Brittany

“Hera thinks of the maternal line: Gaia, Rhea and now Hera. The goddess who created the world, the goddess who nurtured it and the goddess who will protect it. But stronger than that line is its dark twin: Ouranos, Cronus and Zeus, who only care for what they can take.”
― Jennifer Saint, Hera

“Hera didn’t escape her father only to find herself in her mother’s role.”
― Jennifer Saint, Hera

“She can be anyone. Vengeful Hera, wrathful Hera, the queen of the heavens, most long-suffering of wives and cruellest of punishers, will continue without her. She can slip away from the tethers of who she was, find a sweetness in love again, and, for the first time, belong to the world rather than commanding it.”
― Jennifer Saint, Hera

“When Athens loses its hold on its empire, Hera still sees Athena: a grey-feathered owl tilting its head in the town square where men debate philosophy and rationality, striving for sense and understanding; or else a flash of silver in the eyes of someone stacking another roll of papyrus in the public library, the teacher calling his students to lessons, or the woman demonstrating how the loom works to her attentive daughter. At the lush, rolling vineyards, she sometimes thinks she spots the laughing eyes of Dionysus in a jovial winemaker selling his wares. In the forests, she's convinced she catches a flash of Artemis, running in pursuit of a stag, or else she recognises her determined jawline in a defiant girl. In smoky forges, where blacksmiths wipe the sweat from their brows, she feels the patience of Hephaestus; and she is certain that Ares still runs wild on the battlefields, filling every fighter's heart with his destructive rage. Hestia is there, of course, in every kindly friend, at every welcoming hearth.
She wonders where they see her - in rebellious wives, she hopes, in the iron souls of powerful queens, in resilient girls who find the strength to keep going.”
― Jennifer Saint, Hera