#and about priam. his children are dead. they're dead because the children of other people are also dead

[iroissleepdeprived]

It's this whole thing about “you take from me and I take from you”. It's insane now that I think about it. The concept of taking away, tearing something apart because you don't have it yourself. The war started about something being taken away and then the process of getting it back is taking and destroying. Helen was taken away from Menelaus and their family together, she's Menelaus' partner, his wife. Menelaus then takes the life of many men in order to bring her back home, men who were probably married and had a partner and a family. They took his partner, he took the partner of other people as well. This happens with Patroclus and Achilles too, Patroclus was something dear to Achilles, probably the most important being in his life. Hector took Patroclus’ life from him and Achilles then took Hector's life; Hector, dear prince of Troy, one of the most important beings for the city, the joy and hope of the people. And Odysseus, a man who couldn't see his son grow up because of a war he had to go to. He didn't get to see his son's childhood, so instead he takes the childhood of another son, another child too young to understand why. Astyanax’s childhood. He snatched the child from his mother's arms and killed him, another child nobody could see grow up. You take from me and I will take from you.

[littlesparklight]

More worldbuilding talk for my Greek myth ficverse, because I feel like it!

I try as much as I can to lean into the Myceanean era instead of later Archaic/Classical/etc Greece. Obviously this isn't simple lol because first of all we don't know much in detail about how things worked in the palaces/palace economies. It also means I discount how certain things are portrayed in the actual epics or tragedies - anything that implies a more democratic setup gets ignored. No, whatever the hell "the people" wants don't actually matter, in general!

In general I think it vaguely works for the peers of kings and princes (like in the war councils of the Iliad) to have some sort of say on each other, because it seems that in the Mycenaean era the king had a group of elites around him, aside from regional administrative positions under him.

I've tried to lean into the palace economies for some small background things! Partially this has meant references to whole workgroups of (slave) women in the fic about Iphis when she's given to Patroklos. She's a slave on Skyros working with a group of other women processing wool, for example.

I borrow bits and pieces, especially for how Hittite royalty worked, for Troy; in Ganymede's generation, his brothers held their father's two main/most important military/administrative roles, and if Ganymede hadn't been taken (and Assarakos later ended up as an independent ruler of Dardanos), he and Assarakos would've held these positions for Ilus. (The roles were generally held by brothers to the king, see.) By the Trojan war, since both Priam and his brothers are so old, Hektor isn't just the heir, but he holds the most important of these positions and I'd probably say Deiphobos (instead of one of their uncles) hold the other - Mestor probably had Deiphobos' position before he died. How Hittite royalty work is also why I've characterized the Trojan royal family as I have; Hecuba is Priam's first rank wife, and one of the other named ones (Lykaon's mother) is a second rank wife - the children of these two are eligible for the throne. Everyone else are children of concubines and not eligible for the throne, but can and are still given various positions of influence.

And all this means I basically ignore anything in what we know of Classical/etc Sparta. My mythic era Sparta is no different from the rest of mythical Achaea - at best they're a bit more known for being very good warriors, but that's it. None of the thing with Spartiates or the "bad" food or the way children were being brought up applies. It also means I ignore the whole (Spartiate) ~women in Sparta were educated the same as the men and they're so cool and strong and have better rights~ because it starts to just look weird to me at some point when we consider that this is about a very small section of the women in Sparta. So Helen and her sisters/cousins aren't any different from other elite women around Achaea.

I have obviously still ended up borrowing some things from later eras because there's no way not to do that. Often it's been religious festivals/events, to fill out the cultural details, even if there's no way these weren't established until much later. I do sometimes try to refer to/extrapolate from mentions of Mycenaean (or Hittite, where relevant) religious festivals. The Spreading of the Bed/Couch was referred to in This Pleased the Heart of Aphrodite, and there's one festival that might be a forerunner to Anthesteria's festival of the dead associations, that I've used in Adonis' fic (he gets to go up and meet Demeter during that time when he's still little, because it's easier to hide such things when the barrier between the mortal world and the Underworld is thinner).