Divine Incest

The Ur-Example: the family tree laid out in the opening lines of Enûma Eliš.

"Again, incest, pretty common in cosmologies and pantheons. Actually, maybe we can just have some kind of... INCEST ALERT, instead of me mentioning it every time it comes up?"

— Mike Rugnetta, Crash Course World Mythology #4

Within most of the world's mythologies, incest is near-ubiquitous. Is there a God Couple? More likely than not they're brother and sister.

Different explanations have been suggested. Within a Creation Myth context, there's simply no one else who exists yet to get with, and so it may be a simple matter of math. Alternatively, mythology is virtually always an Oral Tradition if you go far enough back, with various different versions getting written down over time. Oral Tradition is known for its inconsistency and Multiple-Choice Past. Family trees often differ between different versions, which is another avenue for this trope to creep in.

Another explanation is that as the primordial taboo, incest is also the primordial story. Things that are taboo and forbidden have a lot of cultural and social weight.

Regardless of the reason, the prevalence of incest in mythology creates an odd juxtaposition: So much of the world has incestuous gods, yet most of the world also has incest taboos for humans. This is less of a problem than you might think. The idea that gods are supposed to be moral (rather than just powerful) and that they should be bound to human morality specifically, is not universal. In Greek mythology, for example, a stark difference can be seen between the treatment of divine incest (like Cronus and Rhea, or Zeus and Hera) and mortal incest (like Byblis and Caunus, or Oedipus and Jocasta).

If human morality is said to be in accordance with the gods' rules, then it's Screw the Rules, I Make Them!

Commonly invoked as justification for Royal Inbreeding: Since incest is associated with the gods, doing it as humans is to take on the trappings of the gods. Gods are above the rules, and so too are royals. Or maybe the royals are outright God Emperors.

More often that not, the gods in question have corresponding or complimentary domains, such as Solar and Lunar duos. More commonly Brother–Sister Incest, although Parental Incest is not uncommon either.

This is not any incest in mythology, it has to be among the supernatural. That said, deity can be a loose category, what with Semi-Divine, Deity of Human Origin, and God-Emperor, so use your judgement.

A polytheism-only trope, as it requires at least two gods to exist. Found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian Mythology, making it Older Than Dirt.

