Persephone

Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld. She is the widowed niece-wife of Hades and adoptive mother of Deicidia.

Early life
Persephone was born to Zeus, king of the gods, and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. As she wasn't one of her father's favorite children, she had no position at Mount Olympus and used to live far away with her mother's closest nymphs. She mostly passed her days planting seeds and nurturing the flora.

When she reached marriageable age, several gods tried to woo Persephone, but Demeter, who suffered many horrible courtships, rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of other deities. Despite this, she said that Persephone could have married the god of doctors.

Kidnapped by Hades
Persephone's uncle, Hades, was very lonely and wanted a wife. One day, he spotted her in the fields and became entranced by her beauty. He asked for help from Zeus, despite his estrangement with his brother. One day, Persephone was picking flowers with some of her nymphs in a field in Enna when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Life came to a standstill as the devastated Demeter searched everywhere for her lost daughter. Hecate, goddess of magic, told Demeter she had heard Persephone scream when she was being kidnapped. Angered and heartbroken, Demeter stopped caring for the Earth, so the land didn't flourish anymore and people began to starve and die.

Hades was determined to make Persephone love him and gave her many gifts and riches. She hated him for snatching her away from her mother until he asked the dead gardeners of the Underworld to make a field of her favorite plants. Pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who heard their anguish, Zeus finally forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother. However, it was a rule of the Fates that whoever consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Before Persephone was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, a servant of Hades tricked Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds.

In order to calm both Demeter and Hades, Zeus ordered Persephone to return to the Underworld for six months each year. When Demeter and Persephone are together, the Earth flourishes with vegetation in Demeter's happiness. When Persephone is with her husband in the Underworld, the Earth once again becomes barren as Demeter is too depressed to work properly. That is how the seasons came to be.

Meeting Leuke and Minthe
Though he was mostly faithful compared to other gods, Hades was quite lonely during the time Persphone spent with Demeter. This is when he would have some affairs, but they usually ended badly.

When Hades kidnapped the beautiful Oceanid Leuke, a jealous Persephone asked her husband to kill Leuke, but he transformed her into a poplar tree. When the beautiful Naiad Minthe bragged about Hades' love for her and claimed to be more beautiful than Persephone, the infuriated goddess instantly appeared before her and transformed her into the plant mint.

Affair with Adonis
After a beautiful child was born from a tree, Aphrodite chose Persephone to help her raise him in the Underworld so no one could desire his beauty besides herself. Both goddesses taking turns raising the boy, shuffling him back and forth between Aphrodite's palace on Cyprus and Hades’ Palace. The child would eventually grow up into the most handsome man in the world. By this time, the two goddesses fell in love with Adonis and began fighting over him.

With them unable to reach a compromise, the two took Adonis to Mount Olympus, where Zeus decided that it would be best for Adonis to spend a third of each year with each respective goddess, and have the final third to himself. During the time he spent with her, Adonis would have to hide in closets and under Persephone's bed every time Hades entered her chambers, since the god didn't know about his wife's lover. After Adonis decided to spend his third time of the year with Aphrodite, he was stabbed to death by a wild boar of Ares, Aphrodite's immortal lover.

Trials of Psyche
Persephone was visited by Psyche, who had been sent by Aphrodite to retrieve some of Persephone's beauty cream. Still furious at Aphrodite's involvement in her past affair with Adonis, Persephone instead filled Psyche's rosewood box with Stygian sleep, the very essence of the Underworld. She warned Psyche to not open the box, but the tired woman decided she needed the beauty cream and passed out after opening the box.

Meeting Orpheus
Devastated by the death of his wife, the nymph Eurydice, the demigod musician Orpheus created a new entrance to the Underworld with his beautiful music. He made his way all the way to Hades' palace, with ghosts, Charon, Cerberus, and even the Furies themselves being brought to tears.

Impressed by the man's love, bravery and skill, the rulers of the dead allowed Orpheus to take Eurydice back on the condition that he would walk in front and not look behind him as he led her back to the upper world. However, Orpheus couldn't resist the temptation the moment he crossed the border and looked back just before Eurydice left the Underworld, losing his wife forever.