is the goddess of loss and sorrow.

In the story of Orpheus, his woman Eurydice dies from a snake-bite. Orpheus, however, was a legendary musician, who could charm all living things. …so he went down to the underworld, and came before Persephone to plead to her to return Eurydice to life, by doing what every mourner does before her: By expressing his grief. …but he does so by a song, and as Persephone was technically still living (as she didn’t arrive in the underworld by dying), he manages to charm her, and move her to tears. This isn’t because dreaded Persephone is a softhearted and sympathetic goddess. On the contrary. Her cold, unmoving heart, is the reason why there has to be a very good reason why dead people may return to the world of the living to haunt it for only a brief period of time - why nobody lives forever.
…but Persephone has a condition: Eurydice will only be released if Orpheus doesn’t reunite with her within the underworld. Is this story known for how Orpheus was so good that he managed to reunite with Eurydice? No, this story is known for him looking back, only so see Eurydice be swallowed up by the darkness of death, by the grace of Persephone.

…so I don’t want to hear it about what a happy and cheerful goddess Persephone is. She has the epithet “the dreaded” for a good reason. Tell anyone who’s been through what she’s been through, what a happy and cheerful person they must be afterwards, and see if they agree with you.[/rant]

2

Kratos put an end to that bitch and her husband. :wink:

3

Not in Titan Quest. The Immortal Throne expansion is absolutely horrible story-wise:

It turns out that despite you killing the titan that drove them off, the gods are all too scared to return to the world, so instead they just leave it all up to “human judges” to rule the world. It’s not like missing or (in the case of Hades) killed gods will upset the natural laws or anything. Human judges can apparently easily take their place by just making up and writing down new laws in books. Gravity? Just outlaw things that float or fall upwards. Dying? Just outlaw people who gets their heads chopped off.
…so with all the gods gone, Hades had this plan to just build demons and invade everything. He doesn’t do a good job other than by mind controlling creatures, so he gets about a few hundred meters into Elysium, before the dead humans begin halting his progress.
I don’t buy Hades as power hungry. Every day people die, so there’s a very demonstrated steady stream of dead, that enters his kingdom. …and it’s a huge kingdom, judging by it containing more people than the world of the living, and apparently he has “the riches of the world” as well, so there’s really no point in creating an army of demons.
The only reason was that he’s the god of death, which sounds heavy metal for a villain.
…and apparently Persephone and Hades had some sort of a quarrel when Hades went “mad with power metal”, so apparently they were this happy couple up until then.

You know what would make a better story for Immortal Throne?
When I killed Typhon as the end of Titan Quest, what happens? Obviously he dies. …so all of a sudden a titan starts wreaking havoc in the underworld, taking it over and driving a shocked Hades into exile, seizing the Immortal Throne (which isn’t even freaking mentioned in the original expansion). I don’t care if that would make an undead Typhon the final boss, because that would have made sense.

4

Though to be fair, there is a faint echo of Aeschylus’s Euminides there…

5

Yes, but they’re expected to replace all the gods as well.
It’s done as a sort of cheesy ending. Titan Quest ended with

Zeus saying that the player is so strong and mighty, and that mankind is ready to do without gods. Would it be anything else than flattery for the player, that would mean that the gods are just hightailing it and running, even after the titan has been killed.

Immortal Throne ends with

Persephone basically saying the same thing.

I get the feeling that they just didn’t care - that they just flatter the player and tell him to behave, and that that’s it. It was pointless.