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Likes, Dislikes, and Origins
Category: Blogging
Little to nothing was known about Queen Antimache that ruled Tiryns alongside her husband, King Eurystheus. She was there to witness the Twelve Labors of Heracles given to Zeus' champion from Hera's champion, Antimache's husband. Her husband hated Heracles, loathed him of his accomplishments, and so being a worshiper of Hera and a follower of her ways, Antimache felt the same way.
One would never know it. Queen Antimache wasn't known for cruelty. That was her husband. She wasn't a priestess of Hera, nevertheless she worshiped and followed her ways, and so did the royal couple's firstborn child, their daughter Admete. Behind the kind, gentle, and benevolent facade the queen always wore there was a vindictive emotion that showed itself in a fury that rivaled Hera's.
Her people never saw it. It happened secretly, coming to a head after the gradual rise of the queen's fury, from one of two storied events. The first might have come from the news of the death of her husband and all their sons in battle when her husband led an attack against the Athenians for Heracles' Heracleidae. The second might have come when Antimache witnessed the deaths of her very sons at the hands of Heracles during a sacrificial meal in honor of her enemy's Twelve Labors being completed.
If the latter was the trigger, it was from the splash of blood from the bodies of her sons that splashed on her regal face at the feasting table that set her off. If it was the former, it was from the whispers from her firstborn daughter in her ear about the deaths of all that she was that set her madness afire. A dagger was twisted in her back after two brothers were put in place to rule Tiryns in her husband's absence, until she was forced out, and Tiryns was given to Argos.
What happened next during that time was fury, wrath, and vindictiveness the only way it has been done during that time. Hera's way. Antimache's goddess' way. So, in that fashion, an oath was made. Antimache turned to her goddess. Antimache turned to darker forces. The former queen allowed Hera fully in, and allowed someone else that shared mutual emotional means into herself. The queen's oath: I will kill all of Heracles' descendants.
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