A to Z Blogging Challenge 2024 - Villains! - M Is For Medea

 

Medea is a sorceress from Greek mythology. She has connections with the gods. Her grandfather is the sun god Helios. Her aunt is the goddess and sorceress Circe. She is a princess of Colchis, where the Golden Fleece is kept. 

When the Argonauts turn up to steal it, she falls in love with their leader, Jason, and helps him steal it. On the way back to Greece, she kills her brother, who has followed them, then persuades the daughters of an elderly king, Pelias, to cut him up and cook him to regenerate him to his youth. Of course, it doesn’t work. 

She and Jason marry and settle in Corinth, where they have children, but after ten years he decides to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon, for political convenience. 

Medea is understandably angry, but honestly,  why not kill Jason? Instead, she sends a gown and crown to the new bride, which kills her horribly, like napalm. (There is a similar story somewhere in the Morte D’Arthure, with a cloak sent by Morgan Le Fay, only it kills her servant). Creon hugs his daughter and dies with her.  

She kills two of her children by Jason so he won’t have heirs, and escapes.  

Her next husband is Aegeus of Athens, the father of Theseus. When the young man arrives in Athens, she has persuaded his father to hand him a cup of poisoned wine, so her own son by Aegeus will inherit, but Aegeus recognises Theseus and stops it. 

Again she flees, and after several more adventures and killings, she eventually lives happily ever after and, as an immortal, has an afterlife in the Isles of the Blessed, with Achilles. 

Jason roams the earth, nobody likes him and he eventually gets knocked on the head and killed by the prow of the Argo as he is sitting sadly under his legendary ship. Actually, I’m sadder to think of that ship, which had been created for adventures and sailed on an amazing quest, rotting away, abandoned and forgotten. 

Medea appears in Euripides’ tragedy and quite a lot of modern fiction - and, of course, in that amazing film Jason And The Argonauts, special effects by Ray Harryhausen and music by Bernard Herrmann, best known for The Day The Earth Stood Still. The most famous scene, in which sown dragon’s teeth pop up as skeletons to fight Jason, was humorously sent up in an episode of TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In another episode Hercules’s mother tells him she is planning to marry Jason. 

Jason And The Argonauts has a happy ending, no killing or maiming, Medea asks Jason to look after her because she has no home to go back to, and they kiss, while watching gods approve. 

Aussie author Kerry Greenwood, best known for her Phryne Fisher adventures, wrote a novel called Medea, showing the story from her viewpoint. It was published back in 1997, but has been republished by Clan Destine press, so is easily available in both print and ebook. 

She appears briefly in Madeline Miller’s Circe, in which she visits her aunt - part of the myth - but refuses to take Circe’s wise advice.

I’m just reading Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero: Heroes Of Olympus #1 in which she appears as a villain along the route taken by a group of teenage demigods(in the Percy Jackson universe) out to save the world. She has a department store which sells all sorts of goodies, including, of course, potions and poisons, and still has the two dragons that helped her escape in the Greek myth. She is definitely not friendly to our heroes, especially not their leader, who is not only called Jason, but was named after her Jason! 

So, how much of a villain is she? She does do some dreadful things, though it’s also hard to find much sympathy for Jason. 

See you tomorrow!