"Pour everything out for the blood you have shed, you're wasting your time in appeasing the dead."
- Aeschylus
Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; it's as sure as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Uther Pendragon sowed the...
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While Odysseus battled the wrath of the Gods, Penelope remained at home, besieged by men whose lust drew them to her like moths to a flickering flame.
As a child, Mairead had a deep and abiding fondness for the myths of the ancients. Their tales of love and loss were all the young girl dreamt of. Figures danced behind her eyes every night. Psyche and Eros, Persephone and Hades, Mairead used to fall asleep to the words of their adventures, lulled into the dream world by the myths of a world long passed.
In truth, the tale of Odysseus was never her favorite.
The young girl found little to be endearing about the man; in fact, Mairead was more than comfortable telling her mother just how stupid the King of Ithaca was.
Her mother would laugh, like the tinkling of bells on a Sunday morning, asking her daughter why she'd say such a thing. Mairead would confidently respond that Odysseus was at fault for nearly all his misfortune. It was him that angered Poseidon and fell into the arms of Circe despite Penelope waiting faithfully at home.
Then perhaps he isn't the hero of this story.
Mairead never understood her mother's words. How could Odysseus not be the hero? He was the one in battle, fighting monsters and figures of evil, defying the Gods so that he might return to his wife and child. She used to spend hours searching for answers, scouring the story for another that might earn the title of hero, but none came to mind.
Odysseus was so often alone in his journey or plagued by idiotic crew members; they were not heroes.
Telemachus was unlikely. He was a boy at heart, desperate for his father and the older man's guidance.
That left only one; Penelope.
The faithful wife of Odysseus, the mother of his son and heir, the Queen of his people.
Young Mairead, a child in a world very different than Penelope's, simply couldn't understand. But perhaps she wasn't meant to.
In all her twenty-odd years of life, Mairead never understood Penelope better than the day she stepped into the stone walls of Camelot.
The Queen of Ithaca, by every right, Penelope had power. She was a ruler, a leader well respected among her people. Penelope might not have wielded a sword and shield like her heroic husband, but she held power of her own.
Of course, what Mairead hadn't understood, was that one thing undercut all of Penelope's status. It leveled the ground she stood on and robbed her of title and wealth.
She was a woman.
It didn't matter that Penelope wore a crown or that she was just as cunning as her husband; when all was said and done, she was nothing more than a woman in the eyes of the world she lived in. She did not exist in a place that allowed her protection by her terms. She could only rely on her wits and the whims of the men around her.
