Lessons from your Library: Three-Act Analysis of Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn

Hello everyone. Welcome back to My Library Blog. It is time for another three-act analysis of a popular novel. This time, I’m going to analyze Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn, a fantasy historical fiction retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone. Given that several retellings of this particular myth have been published lately and this pairing is quite popular in romantasy, I decided to try my hand at it. Let’s get started.

ACT 1: SET UP

• Set Up

Demeter

Demeter, goddess of agriculture and the harvest, is the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Cronus and Rhea have six children: Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, and Zeus. However, there is a prophecy that one of Cronus’s sons will overthrow him and become much more powerful than he, so the god swallows each one of his offspring by Rhea when they are born to prevent this from happening. All of them except Zeus, who, centuries later, frees his siblings from the confinement of Cronus’s belly and sends his father to Tartarus. As a consequence, Demeter adores Zeus, but her adoration for him is blind, foolish, and naïve. She chooses not to see his flaws and makes excuses for them when she does. She also admits that she is in love with her youngest brother, and is envious of Hera, whom Zeus chooses as his wife. That is, until Zeus betrays Demeter’s trust and rapes her.

Demeter’s union with Zeus produces two children: Iacchus and Core. After his assault, Demeter becomes a shell of herself. She is terrified of the world and exiles herself in her palace. Her only source of happiness and solace are her children, whom she vows to protect against the dangers of the world (a.k.a. Zeus) and keeps them tethered to her palace in Olympus.

Core/Persephone

After her birth, Core lives in Olympus with her mother and brother. Iacchus, however, is mortal and eventually dies. Trying to allay her mother’s fears, Core agrees to stay at her mother’s palace in Olympus for centuries. However, the confinement quickly starts to chafe at her. She is a goddess of the Earth, but she is a goddess that has never seen what she is a goddess of.

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• Inciting Incident

Demeter

Zeus commands all twelve Olympians to attend the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia. A wedding between a mortal and an immortal, the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. Fleeing from her brother Poseidon’s attentions, Demeter leaves the festivities and meets Iasion, a prince of Samothrace. Demeter and Iasion fall in love and lie together. Zeus, however, kills Iasion when he realizes that Demeter has given herself to a mortal. This severs Demeter’s ties to her younger brother completely and she refuses to return to Olympus with him. 

Core/Persephone

When Core realizes that her mother has fallen in love with a mortal and that she has finally found the strength to stand up to Zeus, she agrees to leave Olympus with her thinking that she will at last have the freedom she craves. After leaving Olympus, Core and her mother settle in Siphnos, where Hephaestus builds a small cottage for them and their nymphs. A century later, however, Demeter is still grieving Iasion and Core doesn’t know how to help her mother process that grief. She suggests travelling around the world to distract Demeter from the pain, but Demeter refuses and once again Core agrees to abide by her mother’s decision to stay in Siphnos. What she really wants, however, is to leave the confines of the island.

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• First Plot Point; Thrust into Act 2; Crossing the Threshold

Demeter

Demeter loses her closest friend, the nymph Meliae. On her deathbed, Meliae tells Demeter to give Core her freedom.

Core/Persephone

After Meliae dies, Demeter agrees to let Core travel to Parnassus to see and smell a flower the nymph once told her about. Her only condition is that the rest of the nymphs accompany her. This is the beginning of Core’s habit of leaving Siphnos every morning to see the world and coming back to her mother’s island at sunset. In one of her trips to Tegea, however, Core meets Ione and falls in love with her quickly and hard. Eventually, Core and the nymphs reach an agreement in which the nymphs wait for Core to come back from her trips to see Ione so they can all go back to Siphnos together. This is how Core manages to keep Ione’s existence from her mother.

ACT 2A: REACTION

• The First Pinch Point

Core visits Ione daily for two decades and she becomes Ione’s wife in everything but name. Core, however, does not have the courage to introduce Ione to her mother in all that time because she knows that Demeter will see danger and prevent her from ever leaving Siphnos again. Demeter is the antagonist to Persephone’s freedom due to her trauma.

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• Twist #1

Ione dies. When Core realizes that Ione has died, she goes to Tegea and takes part in her funeral. Demeter’s nymph Thelxiepia, who has accompanied Core in her travels for years, however, tells Core to leave the rituals for the dead to the mortals and takes her home. Once in Siphnos, Demeter sees a distraught Core and asks her and the nymphs what has happened but Core cannot talk. Thelxiepia answers for her and tells the goddess that Core witnessed the death of a child that has deeply affected her. After this, Core does not leave Siphnos for a century.

