Plot bunny I need out of my head:
Mycenean Persephone was a daughter of Poseidon and Demeter, so let's say Hellenistic Persephone remained the same, with Arion being her twin. The story of Poseidon having sex with Demeter in horse form but more consensual. Despione is the younger sister born of Zeus.
Persephone was named that from the start, by Demeter and Poseidon. This is pre-Amphitrite so there are no step parents for her to deal with.
She, Arion and Despione live out their childhoods in the wild and the pastures. Perse remembers being percy but like she has a mom and a dad and 2 full siblings and 4 piblings who dote on them so she's enjoying herself. All the soft things she was denied as a demigod she gets now along with her own special interests.
So for like a few hundred years, Persephone is a teenager shaped angel who is perfectly fine with being her mom's baby. Demeter is somewhat overprotective but it's reasonable considering how all the men in their family are. Perse doesn't want a boyfriend, and she has a plan to avoid Hades so he never sees her and since Zeus is not her dad he can't give her away anyway.
Persephone is the goddess of cooking and baking, because Sally Jackson and her daughter definitely bonded over food prep, and so percy liked cooking and baking. Her cookies aren't as good, but they are enough for her right now.
She is the goddess of sailing and oceanic currents and potable water. She likes ships, both sailing and making them, and has like a replica of the black pearl to sail around in. Oceanic currents are useful for the people who pray to her for good sailing. Potable water is needed for farming so she gains it to help her meter.
She is goddess of bladed weapons. Demeter teaches her the scythe, Poseidon the trident to her and 5 years younger Triton, and the moment she gets her hand on a sword it is game over for everyone else who uses the sword.
She is the goddess of plant growth since it's Persephone's original role, and it lets her help out her mother.
TLDR: Persephone is goddess of cooking, baking,sailing, oceanic currents, drinking water, plant growth and blades.
Her sacred plant-related things are pomegranate (she loves the fruit), damaskena (damson plums, blue), carob,oregano, barley, borage flowers, cornflowers, sesame oil, sea lettuce, cattail.
Her sacred animals are the common kingfisher, lionfish, and squirrels.
Her sacred symbols are her sword Atryx, ovens, a mortar and pistle, flower buds or seedlings, and light blue ribbons.
Her sacred stone are chlorite (for carved utensils), and Chrysocolla(for her statues).
When she's around twenty, the flood happens, and then people repopulate the earth. Doesn't effect her too much since she looks like a toddler and is a toddler so Demeter is actually less protective of her even though she's on Olympus. She gets to participate in the first wedding of Zeus and Hera as well.
She makes friends with Artemis quickly and goes on hunts with her.
Despione ends up joining the hunters, making her the 41st hunter. Persephone is 120.
When they're 150 years old and have picked out teenaged forms, Arion starts rebelling. A lot of swearing and running away from home until Amphitrite gets to the heart of the problem - Arion doesn't have a role beyond being god of horses. So Arion leaves, though he still visits and finds himself an independent home.
Persephone is definitely the epitome of mama's girl. She sticks to Demeter like glue and never pushes for more independence, but Demeter is definitely less over the top than canon. Her daughter understands why she needs to stay away from men after all and the only rebellion she commits is staying for longer than expected in the hunt or wanting to bless mortals privately. Which Demeter learns to accept and she understands why she wants privacy with her followers.
As long as Persephone has a distress beacon on her in form of a flower crown, she can spend months without Demeter.
Persephone is one of the most popular goddesses in Olympus, but everyone respects her eternal maiden status, so she never has to deal with people trying to date or marry her. Percy finds this acceptable. It's not like she's ever getting her dream relationship since gods wouldn't know loyalty even if she slapped them. Eternal Maidenhood is perfectly safe, even if she can't upgrade to sworn maidenhood because Zeus grants those and he refused it back when she was 60.
Reasons most people don't try to ask her out: daughter of two Olympians who let her stay a maiden and say no to every offer,even complimenting her is scary. Other Olympians could try to date or marry her, but they all put her in the unattainable category sooner or later.
She's present in Olympus, she comes to the parties and talks to other people.
