Everyone thinks of Hera when picturing Zeus’s wife, but she wasn’t his first spouse:
Zeus had a wife before Hera, her name was Metis, she was Zeus’s cousin and the daughter of Oceanus and his sister Tethys - Zeus tricked her into transforming into a fly and swallowed her to prevent a prophecy of her birthing a son who would overthrow him (like he did to his own father before him) but by then Metis had already conceived a child, Athena, who was freed by Hephaestus after he literally opened Zeus’s head with a axe or hammer.
According to the Clash of the Gods documentary, after swallowing Metis, Zeus inherited her intelligence and cunning, which no doubt helped him greatly.
So does Athena resent Zeus (for imprisoning her mother inside himself) or is it more complicated than that?
Its not so bad - so what if you die after a year, you’ll just reincarnate afterwards. And in the time you have before death you might just be the most powerful being alive and make a huge difference in the world.
But can the Bearer cheat death and keep the full power of the Essence if they win the Hero Trials and obtain immortality? If so then how come this didn’t happen for any of the Bearer’s past lives? Did none of them ever partake in the trials or did they always lose?
But hold on a moment, winning the trials grants immortality, which could just mean “not aging”. It sounds like Lavei needs invincibility to survive Essence-induced implosion…
Zeus also forced Apollo and Poseidon to build the Walls of Troy as punishment for their involvement in Hera’s attempted coup to overthrow him (having felt humiliated from his constant adultery). She nearly succeeded after chaining a sleeping Zeus to his bed, though he was saved by the Hekatonkheires (old allies from when he overthrew Cronus) who freed him, allowing Zeus to enact revenge.
Hera herself was apparently forced to hang from the sky.
None of the past lives were demigods, this is the first time the Bearer and the Bestower are demigods.
That is why this is the first time they will try the Trials.
They were likely never invited by the gods. The opening scene with Zeus, Athena,Poseidon, and Hades made it seem like the gods never did so in the past and things are just so dire now that it necessitates the use of the Bearer. They’re basically creating the one person that has more power than all of them combined and giving him/her the one thing that keeps that power in check.
That’s not exactly a good thing. When the bearer dies, their soul gets placed into a new vessel, rather than going to the underworld. Thus, when they’re reborn, they are different people than their past selves.
This means that the MC will simply cease to exist when they die. It will be a different person born with the Essence.
The mind is separate from the soul. The next incarnation won’t be the MC. It will be someone else, doomed to cease to exist when they die as well.
Though the Essence make the Bearer all powerful, it is really a curse.