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Examples

Real-world myths

Mythology

• Aztec Mythology: In the Codex Chimalpopoca, it is said Quetzalcoatl was coerced by Tezcatlipoca into becoming drunk on pulque, cavorting with his older sister, Quetzalpetlatl, a celibate priestess, and neglecting their religious duties. The next morning, Quetzalcoatl, feeling shame and regret, had his servants build him a stone chest, adorn him in turquoise, and then, laying in the chest, set himself on fire. His ashes rose into the sky and then his heart followed, becoming the morning star.
• Chinese Mythology: Fuxi is an "original god" who takes his sister Nüwa as his bride.
• Classical Mythology: The gods marry and have affairs with each at every turn, and there's a lot of incest. This probably has something to do with how Greek mythology is better documented than many other mythologies. Some gods have a Multiple-Choice Past, but very few lack a backstory or linage.
  • The core of the family tree are these three generations of God Couples:
    • Gaia (earth) is a primordial god who exists without parents. Uranus (sky) is her son and husband, and together they have 12 children, the Titans.
    • Among the Titans, Cronus (Top God) and his sister Rhea mate and have six children, the Olympians.
    • Among the Olympians, Zeus (Top God) marries his sister Hera. Their main children are Ares and Hephaestus.
  • Other miscellaneous examples include:
    • Persephone is typically said to be the daughter of siblings Demeter and Zeus, born of a short-term relationship. Alternatively, in an Arcadian myth, Persephone is fathered by Poseidon (also Demeter's brother). In that version Demeter and Poseidon mate while transformed into horses. Demeter then gives birth to twins, a humanoid goddess daughter Despoina (probably another name for Persephone) and a divine horse son Arion. There's also an Orphic version where Persephone is the daughter of Zeus by his mother Rhea.
    • Hades (a brother of Zeus, Poseidon, and Demeter) marries Persephone, his niece on both sides. They're a God Couple, best known for having the most stable, loving relationship in the entire pantheon, as the Ruling Couple of the underworld with a Seduction-Proof Marriage.
    • Zeus gets with his aunt Mnemosyne, a Titan, and their union births the 9 Muses.
    • In an Orphic version of the myth, Zagreus (read: proto-Dionysus) is the son of Zeus and Persephone (father and daughter).
    • Antaeus and Charybdis (of Scylla and Charybdis) are the children of Poseidon and Gaia (Poseidon's grandmother)
• Egyptian Mythology:
  • Three generations of it in the mythology of the Great Ennead (Nine Gods) of Heliopolis/Iunu, being the eight great descendants of the sun god and creator Atum-Ra:
    • Siblings and consorts Shu and Tefnut—born of Atum-Ra alone—are the father and mother of Nut and Geb. Their divine remits are a bit vague, though usually defined as "Air" and "Mist" respectively.
    • Nut (sky mother) and Geb (earth father) are siblings and consorts who Gender Invert the Mother Nature-Sky Father trope. In most stories and depictions, Shu stands on Geb and holds up Nut, keeping them separated, on Ra's orders. Nut and Geb have four kids: Nephthys, Set, Isis, Osiris. The bit about "Ra's orders" is important, because originally Ra decreed they would not have any children on any day of any month of any year, but Thoth, their friend, played dice with the Moon to create five extra days that would not be part of any day of any month. Nut popped one out each day for four of these days. (This is apparently "Just So" Story to explain why the solar year isn't exactly 360 days, and it reflects how the Egyptian calendar worked—there were 12 30-day months, plus 5 festival days at the end of the year that were not part of any month.)
    • Isis and Osiris got married, and their union is very central with much written about it. Nephthys and Set married as well, in a Pair the Spares kind of way, but there aren't really any stories about them. In one version Nephthys gets with Osiris by way of a Bed Trick with Nephthys disguised as Isis; in another version Set chases after Isis in the form of a bull to try to rape her, and she escapes by turning into a bird and flying away.
  • Hathor (sky goddess) was simultaneously considered to be the mother, wife, and daughter of Ra (sun god). It's about rebirth, the cycle of constant regeneration as the sun rises and sets each day. She was also considered both Horus's mother and consort, depending on whether or not she was combined with Isis.
• Inca Mythology:
  • Inti (sun) and his older sister Mama Quilla (moon) are a married Solar and Lunar God Couple. Inti is the Inca's Patron God, and Mama Quilla is the patron of women.
  • Manco Cápac and Mama Ocllo are semi-mythical figures who may have been real (though heavily mythologized) historical people. Manco Cápac was the legendary Founder of the Kingdom, and his older sister, Mama Ocllo, was his wife. Mama Ocllo came to be worshiped as a fertility goddess. In some versions of the story, they're the children of Inti and Mama Quilla too.
• Inuit Mythology has a Solar and Lunar myth about siblings Aningaat and Siqiniq. A man came into the woman's house, blew out her lamp, and raped her in the dark. She managed to get some soot on his face. When he left, people saw the soot of his face and laughed. She followed the laughter and saw that the man was her brother. Enraged, she cut off her breast and thrust it at him, saying, "If you want my body so much, eat this!" This confrontation resulted in a chase. Both carried torches, but the brother's went out, leaving only embers, while the sister's kept flaming. The chase went to the sky and they became the sun and moon. The soot on the brother's face is the craters on the moon, and the blood of the sister's cut off breast is the colors of sunset.
• Japanese Mythology:
  • The Kojiki (Japan's oldest surviving narrative) tells of how the primal couple, brother and sister creator deities Izanagi and Izanami, create the first dry land at the dawn of the world, go down onto it, and mate. From their union are born many islands of Japan and many deities.
  • Some versions of the myth record that the sun goddess Amaterasu was married to her brother, the moon god Tsukuyomi. They also usually include the fact that Amaterasu bailed out of the wedding when she saw Tsukuyomi kill the local food goddess Ukemochi and refused to ever see him again, which was the explanation for why the sun and moon were always apart.
• Mesopotamian Mythology: Enûma Eliš begins with Tiamat (salt water) and Abzu (fresh water), the first gods at the dawn of the world who have no parentage to speak of. They get together and have Lahamu and Lahmu, sibling-consorts who have Anshar and Kishar, another set of sibling-consorts, who have a son, Anu.
• Norse Mythology has less incest than many pantheons, since many gods don't have clear parentage. Several gods also marry giants instead of each other. That said, there is a bit.
  • Njörðr was married to his unnamed sister and they were the parents of Freyr and Freyja. In the Ynglinga saga (found in Heimskringla), it says this was allowed under Vanir laws but forbidden under Aesir law.
  • In the poem Lokasenna (found in Poetic Edda), Loki accuses Freyja and Freyr of having sex. It's unclear whether or not this is Malicious Slander. Either way, it's clearly riffing off this trope — Freyja and Freyr are a corresponding pair of sibling gods, and so them being a couple would be very much in keeping with the general patterns of mythology. Their Couple Theme Naming even harkens to other examples of the trope, like Izanami and Izanagi or Lahamu and Lahmu.
• Pacific Mythology:
  • In Hawaiian mythology, Wākea the Sky Father is married to Papahānaumoku (or Papa) the Mother Nature, and they have a daughter, Hoʻohokukalani (star goddess). As she got older, Wākea desires his daughter. They have a baby together, Hāloa, who is stillborn. They bury the baby and from the grave spouts taro (the staple food of the Hawaiian people). They then have a second baby, this one heathy and living—also named Hāloa—who is ancestor of the Hawaiian people. Thus taro is the older sibling and people the young siblings. Accordingly, the two siblings take care of each other.
  • The Maori forest god Tāne made Hine out of earth and breathed life into her, technically becoming her father. They then married, but upon discovering the truth of her parentage, Hine was so shocked that she ran into the underworld to become the Goddess of Death.
• Zoroastrianism: Incest occurs several times in succession in the religion's creation myth. Ahura Mazda, creator of the universe and representative of all good things, 'makes joyous action' with his daughter Spenta Armaiti, who represents devotion and the earth, and she gives birth to Gayomart, the perfect first human. When Gayomart lies dying, his seed falls on the earth, and Spenta Armaiti gives birth to the twins Mashya and Mashyana, who come together and give birth to fifteen sets of twins, who become the progenitors of the various races of mankind.

