My #Xena story covers not only events on Earth, but in Olympus as well. Aphrodite finds herself the queen of Olympus. This is not the 1st time! On #HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys Aphrodite’s alternate self in Stranger in a Strange Land is not the goddess of love (that’s Ares), but the queen of Olympus. Hercules’ alt-self is The Sovereign. I love this concept because Earth’s Herc is defined by friendship, but the Sovereign believes he needs no one (one of the meanings of the word “sovereign”). Queen Aphrodite is being forced to wed him to save Zeus’s life.
Her wedding dress is black, as if she’s in mourning. This is a nice coincidence, because the Queen Aphrodite in my post-Motherhood story is still dressed in her black mourning gown, in honor of the fallen Olympians killed by #Xena.
She’s also mourning her old role as simply the goddess of Love. Running Olympus on your own is not all it’s cracked up to be. We never actually get to see her in this role on the show because we don’t see her again until The God You Know, in which it turns out she’s under the thumb of up-and-coming god Caligula. So, in a way, the 2 queens have a lot in common! Aphrodite doesn’t get her godhood back until You Are There, at the same time as Ares, & when we see her next, in Many Happy Returns, she’s back to her cheerful self, ruling Olympus with her brother Ares sharing the burden.