Woobie / Mythology

Even some of the oldest stories in the world have characters who can't catch a break.

• Celtic Mythology: Lleu Llaw Gyffes from the fourth branch of the Mabinogion. His mother, who gave birth to him after failing a virginity test, saw him as an embarrassment and cursed him three times so that only she could name and arm him (neither of which she intended to do), and that he'd never find a human wife. His uncle Gwydion helped him get around these curses and worked with Math to create an Artificial Human named Blodeuwedd to be his wife. Unfortunately, while Lleu was away visiting Math, Blodeuwedd fell for another man, and the pair conspired to kill him. He managed to survive by transforming into an eagle and flying away, but was gravely wounded. When his uncle found him, he was Nothing but Skin and Bones, and his injuries had festered until it was constantly dropping piles of rotten flesh and maggots. The narration even described his state as "no man had ever seen a sorrier condition than that which was upon him". Thankfully, he gets better.
• Classical Mythology:
  • Both Hades and Hephaestus, by modern standards. One is the lonely (until he got his wife), overworked, generally disliked and often-misunderstood god of the Underworld. The other is the equally-disliked, equally-overworked, crippled, undeniably brilliant smith-god with a hot wife who's screwing everyone but him.
  • Persephone, who in her famous myth was kidnapped from her home and forced into marriage by Hades (a union sanctioned by her own father Zeus, unbeknownst to her or her mother Demeter) and terrified out of her mind. Thankfully things get better for her as she still got to see her mother and have a stable marriage with Hades, as well as her her own Underworld to boot.
  • Demeter. Her role in the myth of Persephone is desperately searching for her daughter who disappeared screaming. Again, things do also work out for her when she got to see her daughter half of the year.
  • Io got a crappy deal too. After being desired by Zeus, she had to be turned into a cow to hide from Hera's wrath. And Hera still found her and had her tethered and guarded by the hundred-eyed watchman Argus. And even after Hermes beheaded Argus and saved Io, Hera sent a gadfly to chase her out of Greece and into Egypt. Only then did Io find peace as a priestess of Isis.
  • Inachus. He is eventually reunited with his lost daughter-turned-heifer and the two cry together over her fate. Io is then driven away by Hera, and Inachus never gets to know what happens to her, hiding in a cave and deepening the river with his tears for his lost child
  • In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the sisters Medusa, Euryale and Stheno got turned into Gorgons after Medusa was raped (in some versions of the myth, in others it was consensual) by Poseidon in Athena's temple, and then banished to a desolate, barren island - and of course we all know Medusa's final fate at the hands of Perseus, with Athena's help.
  • There is no version of Tiresias that was not put upon by the world. Once a priest of Zeus, he's said to have been turned to a woman for interrupting snakes mating. They then spent several years as either a priestess of Hera, a prostitute, or both. They later turned back to a male by leaving another set of snakes alone, but this gets the attentions of an arguing Zeus and Hera. They're having an argument about who enjoys sex more: Zeus says women get more pleasure out of it, and Hera says the man gets more pleasure. They ask Tiresias (who clearly has experience on both ends), and he lets out the secret that a woman's climax is ten times better than a man's climax. Hera gets upset and strikes him blind; Zeus can't undo the blindness, instead giving him prophesy to make up for it. Which makes Tiresias miserable, because peoples like Oedipus waste his time by demanding his help and then ignoring his advice. Then there's the one where he was struck blind by stumbling across Athena in the bath. By accident. Athena also cannot undo said blindness and is sincerely sorry for her mistake... but then she gives him prophesy too, and you know what followed.
  • Nerites; there is no version of him that doesn't get transformed into a shellfish for extremely petty (by today's standards) reasons. To make matters worse, in one of them, he was the first person Poseidon truly loved.
  • The original cyclopes. Their father locked them in Tartarus since birth. Their older brother Cronus doesn't bother to free them after his rebellion. When Zeus frees them, they return his favor by forging weapons for the gods and finally live peacefully working as Hephaestus's helpers. That's until Zeus kills Asclepius and a vengeful Apollo doesn't have the guts to turn against his father, so he kills the group of cyclopes who forged Zeus's lightning bolt instead. Though there are versions that have both them and Asclepius get better.
  • Cassandra. Almost nothing ever seems to go right for this girl. First: either Apollo tries to rape her, she commits the "sin" of blowing his affections off, she cheats on him, or she leaves her work as a priestess of his temple in Troy without counting on how that would piss the Hell outta him. Then, he curses her so that none of her visions of the future are ever believed. Then the Trojan War happens and her brother Hector dies. Then she starts to lose it. Then she tries to hide in Athena's temple only to be kidnapped and violently raped by Ajax the Lesser, while her entire family is either killed or enslaved. Then, she ends up as King Agamemnon's concubine. And finally, Agamemnon's cheating wife Clytemnestra kills her. And if the Agamemnon play is to be believed, she clearly knew shit was about to go down but was resigned already to her and Agamemnon's bloody fate, not attempting to run away even when the local elders expressed sympathy for her.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Hera's not nice by a long shot, but her husband continually cheats on her- the goddess of marriage- even though he knows it will make her mad. And she can't punish him because he's stronger than her, so she has to settle for hurting his lovers and children.
  • Oedipus. Big Time. He accidentally kills his own father while traveling in order to avoid this fate, marries his mother and have four children with her, then blinded himself after finding the truth. It doesn't end there. His two sons exile him and he dies wandering with his daughter, who's also his half-sister.
