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Hey, what do you think about Medea? I know people portray her as a cruel witch but I think she never had someone besides her than her aunt; Circe. She really deserved to be happy, right?
This is the story of the wicked villain’s daughter who whispers in the hero’s ear and teaches him how to overcome every trial. Through her magic she transmutes the most insurmountable labor into triviality, she foils the villain’s pursuit so that her father cannot catch them in their flight.
(she chops her brother into pieces and casts the pieces to the sea, so that her father’s fleet must be hindered dredging up every bloody portion so that their king might bury his son)
She is wise, and she is good, and she is wonderful, filled with wonders, and the story never thinks to ask:
Why, with all her knowledge and her power, in all the years before the hero came, did she do nothing to curb her father’s wickedness?
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When Medea excoriates Jason for his betrayal, he snaps back in retort:
“You exaggerate your favors,” he sneers. “Should I thank you? Did you act purposefully? Or was it not the shafts of Eros, as Aphrodite willed, that compelled you to save my life?”
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Medea loves her children dearly, and she kills them, and in that she is beyond compulsion.
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We might ask instead what purpose Jason served in the story, if Medea and the Argonauts accomplished all his feats for him. Did Jason on his own slaughter the six-armed Gegenees? Did he know how to withstand the fiery breath of the Kolkhis Bulls? Did he know the dangers of sowing the dragon’s teeth, how to lull the sleepless dragon into sleep?
Could he have outplayed the sirens, killed the bronze man Talos on his own initiative?
What was the point of him, then?
(the answer is: it was his story)
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When Medea returns to her home of Colchis many years later, after all the unpleasantness with Jason is well and done, she discovers her tyrannical father has been overthrown by his brother Perses, the new king.
Unfortunately for her, this is no happy ending. Perses hopes to purge her father’s bloodline and eliminate all other claimants to the throne.
So, she kills him.
(she is good at that, killing family)
It was said that when the Golden Fleece was removed from Colchis, so too would the king be removed from his throne. Medea returns, years later, and kills her uncle and restores her father to the throne, and the old wrong is finally set right.
.
The dead are all still dead, of course.
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After Medea kills her brother, the gods demand she must be cleansed.
The Argo sails through storm and hellish steam and darkness, and finally docks at Circe’s island. Circe slits the throat of a piglet, stains their hands with its blood. The hearth fires blaze bright, and many cakes are brought out to be burnt as offerings to Zeus.
“There,” Circe says afterwards. “All done.”
Medea sits next to her on the polished chairs, looking at the thin dark line of pig’s blood still beneath her fingernails. “I don’t know that I can ever be cleansed of this.”
Her aunt smirks. “Too bad,” she says. “Ceremony’s over. You are.”
“I just -” she says, and looks towards the Argo where Jason is waiting, and feels her throat close up with emotion. “I feel like I’m going insane. I don’t know what I’ve done. I feel like I would do anything for him.”
“The only morality in the world is love,” Circe says. “Everything else is mere ambition. Falling headlong into someone else’s story, and selfishly living out your own.”
“I helped kill him,” Medea says. “I killed my brother.”
“He was hunting you down. They would have killed you both, if they caught you.” Circe looks meditatively into the fire. “The gods have done worse, for worse reasons. Zeus, the Cleanser of Sins, once tried to devour his own daughter.”
They are silent for a time. The fire crackles cozily, and the burnt fragrance of cake hangs in the air. “I don’t deserve any of this,” Medea says.
“Ah, that’s the cruelty of it.” Circe sighs. “You are part mortal and part divine, a truth unto yourself, consequence unmoored from judgement.” She lays a hand over Medea’s. “You don’t deserve a damn thing.”
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When Medea kills her children, she weeps.
(but she has wept before, and gone on to do more wickedness, and so tears are neither salve nor salvation)
After her children are dead, Helios sends down a golden chariot from the heavens to carry her away, to carry away with her the bodies of her children, so that she might bury them with her own two hands in Hera’s sacred grove, safe from any further indignity or harm.
(as a sign from the gods, this might be taken as approval)
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This is how Medea’s story goes: Time passes and wounds slowly heal. She falls in love again, and has another child. She falls into old habits and once again tries to kill her lover’s son, but this time is unsuccessful. She is forced to flee, and at last returns to her father’s kingdom. She kills her uncle. More kinblood is shed.
Her son Medus grows up to take the throne, and he is so renowned in conquest that the Aryans rename themselves the Medes, in his and his mother’s name.
He is her darling son. She loves him dearly.
.
This is a happy ending, perhaps.