Literature

• Riordanverse is all based on mythology, making this an Enforced Trope.
  • The Camp Half-Blood Series is based on Greco-Roman mythology. Almost all of the main characters are demigod children of the Olympians, so they're all related after some fashion. They do date each other. In The Last Olympian, it's handwaved with the following:
    Percy's narration: And I know some of you might be thinking: aren't all demigods related on the godly side, and doesn't that make dating gross? But the thing is, the godly side of your family doesn't count genetically speaking, since gods don't have DNA. A demigod would never think about dating someone who had the same godly parent. Like two kids from Athena cabin? No way. But a daughter of Aphrodite and a son of Hephaestus? They're not related. So it's no problem.
  • The Kane Chronicles is based on Egyptian mythology. The books handwaves the incest by saying that the gods' relationships are based on the relationships of the humans hosting them at the time rather than being something innate to the gods themselves. Isis in particular has gone from Osiris' sister to his wife to his daughter, based on the relationship her host has with his.
• Sirena: Gods and dumb animals are free to engage in incest, but humans are not. When the mermaids — the product of an Interspecies Romance between Eros and a parrotfish — were hatched, Eros's lover Rhodope put a curse on them forcing them to live according to the human incest taboo. If a mermaid wants a lover, her only options are human men. Unfortunately, the mermaids' attempts at seduction often end with the man drowning.

Webcomics

• In A-gnosis' comics on Greek myth, both the narration and the characters acknowledge the incestuous relationships within the pantheon. Mortals and the gods both believe that gods aren't bound by the same rules as humans; however, Athena's disgusted at the thought that Zeus impregnated his daughter Persephone via a Bed Trick.

Western Animation

• Since Krapopolis depicts a dysfunctional family in Ancient Greece, this topic comes up quite a lot. Specific examples include Hephaestus being married to Aphrodite; and then when the family is reading the story of Oedipus as a news article, Deliria says it is hardly noteworthy because the idea of Incest and murder is described by her as most of her family tree.

Fantasy Pantheons

Franchises

• Transformers: In the "Aligned" continuity (made up of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Rescue Bots), the backstory includes the story of the Thirteen Primes, powerful demigods created by the Transformer creator-god Primus to battle his opposite Unicron. Because of this shared origin, the Thirteen viewed each other as "brothers and siblings." ^note In-universe narrator Alpha Trion admits that this was the closest term he could come up with for a human audience, and himself is unsure whether or not divine origins really made them related. Solus Prime (the first female Transformer and the blacksmith of the Thirteen) and Megatronus (warrior of darkness) eventually fell in love with each other. Downplayed Trope in that the sibling relationship isn't brought up once Unicron is defeated and their romantic relationship begins to bloom. It's mentioned that Prima, the first Prime and the one closest to their creator Primus in terms of personality, was confused by the idea they could fall in love, but recognised it made them both happy and so let it be.