  • A case could be made for Actaeon too: he accidentally sees Artemis bathing and gets turned into a stag only to be torn apart by his own hounds. And, in Ovid's Metamorphoses at least, it's implied that's what she wanted to happen (" They say Diana the Quiver-bearer’s anger was not appeased, until his life had ended in innumerable wounds.") All because he accidentally walked in on her bathing.
  • Callisto. She’s one of Artemis’s hunting companions and followers, either Lycaon's daughter or a nymph. She never does anything wrong except looking beautiful, and even then she wasn’t intentionally doing so. Zeus sees her, and he transforms his appearance into that of his daughter Artemis to get close to Callisto and rape her. Despite Callisto’s effort, Zeus is Zeus and he overpowers and rapes her. Callisto hides her pregnancy for nine months, then when Artemis and her followers decide to take a swim, her “sin” is discovered. Artemis banishes Callisto, or in some versions, is the one to turn her into a bear. Callisto gives birth to Arcas, but she doesn’t get to see him for 15 years because Hera, angry at Callisto for “flaunting Zeus’s affair with her” (by giving birth to a child by Zeus), turns her into a bear. For 15 years, she lives in fear of hunters (what she used to love doing) and other bears. Then either Artemis herself kills Callisto with an arrow, or Arcas, Callisto’s son. Callisto recognizes Arcas after 15 years, he sees a bear staring at him, and shoots. Zeus decides this is too messed up so her transformed both into constellations (both now in bear form). Hera bans Callisto to set her feet below the ocean. Later, Phaeton in a flaming chariot burns her.
  • Dionysus' early story reads like a Trauma Conga Line. His mother was burnt to death while still pregnant with him because his mother was tricked by Hera to ask Zeus to show himself in his true godly form, so Zeus had to sew fetus Dionysus into his thigh. After the baby was ready to be born, Zeus gave him to Hermes to take to the relatives of the dead mother, who dressed him up as a girl to hide his presence from Hera. They succeeded... for three years. Then Hera drove them insane, made them kill their own children and themselves, and the only reason why Dionysus survived was because Zeus turned him into a goat. The toddler gets shipped off to Mount Nysa, where he is raised by satyrs and nymphs and lives the good life, having friends, till one of them dies trying to get him a new strange plant, which Dionysus makes bear fruit in penance, creating the first grapes and then wine. He starts to get a following and then the first time he and his entourage offer the king of a city their help, said king kills several of the satyrs, Dionysus' SECOND stepmom, and almost Dionysus himself too, but he gets away into the sea where he stays with Thetys for a while to regroup.
  • Hyacinth. A young prince who enters a loving relationship with Apollo. And what does he get for his trouble? A brutal death by a discus to the head either by wanting to impress Apollo or because Zephyrus got jealous. At least he got a flower named after his honor.
  • Chrysippos, son of Pelops and a nymph. Laius, his father's honored guest, was his teacher in chariot-racing — and took the first opportunity to abduct the pretty Chrysippos to Thebes and rape him. And after that, his half-brothers, Pelops' legitimate sons from his wife Hippodaimia, see him as a rival for their heritage because he's Pelops' favorite son, and murder him.
  • Iron Woobie: Psyche. No matter how much crap life (and Aphrodite) throws at her, she never gives up on her love for Eros. It's easy to see why the latter disobeys his own mother to forgive and save her from the deep sleep from Persephone.
  • Another Iron Woobie: Hercules. Hera basically takes it on herself to destroy him-all because Zeus couldn't keep it in his pants; when he's a baby, she sends snakes to kill him-but he beats the crap out of them; when he grows into an adult, she drives him insane, which results in him accidentally killing his family, and then having him undertake a series of challenges for his cousin, Eurystheus-who also despises him; all of this makes his ascension to Olympus and ending his feud with Hera all the more satisfying.
  • Myrrha/Smyrna, is another Jerkass Woobie. While falling in lust with her father, and tricking him into having sex with her is undeniably a fucked up thing to do, most version of the myth strongly imply (or state outright) that it's not her fault she's this way, and was made to have such feeling due to a curse of some kind. One version even says Aphrodite cursed her because her mother said that she (Myrrha) was more beautiful than the goddess, meaning she's getting punished for something her mother did that she had no control over.
  • Echo's unrequited love for Narcissus. Due to a curse, she is only about to speak the last words another person has spoken. One day she spots Narcissus in the woods and falls in love, but is rejected, and flees in shame and grief to a cavern where she wastes away. Yet her love for him only grows. When Narcissus dies, wasting away before his own reflection and looks one last time into the pool utters "Oh marvellous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell", Echo can only helplessly echo "Farewell." Eventually Echo begins to fade away to nothing, till only her weak, eternally repeating voice is left.
• Norse Mythology:
  • Baldur was described as quite a Nice Guy, and lived in fear of dying despite being a god. Despite all the god's attempts to protect him, Loki still found a way to kill him (pretty much just to be a dick). Even worse, he couldn't be brought back to the dead just because Loki refused to cry for him. But that’s in one version that was heavily influenced by Christianity; at least one other version made him a jerk.
  • Sigyn is Loki's wife, and is was always loving towards him despite how badly he treated her. After he was imprisoned under the earth, and condemned to be tied up and have a snake spit venom into his eyes, she tries to ease his suffering by collecting the snake's venom in a bowl. However, she still has to pour it out from time to time, and every time she does he still screams and curses at her.