I’m thinking about Danaë, Perseus, and Andromeda.
Danaë was a princess, once. Her happy life was upended the day her father caught wind of a prophecy that his grandchild would be his undoing. She was imprisoned in her own home, and when her son was born, she and the baby were banished and left for dead. Yet Danaë powered through, as heroes are known to do in these types of stories. This single mother in a strange land raised her son with pride — not hubris, but true, righteous pride. They have no need of gods or monsters or the kingdom that cast them out; all mother and son need are each other.
Perseus’s call to adventure begins when yet another evil king decides to treat Danaë as an object instead of a person. Polydectes will force Danaë to marry him unless Perseus can cross the world and return with the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Perseus is in no place to protest, not when the truest hero he’s ever known is counting on him. This is not a quest for glory, but piety: the duty a child owes to their parent.
In his travels, Perseus meets Andromeda, chained to a cliffside and awaiting her grim fate. She too, has a story of a mother and child. Queen Cassiopeia foolishly offended a long list of sea gods and their kingdom will be washed away unless the gods exact their price. Cassiopeia did the offending; it should be her on the cliff. But Andromeda has to suffer for the sins of her family, just like Perseus. He chose to risk his life for his mother; Andromeda had her fate chosen for her.
Maybe Andromeda tried to talk herself into thinking her death would mean something. She’s grown up as a princess, where each generation of the dynasty is meant to be in unbroken continuity with the generation before. The crown she is presumed to wear weighs down any hopes for her own life. If Cassiopeia tells her to die, it is her duty and honor as the child to obey. Secretly, she prays that her death will mean something for her mother — that the next child she has will be granted the freedom of choice Andromeda herself never knew.
But Perseus, raised by a mother worthy of her role, knows that is bullshit. He knows Andromeda deserves better than this, and he breaks the cycle by destroying the monster and breaking her chains, will of Poseidon be damned. And when Cassiopeia reunites with her child, it’s clear she has learned nothing. She immediately tries to force Andromeda into an unhappy marriage - just like what Polydectes means to do to Danaë.
Now Andromeda and Perseus are both angry. She is ready to let her so-called family crumble. She shields her eyes, and lets her suitor and her mother meet the Gorgon’s eyes. She walks away from the stone to which she was chained, into a new life of her making.
The young couple returns to Seriphos. Perseus saves Danaë from the dread altar. A worthy king claims the throne, and in a remarkable stroke of luck for Greek mythology, Perseus kills his evil grandfather without technically violating Ancient Greece’s taboos on kin-slaying. Andromeda and Perseus ascend to the throne of Mycenae, and have that rarest thing in any myth: a happily ever after.
Andromeda gets a husband and a crown, sure, but she also gets Danaë. Danaë is everything Cassiopeia wasn’t: humble, resilient, and loving. She raised Perseus well, and she teaches Andromeda how to stand tall against monsters: not the sea beast, but the creatures that would rather offer up their own children than admit that they were in the wrong.