Literature

• Inheritance Trilogy: The three creator gods Itempas, Enefa and Nahadoth are siblings and also in a polyamorous relationship. Their various children also have sexual relationships with each other as well as with their parents. Human societies shown in the novels have an incest taboo but concede that it doesn't apply to the gods who walk among them.
• Star Wars Legends series New Jedi Order: The Yuuzhan Vong sect of the Undying Flame worships Yun-Q'aah and Yun-Txiin, deities whose domain includes "love and hate and all things opposite". Their usual titles are either "The Twins" or "The Lovers".
• Tigana: In the Peninsula of the Palm, a three-god pantheon is worshipped: Adaon ("of the Waves") and Eanna ("of the Names" and "of the Lights") are consorts and brother and sister. They have a daughter, Morian ("of Portals"), who is Adaon's second bride as well.
  The sin of the gods, it was named, [incest]. For Adaon and Eanna were said to have been brother and sister at the beginning of time, and Morian was their child.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: In the Suel pantheon, Wee Jas and her brother Norebo have been lovers for a thousand years, despite their contrasting philosophies — she's the goddess of law, he's the god of rogues and gambling. Since they're related through an old progenitor god, they might have a looser concept of family than most.

Video Games

• COLINA: Legacy: Several notes make references to a heptad of cosmic entities, among which a trio involved in divine incest: The Lady of the Golden Womb gives birth to the Son of the Moon, who rapes his mother and sires another deity named the Moonchild. Despite the Lovecraftian elements of the game, the mythopoeic narrative seems to be a foil to the protagonist Alex's journey to remember his mother's sexual abuse of him.
• Dragon Age: Implied within the elven pantheon. Elven myth disagrees on whether Sylaise the Hearthkeeper and June the Craftsman are brother and sister or husband and wife. While the obvious third option is never brought up in-universe, it is assumed that players familiar with this trope in real-world mythology will pick up on it.
• Elden Ring:
  • The demigod Mohg, Lord of Blood, is the son of Godfrey and Queen Marika, the latter of whom is a full goddess. Mohg developed an intense love for his half-brother, Miquella, who is the son of Queen Marika and Radagon, her second husband. Mohg kidnapped the unconscious Miquella from deep within the divine Haligtree and brought the unresponsive demigod to his home deep underground in the Mohgwyn Palace and attempted to start a new dynasty where Miquella would be raised to full godhood with Mohg as his consort. Miquella has proven completely unresponsive to Mohg's advances, and in fact seems to be entirely comatose, though this does nothing to stop Mohg from "sharing his bedchamber."
  • Speaking of Miquella, he and and his twin sister Malenia are both the product of this, because Marika and Radagon are the same person. Can't get more incestuous than that. The twins even received some divine birth defects as a result of said incest. Miquella was permanently stuck in a child's body (although either he or Mohg seem to have found a cure for that, as his comatose body in Mohgwyn Palace is clearly an adult's), while Malenia was chosen as the vessel of the God of Rot (and no, this did not come with the Required Secondary Power of being immune to its effects).
• Final Fantasy XIV: The Eorzean Creation Myth says that the first two members of the Twelve were Althyk the Keeper and Nymeia the Spinner, who were both born at seperate times from the Primordial Whorl, technically making them brother and sister. Althyk taught and cared for Nymeia after she came to be, and over time the two fell in love and coupled, giving birth to Azeyma the Warden and Menphina the Lover.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons: The Multiplicity, the Fantasy Pantheon of the universe, consists of 777,777 gods who were all the offspring of the primordial gods YIS and UN, who themselves were created through an act of 'holy division' by The Maker YISUN. Several of them are implied to have married each other, though on the other hand they are not implied to have viewed each other as family in a traditional sense anyway. Confusing the matter even further is how almost all legends of The Multiplicity shows YISUN interacting directly with several of them (including taking several of them as lovers), despite being their origin, and also long dead by the time The Multiplicity came into being.
• Unsounded: The four creator gods are imagined as siblings; two of them are married, and one version of the Creation Myth takes a decidedly physical interpretation of their activities. Being very much not Physical Gods, the incest element isn't seen as applicable.

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