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• Premise

Core confronts the nymphs and asks them how they knew where to find her when Ione died. Their words make Core realize that she doesn’t want to become her mother so she makes plans to leave Siphnos immediately. But when she arrives to Tegea, she doesn’t recognize the village anymore. Time has gone by while she grieved for Ione and Core realizes that she has indeed become her mother, without realizing it. So, she makes plans to forget Ione. She meets Mnemosyne, the Goddess of Memory, and asks her to remove the grief. But to remove the grief, the mother of the muses says, she must also remove the love that Core once had for Ione. Core agrees, and she drinks the water to forget Ione. Core forgets Ione, and life goes on.

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• The Midpoint

Demeter

Core asks her mother if she can leave the island again after another century, but this time she doesn’t come back with the nymphs that day. And when Demeter asks them where Core is, the goddess finds out that Core has spent most of her time on these daily excursions by herself. Feeling betrayed, Demeter turns the nymphs, the only three left on her island, into Sirens.

Core/Persephone

Hades abducts Core and takes her to his palace in the Underworld.

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ACT 2B: ACTION

• The Second Pinch Point

After refusing to go inside Hades’s palace, the god of the Underworld tells Core that he took her there with Zeus’s blessing. He confesses that he has watched her before and asked his brother to give her to him as his wife. Zeus complies. Hecate, Demeter’s ally and the only goddess who can travel between the land of the living and the dead visits Core in the Underworld. She tells her not to eat anything while she is in the Underworld.

Orpheus shows up in the Underworld and Hades asks Core to take her place beside him as the Queen of the Underworld to hear what the musician has to say. Orpheus asks Hades for Euridice back, and the god of the Underworld tells him that he can do so under one condition: Orpheus must walk in front of her and not turn to look back at her until they have both fully emerged from the Underworld. Once he has been granted this, Orpheus sings for the gods of the Underworld as a thank you. But Orpheus’s song makes Core recover her memories of Ione and she determines to ask Hades if she can see her lover’s soul in the Underworld.

• The Protagonist Fights Back; Battle 1:

Demeter

The Underworld has been receiving an unusual number of new arrivals lately and Core realizes that the frost in the land of the living is her mother’s work. Demeter has turned the entire earth into ice because of her grief in losing her.

Core/Persephone

Core asks Hades if she can see Ione. He allows it on two conditions: she cannot go alone and she must change her name. She agrees. She is now Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Her companion is Ascalaphus, a demon that does not like Persephone and that makes her wait the day she sets out to look for Ione. When Persephone finds Ione, she realizes that her lover is in the Asphodel Fields and a semblance of what she used to be. Persephone determines to take her to the Elysian Fields. She and Hades, however, make a deal: For every hour that she spends with Ione, she must spend with him too.

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• Plunge Into Act 3 (75%):

Demeter

Demeter goes to Zeus and demands he give her Core back. He refuses. Later, Demeter goes back to Olympus and demands Zeus give her Core back. If not, the world will remain fixed in ice. Zeus agrees to send Hermes to fetch Core.

Persephone

Persephone visits Ione, who prompts her to eat pomegranate seeds.

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ACT 3: RESOLUTION

• Ponder

Demeter

Hermes and Demeter meet. She is waiting for him to take her to the Underworld to fetch Core, but he tells her that she is not allowed in the land of the dead.

Persephone

Persephone visits Ione; Ione asks her if she can drink some water from the River Lethe. She wants to forget Persephone. Persephone lets her, and she embraces her powers as Queen of the Underworld.

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• Crisis

Hecate arrives again and tells Persephone that she is going back to the land of the living. But when Persephone is about to leave with Hermes, Ascalaphus arrives and says that Persephone has eaten food of the dead and cannot leave. 

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• Battle 2:

Demeter

Demeter waits for Hermes to come back. But when he does, Core is not with him. Demeter goes to the Underworld with Zeus.

Persephone

Ione confesses that Persephone ate pomegranate seeds with her. Hades tells Persephone that she is bound to the Underworld now. She confronts Ione. Demeter arrives.

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• Climax

Demeter, Persephone, Hades, and Zeus agree that Persephone stay six months in the Underworld and six months in the Land of the Living.

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• Resolution

Persephone lets Ione go.

Each image used in this post is copyrighted material. None of these book cover pictures are mine; I borrowed them from Goodreads. The 3-Act diagram(s) is mine.