Thats what happened in canon.
Depends on the canon. There are versions where Hephaestus was born to Hera alone, similar to how Zeus “gave birth” to Athena. Then when Hephaestus tried to protect Hera from Zeus’s advance, the skygod hurled him off of Olympus
I think it’s pretty striking that the version where Zeus throws Hephaestus not only makes more sense considering Hera’s traditional traits, it is also not the Athenian version. It is part of the Spartan mythology, as Sparta had a much more favorable view on Hera (who had a very good relationship with their patron gods, Ares and Enyo, as Ares was her son and Enyo was her daughter-in-law).
Like Athens had a pretty vested interest in never showing anyone but like, Athena and Zeus in a positive light. I have at least 7 separate rants about how the Athenian depictions of Ares and his wife Enyo are just Athenian propaganda against the Spartans because Ares and Enyo embodied a lot of Spartan ideals about masculinity and femininity (particularly devotion to family, which the Athenians did not believe was a man’s job, and respect for women as equals, as the Athenians believed women to be subhuman) and even more striking, Ares and Enyo had married for love, which most Athenians thought was a completely frivolous practice.
Hera has the same demonization in the Athenian canon, because her traditional trait of being jealous, to the Athenians, was unreasonable, because Zeus was a king. They also believed that her hatred for his actual born out of wedlock children was unreasonable. Considering other Greek city-states made it very clear that Zeus was abusive towards Ares and Hephaestus, more so than his other children, many of whom he doted on. I think a pretty telling thing is that Hera got extremely mad at Zeus when Ares demanded Heracles be punished for literally killing his son and Zeus said the basic equivalent of “You’re my least favorite and Heracles is my favorite so no.” In most versions, i.e. Spartan and non-Athenian states, Zeus’s reasoning is seen as backwards and wrong, Athens sees it as totally fine and reasonable of good Zeus.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that during the time of the Greeks, the Athenians were hated by a large portion of the other Greek city-states because of how rude and capricious they were.
Also side note Nemesis fucking hated Zeus no matter the mythology so I think when the goddess of revenge thinks someone’s a dick it might be a good idea to agree with that.
I’m reblogging because of the last part. Wowza, I’m not alone in thinking that Zeus is an asshole.
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