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EROS
~Greek God of Love, Lust, and Sexual Desires~
Son of Aphrodite and Ares, or in some sources a primordial God that predates the Olympians or Titans. Married to Psyche.
I chose him rather than Aphrodite because while she is the Goddess of Love he is the one whose actual duty is carrying out causing people to fall in love. How he does this is the well-known bow and arrows we still use today. Honestly one of my all-time favorite stories in all of the Greek Mythology is the story of Eros and Psyche because I'm a sucker for cute romantic stuff.
There once was a beautiful princess named Psyche who was considered so beautiful that men were completely ignoring worshipping Aphrodite in favor of worshiping her instead, and this pissed Aphrodite off. So Aphrodite told her son, Eros, to go make Psyche fall in love with a hideous monster. But when Eros shows up to do that he takes one look at her and she's so pretty that he goes a little stupid and pricks himself with one of his arrows accidentally so instead he falls in love with her.
Well, Psyche's dad is confused about why his daughter hasn't gotten married yet, so he asks the oracle. The oracle tells him she's actually cursed to marry an ugly monster. So he's disappointed but what can you do so he sends her up into the mountains to marry her ugly monster husband. But Zephyr, the God of the West Wind, shows up and takes her instead to a beautiful palace where she's showered with gifts and given anything she could ever want. Then at night her "monster" husband shows up and tells her that she can have whatever she wants as long as she just doesn't look at him.
So after a while of this, she's enjoying her doting and affectionate monster boyfriend she's never seen, but she misses her family. So she asks him if they can visit, and he's fine with it so he has the wind bring her sisters up to visit. While they're there they get super jealous and tell her that she should definitely break the promise and look at him cause I mean what if he's actually an ugly monster like the oracle said he'd be.
So they leave, and that night Psyche goes in with a lantern while Eros is asleep and takes a look at him...and he's so pretty that she goes a little stupid and accidentally pricks herself with one of his arrows and falls in love with her. But then some oil from the lamp splashes him and he wakes up, and when he realizes she broke her promise he leaves and she is sad.
Her sisters try to get with him instead and die cause Greek/Roman stories have no chill. And Psyche goes to pray to Aphrodite for help, which considering this was all Aphrodite's fault in the first place is not the wisest move but she doesn't know better. So Aphrodite shows up and takes her to a room filled to the ceiling with random types of grain, and tells her if she doesn't sort it by morning she's not gonna get to see her son again. She leaves and Psyche starts crying, but a passing ant notices her and offers to sort it all for her. So the ants do, and when Aphrodite comes back in the morning she's pissed. Meanwhile, Eros is chilling at his mom's house throwing a fit about the tiny burn he got like it's a broken bone or something, so he can't do anything about his crazy mom.
So Aphrodite tells her she's gotta go get some golden fleece from some magic sheep. But when Psyche goes to the river where these sheep live, and she's so sad at this point that her goal is just to drown herself but instead a river God stops her and tells her that the sheep will actually kill her if she gets too close so instead she should just go grab some of the loose fleece that got stuck on some thorn bushes instead. So she does that and takes it back to Aphrodite who is more pissed cause she was really hoping this would just kill her so she'd be rid of her. Now Eros is over his tantrum and really wants to see his wife, but his mom is having none of that and isn't letting him.
So for her final task, Aphrodite decides to stop being subtle and instead just tell her to literally go to Hell. She says to get a box of beauty from Persephone and bring it back and then she'll totally get to see her husband again. So Psyche kinda decides she has no clue how to do this and instead is just gonna jump off a tower and kill herself cause she's pretty much lost all hope. But as she's climbing the tower it talks to her and tells her exactly how to get to the Underworld like it's nothing because Psyche's whole life basically works on Disney logic.
So she goes to the Underworld and gets the box from Persephone and starts heading back, but before she gets to Aphrodite she figures she'll open the box just a tiny bit and take some of the beauty from it to freshen up since she's about to see her husband again...and upon opening the box she basically goes into a coma/dies.
So Eros is 110% done with his mom's shit at this point and goes down and gets Psyche and wakes her up, and puts the coma magic back in the box. Then he takes her to see his mom and give her the box which causes her to succeed at Aphrodite's trials. So then Eros takes her to Zeus and gets him to make her immortal too and to marry them for real, and Zeus basically tells Aphrodite that she can either get over it or talk a long walk off a short pier cause her son is married now.
Honestly, I cannot do this story justice without more time, but you should totally read it sometime. It's so cute, and both of the characters are so goofy and end up making really dumb mistakes because love makes everyone a little stupid. It's just great.
I tried to represent Eros' symbol of hearts pretty well and chose a school uniform to kinda represent that he's a young God, though depending on the story he's both a young God and older than his own mother, so it's certainly interesting. I've also been just playing around with the photo editing lately because I just wanna see how I can improve with it over time, and figured this year of Greek Mythology would be a good way to practice all sorts of different things. I think next week I'm gonna shoot for making my own background rather than settling for a plain backdrop like I have been doing. I just don't collect as much furniture as I think I should, but I suppose this is also a good reason to justify doing that too.
Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day and thank you all for reading. I hope you all find lots of love soon. I know I certainly wouldn't mind finding someone. But for now, have a lovely day.
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