Persephone's closest friends are Angelos, Hekate, and Aura. Angelos is a nymph daughter of Hera and Zeus, a sworn maiden, and was raised by nymphs in Crete. Hekate is the goddess of witchcraft, magic, crossroads and the mist, the daughter of Perses and Asteria, and their babysitter, basically. Aura is the daughter of Lelantos, cousin to Artemis, goddess of the breeze, and when Perse met her, she remembered the story and decided to stop it. So Aura never swears to the hunt and instead is Persephone's best friend. She's a nature loving deity who likes adventure,it's a match made in heaven.
Persephone has some prophetic powers as a daughter of Poseidon as the god of prophecy, which normally manifests as her knowing things. Like when the harvest will end, who will win in a duel, if this person is important or not in the grand trapesty, stuff like that. A combination of future knowledge and real prophetic dreams.
Persephone's epithets are :
Kore, the maiden | Pelegia, of the sea | Chthonia, of the earth | Cleomater, glory of the mother | MageirikĆ³a, the cook | Fournaris, the baker | Eupoleia, of good sailing | Ploionia, of ships | Rhoeia, of the currents | Posimohydria, of drinking water | Makhaira, of blades | XifomĆ”chos, the swordswoman | Hoplismena, armed | Daeira, knowing one | Pronoea, foresighted one
She has a job and a house near her mom's and witnesses the greek myths of the gods play out. Because it's early days of the gods, her naming herself kore is the same as swearing eternal maidenhood but people can ask for her hand in marriage.
When Helios marries Rhode, she tries to protest but politics means she isn't listened to.
The first time he cheats, she knows. She comes into the domain of loyalty this way, and punishes Helios by making him taste sawdust until he apologises to Rhode and is forgiven.
She befriended Chiron centuries ago as a toddler during the flood, so when he tells her that he has too many heroes to train alone, she helps him recruit trainers from among older heroes and nature spirits. She then gets camp halfblood revamped into a city, named Peliorion, which is like Olympus in that it's a magical place but not beyond time.
She becomes goddess of heroes as well, gaining new epithets: Soetira,the saviour, and Iroikos, of heroes.
Her plans for avoiding Hades come to naught in the end, because she ends up a psychopomp. She sees Hermes struggling to collect the soul of a drowned maiden and helps him by collecting her in her ship sails, and then sailing her ship to Hades to deliver the soul. She's the psychopomp of the sea, deliverer of sailors, the drowned, the tritoni leaving in the waters, and all those who make a home at sea, and the psychopomp of heroes, as their goddess she is the one who arms them for their battle in life and the one carries them to their eternal rest when they lose their fight. Her epithet as a psychopomp are Porthmeia, she of the crossing and AnapaĆŗsia, she who grants rest.
Her meetings with Hades she tries to limit until she finds out he's dating Leuke. Since he's known for his romantic loyalty to modern demigods, Perse figures she's safe from any bridenapping and makes friends. For a few years, she only took souls that Hermes or Thanatos couldn't, but afterwards, she takes all her charges. Hades thinks she's less scared of the Underworld after a few years of coming down.
Hades starts talking to her at winter solstice parties as well, which Zeus notices. After ten years, Minthe decides to cheat on Hades with some mortal maiden, and so Persephone turns her into mint in anger at the betrayal. She then starts using it as mouth freshner.
When Hyacinthus dies, it is Persephone's job to take him to Elysium, as a demigod and as a hero she trained, but she stands in that clearing as Apollo attempts to heal him and looks away. She lets him be healed. Hyacinth flowers grow where his blood has fallen, and she gathers them into a flower crown and crowns him with them when he rises as a god, after Apollo has poured the chalice of the gods down his throat. Hyacinthus is the god of those who die in the name of love, the injustly murdered, and stories.
The winter solstice after that, Hades and Zeus talk about Persephone. Hades tells him he loves Persephone, Zeus plots out a way for him to marry her without Demeter interfering. As king, Zeus had the power to officiate marriages.
And so the rape of Persephone commences.
There's a hero, unnamed except for him being a son of Poseidon, whom Perse knew from childhood. She's very attached to him and he lived a full life, destined for Elysium. When she delivers him, Hades asks her to stay and watch the judgement. While she's watching the judgement, he has Koios released from Tartarus, covertly enough only Nyx knows he did it.
