“Why does Tumblr romanticize Hades so much?”
Idk Clarice, maybe we’re just tired, and life is uncertain, and we like the idea of a stable husband with a steady job and a big dog and his own place away from all the loud, shapeshifting-kink party gods.
What’s not to romanticize?
Why do people normally romanticize Zeus, Apollo, and Poseidon when those guys are all pretty clearly rapists? Why were women encouraged to be June brides (the month named for Hera’s Roman counterpart) when she probably had the unhappiest marriage in the entire pantheon with a super unfaithful husband? Why do people call Perseus a hero for killing the gorgon Medusa, when her only crime was getting raped by Poseidon before being turned into a monster?
Hades got the underworld by drawing the short straw with his brothers. He’s grim because he was given the world of the dead when he could have had the land or the sea. He made a river where people could forget their unhappy lives and rest in peace, he gave a living guy the chance to bring his dead wife back if he could only follow simple instructions, and unlike pretty much all the other gods there isn’t really a story about his hubris making him lash out at people.
In the Hymn to Demeter where the story of Persephone is found, Hades goes to Zeus first to arrange things. Zeus gives him his blessing to marry his daughter and even helps him scheme how to go about nabbing her since her overprotective mother would never agree to letting her daughter marry anybody. Once he’s got Persephone in his own realm he treats her with nothing but kindness and offers to make her his queen, promising her that she will be respected as such.
Disney warped Greek mythology to put up a hero story. They glorified Hercules, who totally WASN’T a bastard child who killed his children in a fit of insanity due to Hera’s jealous spite, and had Hades play the deal brokering devil. I got to grow up with kids who thought that’s what his myth was about. If popular media gets to spin Greek mythology to make it more palatable then SO CAN WE.
So wrap that in a grape leaf and suck it.
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