Hades (Patreon)

Something a bit different this time. I’m in a Hades and Persephone mood at the moment, and decided to draw one version of how I imagine the lord of the underworld. I’ve always had a soft spot for the externally cold, unfeeling, emotionless god of the dead, imagining him to care deeply, but not feeling able or allowing himself the luxury of emotions.

Here I doodled him using his full powers. His usually grey eyes have turned blood red, and spidery lines crawl across his skin from his heart and his eyes, representing the strength of his powers of darkness. Why is he so angry here? Who knows? Perhaps someone insulted Persephone?

I do picture him as very tall, emaciated and pale skinned, with slightly nebulous, floaty, straight black hair and a strong profile. He’s someone who works too hard and forgets to eat and take care of himself, much to the chagrin of his loyal servants and friends. Sunlight and the world above drains him to the point of lethal weakness if he remains there too long, hence why he rarely leaves the underworld. Olympus is safe for him though, but he finds the noise and festival atmosphere there to be draining and tiring.

He adores his doggos, Cerberus, and is a good friend and lord to Thanatos and the other deities and divinities of the underworld. He lives and experiences the world above vicariously through the memories of the souls in the River Styx, and takes his duties as shepherd, lord, and guardian of the departed very seriously. He’s just and cold when it comes to judgements, and sees a person’s worth immediately.

As husband to Persephone, he is doting and shy, but she provokes a warmth and fire in him that he never imagined possible. He is also torn apart by guilt over the way she first came to the underworld, abducted by him in a moment of desperate, painful loneliness, and he is also riddled with self doubt that she remains against her will or that she finds him repulsive and cold, or that she resents him for facilitating the eating of the pomegranate seeds which bind her to the underworld for a third of the year. Spoilers, she doesn’t.

Of course this is a hideous romanticisation of the Greek mythologies, but hey, I live for that... I hope you enjoyed my ‘ramblings on a theme of Hades’, and who knows, perhaps I’ll even get to write something along these lines?

I did think of an Unseelie parallel, with a dark fae prince called Aedon, but we’ll see if that story gets any traction in my brain.

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