Hades then closes down the underworld, the only person allowed out is Thanatos.
At this point, Persephone is more Percy about him - This is my uncle, he's nico and hazel's dad and i'll be nice until he pisses me off. But different because they're friends now and he has no kids. She suspects something but not kidnapping.
Hades and Persephone investigate the escape of Koios from Tartarus. They wander around the underworld looking for the titan. They search through Punishment first since it's closest to Tartarus, spend a year looking only to find ichor in Tantalus's pond, and Persephone makes the decision to go into adosphel next. Hades makes sure they get lost in Adosphel, and they end up spending nine years among the shades trying to find a disguised Koios, because that would make sense, the blood trail ends here so he must be disguised somehow?
On the surface, Winter has been going on for nine years. Demeter is pissed her daughter is missing, Helios blabbed a year in and told her she was seen carrying a soul into Hades, so Hades is cheif suspect, but not even Hermes is allowed in. Thanatos looks 5 and has zero idea where Persephone is. All he knows is that a titan broke out of Tartarus, and Hades went looking for him. The gods found and talked to Thanatos after nine years of winter. Demeter stops enforcing winter because this is a genuine problem. Obviously, Hades didn't kidnap Persephone , she's just doing her psychopomp duties.
The next day, Hades and Persephone finally stumble into Elysium.
It's the myth of Kornos being lord of Elysium but with more hostile takeover of Elysium and It's Koios instead.
But Perse's heroes are all here, and they help. So Persephone and Hades,Xenopatra daughter of Hellen, Ion son of Apollo and Xuthus,Tectamus and Aegimus sons of Dorus, Arcesius son of Zeus and grandson of Aelous son of Hellen, Ilona daughter of Hermes, Aeacus son of Zeus by Aegina,Damocrateia daughter of Zeus by Aegina and Huntress of Artemis,and Harmonia daughter of Ares and Aphrodite team up to fight a titan in Elysium. This is like three generations of the family of Hellen son of Deucalion.( if one counts Harmonia as Cadmus's replacement in this ancient dream team).
Hades makes the plan. He's actually in trouble now because Titan Takeover.
Xenopatra, as the daughter of Hellen, gets great respect in Elysium. Hellen was more of a stone nature spirit than a human man so when he died he didn't become a spirit. All of his kids did achieve Elysium though. Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus are somewhere in Elysium, on lockdown, and not coming out of their huge palace complex. Xenopatra has a separate home and came out when she heard Hades was in Elysium. Her part is to throw a party and invite all of Elysium, obstinately to accept their new overlord.
The rest of them will sneak in as guests. They have Harmonia approach Koios as a potential one night stand, and while they flirt, Tectamus and Aegimus start a fight that ends up getting too close to Koios and Harmonia. The rest of them will make sure the fight turns into an outright brawl.
During the brawl, Harmonia escapes the fighting. Koios is constantly attacked by atleast one of them, without knowing who. Once he starts to tire, they capture him in plants and jewels.
It is a fierce fight, but Koios suspects nothing, being separated from the sky. In the end, he is tussled and gagged and put back into jail by Hades.
Hades and Persephone go to his castle for rest until they heal. Once Persephone takes a guest bedroom and falls asleep, he sends a merman spirit with a message to Poseidon. It says ' consent to me marrying Persephone, or I'll never let her leave' . To be extra nefarious about it, he had the merman see where Persephone is being kept and how there are gaurds surrounding her so she can't run.
Persephone wakes up and tries to leave but the main door gaurds don't let her. She attacks them, leading to Hades showing up and dragging her away. Hades tries to trick her but she has realised that something is going on so she fights him as well and he reveals he's in love with her and wants her to become Queen of the Underworld and that Zeus is ready to officiate their marriage as soon as she accepts his proposal. He doesn't reveal how he's blackmailing her dad, he knows it would just turn her against him.
Persephone freaks the fuck out, but he's an elder god and she's a non olympian godddess without weapons or allies, he can absolutely manhandle back into her room. Obviously he's covered all her escape routes and shows up at her door to beg her to marry him. He starts lessening the commitment when she tells him to fuck off, from marriage to betrothal to dating to 'just one date, Perse, please'.
