#Muir talks about how she was going for that naming theme then ultimately decoded to kinda drop it

[specialagentartemis]

Reading (listening to, as Homer intended) the Iliad making me go oh. Ohhh. I should have done this before I read Gideon the Ninth. I get it now.

Particularly thinking now about the tidbit that in early drafts, our beloved gray-eyed Necromancer Warden of the Sixth House was named Diomedes Sextus. For Diomedes, king of Argos, young, brave, noble, heroic. Favorite fighter of Athena, bestest friend of Odysseus. And, notably, fought gods and—well he didn’t win exactly. But he got them good.

And specifically, he fought and wounded Aphrodite; Aphrodite, who is also called Cytherea.

And then of course Tamsyn Muir said she decided to change his name so she could make the Sex Pal joke.

Palamedes is a less heroic, less fondly remembered character in the Trojan War, but according to Plato, he unrelatedly invented both number and the alphabet, so you keep that connection to scholarship even if that’s not the first association with him. More interestingly, imo, there’s also an Arthurian Knight of the Round Table named Palamedes, best known for his unrequited love for Isolde (and his apparent ultimately gracious acceptance of her choosing Tristan).

I think this is actually a super interesting shift in thematic naming focus: from favored-of-Athena, fought-gods-and-wounded-them to unrequited heterosexual love, but didn’t act like a dick about it.

Also y’know. Sex Pal