Persephone
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Wife first, Queen second, mother third; always and forever in that specific order.
Persephone, who usually goes by Seph (but NEVER Sephy, unless you're her awful mother who will not stop, or her dear half-brother who gets a reluctant pass), is Macaria's mom and the Queen of the Underworld, married to Hades from, y'know, THAT famous myth. She's a minor character in the Elysium'verse, and Seph's significant roles in canon took place during the very beginning stages of Elysium's story. Within current canon, Seph exists now mostly via cameos, as the one parent Maci still maintains a relationship with.
Appearance
Seph's look actually changes slightly seasonally, but year-round her staple traits include light pink skin, violet eyes, and blonde hair parted and styled into an eternally anachronistic bouffant. She wears exaggeratedly long, spider-like eyelashes, dark colored purple or black lipstick, and a diamond necklace sculpted into the shape of a small skull (a gift from her husband) regardless of her location or the time of year. She is 6'4" tall.
During the spring-summer season, Seph's hair is naturally curly - it's a shift that physically happens whenever she steps topside. To appease her mother, she tones some of her makeup down into a subtler smoky eyeshadow, and dresses in light colors.
In the fall-winter season when she returns home, Seph's appearance changes upon immediate descent underground, as she is chthonically enmeshed as the Queen of the Underworld. Her naturally wavy hair turns pin-straight, her bright pink skin-tone dulls slightly, and upon her extremities (the tips of her fingers, the helix of her ears) her skin darkens into the signature Underworld shadowy black. While in the Underworld, Seph restyles her look closer to the traditional Chthonic trend and the way she prefers, with heavy black eyeshadow and eyeliner and dark-toned clothes, usually an array of chitons and robes in black, gray, or deep navy blue. Her crown is an arch of jutting black spikes.
Her signature chiton pin is a pomegranate or a skull.
Powers & abilities
As a goddess, Seph shares the basic abilities most deities possess, such as full immortality, teleportation, and the ability to summon objects at will.
Since Persephone is a direct descendant of one of the Olympian Twelve (her mother, Demeter), she also possesses some of their standard abilities, namely the power of transformation, in which she is able to metamorphose other beings back and forth into plants or animals. Since she isn't actually one of the main Olympians, Seph's transformation powers are extremely limited, at least when it comes to undoing the direct effects of transformations others have caused (...her mother, Demeter). For example, metamorphosing her gardener Ascalaphus, "Laphi," from owl to human (after he'd been turned from human to owl) left him with permanent owl-like traits rather than a fully complete and seamless transformation.
As Goddess of Spring, Seph has the unique power of plant manipulation. She is able to create vines and flowers from thin air and can control any existing plant life to behave to her will with no limitations. While in the Underworld, Seph's power shifts to adapt to her environment and any flowers or plants she creates there will manifest in unusually dark and gothy colors.
Personality
Seph is cool, and distant.
This is the best way to describe her. She grew up under her mother Demeter's cruelly smothering and overbearing thumb, chafing all the while in her youth, and as an adult, adapted to be overly independent out of spite, with a natural instinct to keep everyone at an aloof arm's length. She is viciously loyal to her beloved husband Hades, and almost no one else. With him, she is the warmest version of herself that she has ever been, and the same can be said of him.
Other than her demeanor with her husband, it's not in Seph's nature to be tender and doting, despite the implications of her upper world realm. It may have been in her nature once, maybe long ago, but she'd long since suffocated any of these traits out of herself in defense against Demeter. Regal but casual, calm but prone to spells of bitterness, polite but with whims of sarcasm - similarities to her upper realm can be found in the fact of Seph's personality echoing and balancing many opposite traits, just like the two polarizing spheres of nature she presides over. Sweet, with dark edges. Goddess of spring, Queen of the Underworld.
Seph's demeanor crucially balances her husband's when they are next to each other. He makes her look better, as she is the note of kindness to his callousness, the voice of reason to his rage. Seph is not usually a cruel goddess, though she has certainly seen her moments of wrath and revemge. Seph's role in the Elysium'verse revolves around her behavior with Maci, and Seph is eternally patient, if often mildly exasperated, through Maci's shenanigans. To her daughter and grandchildren, Persephone has always come across like an older sister rather than a "proper parent." Though she loves her family, Seph has always felt no need to draw any of them any closer than they need to be. These qualities, through her signature cool and distant style, often veer into accidentally dismissive, as Seph has too kept Maci at arm's length from her even throughout Maci's youngest childhood, and her darker moments.
Pre-canon backstories
This section contains information about Seph from long before the canon Elysium’verse began - events that have taken place essentially “offscreen,” but are still canonical to both Seph's history herself, as well as her role in the pre-canon history of other characters (particularly Maci).
Hades & Persephone, for the mythologically uninclined
For starters...
Technically, the myth of Hades and Persephone could be considered the core romance of the Elysium'verse, since without which none of this ever would have happened.