Up on Olympus, the gods are in their tenth year of "where is this major goddess that's very important for mortals and us?". And they are deep into a 'A titan escaped Tartarus and took over the third godly realm' induced beeakdown. Except Poseidon, who got the note telling him Koios was no longer at large and blackmailing him into marrying off his eldest daughter. He considers it for about 5 minutes and then makes a list of the bride price he wants, the dowry he's shipping into the underworld and writes up a ' Respect Persephone or this marriage is invalid' marriage contract. He wants his daughter back, marrying off a grown woman with multiple sources of income is not the worst marriage he's signed off on for political reasons, and his brother wouldn't hurt Perse.
Poseidon sends his acceptance of the proposal and Hades signs it, making them married.
Perse meanwhile is desperate to get out of her bedroom suite. She agrees to one date, where she gets to cook, wear her own clothes and jewellery ( hello Atryx the hairpin in her bun) and the open windows of the smaller dinning room.
Perse does find Hades attractive ( panther-like movements ,anyone?) but marriage is not something she wants with any god- they'll all have other lovers. So she poisons their dinner with poppy, sleeps with him, and afterwards purges the drug from her system, takes the weapons in his room and sets a trap so that they'll injure him if he wakes up and tries to leave, and then jumps out the room's window, since no guards are posted anywhere near lest they catch sight of the god's bedroom.
Thus Persephone trudges to a glade near the Styx and for a few few hours rests at her edge. They speak, the river of oaths and the goddess of staying true to them, and then Persephone calls upon the river's water to flood the plain and open an exit from the underworld, which will be called the doorway of the queen.
Persephone stumbles out onto the aboveworld, and finds a temple of her mother for refuge.
The mortal world is a snowy, barren land, but as Persephone walks across it the hibernating seeds bloom and the sleeping animals wake, and her mother Demeter appears in the temple she sought for refuge and embraces her.
Yet the reunion of mother and daughter is short, for when Kore forced poppy seeds into the mouth of Hades, the pomegranate wine she drank was made from his palace's pomegranate groove and not elysian trees.
And so for the half glass she drank, the marriage contract in her father's hand and the three hours she spent in his arms, she is bound to a marriage that crowns her Queen of the Underworld.
It is decreed she will spend half the year in the Underworld, and during that time, the seas rage, the plants do not flower, snow falls from the sky and drives game into hiding, for as long as Spring herself is dead.
And so Persephone becomes Queen of the Underworld, Briome the terrifying one, Praxidike the enforcer of justice, Stygiea of the styx, Melania of the dark, Anassa The Queen, Baisilea Elysion the queen of elysuim.
Persephone is very much uncooperative with any attempts to box her in and only returns to the Underworld in the winter to sleep and otherwise she carries on her duties as normal, adapting to changes in her work that winter brings but not acknowledging it. Like, she sleeps in the grove for summer and in the Underworld for winter and that's all that changes between the seasons, she does not stay anywhere all the time and she refuses to rule .
She forgives Poseidon a century later, since he did have good intentions.
Hades pleads for her forgiveness for a very long time, making her a huge garden at the banks of the styx, and remodeling his castle to be more to her tastes, and inviting Hecate to be a permanent member of the dark council of clthonic gods.
In the end, it's actually his kindness towards Angelos that makes her forgive him. Hades does not remember that Angelos is her best friend, but when his neice shows up at the gates of the underworld in summer and asks for sanctuary because her mother is upset at her for attending to Europa- a kidnapped young princess trapped on Crete who deserved to be pampered during her very hard pregnancy with Minos. Hades grants Angelos sanctuary even though he knows nothing about her. He's suprised to find out they are friends. With Angelos comes Aura, and she is not staying but the underworld is her home base now.
At this point, the Queen's garden is basically a forest, and there are four goddesses living in it.
Persephone and Hades get together in the emotional sense at some point, and progress slowly to an official, healthy romance with Nyx acting like their therapist.
Hades and Persephone have a son, Zagreus.
