#im also not the biggest fan of aneas as a person but he exists in UDAD for a reason to ne

[spacetrashpile]

you: ‘so udad cassandra-’ me: 👀 I Am Looking Directly At It 👀 (pls tell me your thoughts about her, i’m dying to know)

YES YES let me find the rant I typed up about how her story works

UDAD Cassandra is the daughter of one of Illium’s important political figures (Priam) who is SO MUCH SMARTER than everyone else in her family and they all resent her a bit for it, especially Paris. Prior to the war, she was on good terms with one of the Olympians for a while (Apollo) and instead of giving her the gift of prophecy he taught her how to be an extraordinary liar, interrogator, and spy. He wanted her to work for the Olympians, she wanted to prove herself to her family. This work relationship fell apart when, as happened in the mythos, Apollo tried to make a move on her. She left the job and Apollo got a bit of a grudge.

The Illium war starts in UDAD because Illium refuses to surrender its lands to the city, and Casandra does a large chunk of spy work that helps Illium stay standing for so long. However, she doesn’t get the credit because 1. That’s not how being a spy works and 2. She knows that if Paris, who is leading the war effort, finds out the information is from her, he’s very likely to not pay attention to it cause he’s a jealous idiot and doesn’t trust her because of the time she spent working with Apollo. SO she delivers information through other people and makes herself a big problem for the Olympians.

Apollo knows exactly who’s finding out all this information, and in the last year or so of the war, he convinces Agamemnon to take her as a political prisoner. He does, and Paris and Hector both decide she’s not worth wasting time and firepower to get back (Casandra continues to get wronged by men even in UDAD I’m sorry). Cassandra finds out about Ulysses’ plan while imprisoned and is able to sneak word to Paris, but he once again disregards her (fucking moron). Casandra is forced to watch as her home falls (I have a VERY vivid image of this scene in my head) and is one of the two survivors from Illium when the war is over (the other is Aeneas, she doesn’t know he’s alive and doesn’t learn about it).

Clymnestra, who also exists in UDAD, is just as valid and pissed as she is in the original Greek myth, and decides that she’s going to use her money to do some good. She still kills Agamemnon and he still deserves it, and then I have two ideas for how she handles Cassandra. One is that she pays to get her away from The City, which I really like but doesn’t super line up with actual mythology, and the other is that she is able to pay someone to kill Casandra in a way that ensure no piece of her brain is left behind, and she escapes the Acheron. I can’t really decide on either ending tbh but I like them both so! Anyways I love Cassandra so much and she deserves better but The City cannot and will not give her that.