That summer, Persephone comes home with another baby, Bacchus, son of Zeus who is very important in the grand scheme of things and a baby besides so they end up raising the boys as twins.
Bacchus and Zagreus grow as mortal babes do, and are happy enough, raised between the land and the underworld.
Zagreus grows into the god of violent death and blood, the crown prince of the dead, the prince of Elysium, who collects the souls of warriors who fall in battle and avenges the murdered alongside his army of dead heroes. He's another inspiration for the myth of the wild hunt.
Dionysus grows into a wild demigod, with his stayr friends and his invention of wine and his revelry and his love of theatre.
The dead aren't critical enough of his plays for him, so he moves to Athens and becomes a playwright, then starts dating Ampelos, and then when the stayr dies and turns into grapes he makes wine. With the support of his foster parents and the entirety of the clthonic gods, he makes his way through greece, collecting people for his cult and being absolutely mad and creepy and entertaining with his revels. When Hera finds out that the 'wine god' is a biological son of Zeus she curses him to madness, he wanders into the desert and makes it to India before being dragged back by Persephone who takes him to Doddona, leading to the rumors about Zeus and Persephone having a biological shared child. Then he got kidnapped by those pirates that get turned into dolphins and he takes his cult to india to get tigers, and then he returns just in time to rip apart a king of Athens for not believing in him. And ascends to Olympus.
On Olympus, Hestia is really done with being a sitting member of the council, because her brother has a lot of stupid rules like 'don't tend to the fire if you're on the throne' which means it inevitably gets cold. An Olympian level, major god with cults from greece to Africa to India, and love from the hearts of every man , she just picks him up and puts him on the twelfth throne like 'this is your problem now' and the problem is ruling the world.
Meanwhile in Persephone Land, the whole being Queen Consort of the Underworld is not so bad and it's not cutting into her responsibilities as a major food goddess, sea goddess of death and sailing or war goddess, so she might be fine with the whole being kidnapped thing now and the two unplanned but definitely loved kids are the best thing that's ever happened to her, other than her retirement from mythological shenanigans. The whole kidnapped captive to queen pipeline means she can retire to being just a normal goddess who helps out sometimes even richer than before. She's the main character of exactly one myth that she knows of and it's about her marriage. Canon Persephone never really did anything so Perse also doesn't have to do anything either, she just wants to help those in need.
Persephone is of course mentioned in all heroic myths atleast once, as their trainer, teacher or foster mother. The lady of Peliorion is the moral compass for most heroes, and none of Chiron's trainees would dare disrespect her.
Persephone and Demeter remain the closest and healthiest of all mothers and daughters in the pantheon. Persephone and Hades are just as unhealthy as the rest of the kings and queen but they do bring a new type of toxicity to the pantheon instead of just infidelity.
Persephone cares for no one except the women and Diomedes, Ajax, Hector and Menelaus in the Trojan war. None of the other heroes remember her teachings or any civility at all, murdered children in temples, captured priests, ill treated captives, she diswons all of them one by one as they descend into denegracy. Helen she wishes to help but cannot until the walls of troy fall and by then Menelaus has her, Cassandra she does take in as her priestess and bring to the Underworld as a handmaiden, Adromache and Astanyx she helps by temprorily turning them into kingfishers so they can fly away. She grants Patroclus Elysuim personally, and condemns Achilles to gaurding the styx forever. She gives Penelope the thread of cattail fibres, which will unravel every night when she leavss a piece on the loom, so it is easier for her to delay the suitors. She blesses Diomedes and Ajax with the abilty to go intagible and invisible like a shade, so they can avoid blows. She brings Hermione to Menelaus and Helen in their dreams every night so they know their daughter even in seperation. She has Eros make Paris impotent in exchange for an apple of immortality that grows in her garden, for Eros is keeping Psyche in Split at this time as his wife, and wishes to make her a goddess.
After the war, Eros brings his wife to Olympus and though Aphrodite rages, she can't kill her or break them apart.
She is a witness in every war that is waged, in every marriage that is vowed, in every death that takes place.
Persephone is there for every hero, for every demigod, for every child who needs care. She walks in Peliorion for the entirety of the time when Greece is the cradle of civilisation.
And then the flame moves to Rome.
