Medea is Not Responsible for her Actions

1.) Medea's main goal was to protect her children. Without her, who is going to protect the children from the wrath of the kingdom? Because Medea killed the King and his daughter, she would obviously not be let off scot-free, even if she ran away. Not only that, but if she did commit suicide, and left her kids, most likely than not, they would have to shoulder the blame as well. Leaving her children there, unprotected, because their father most likely would not have taken them in, nor would he be able to due to what they, the children, had to bear. 2.) Medea did not kill her children to make their father suffer. She had abandoned that reasoning after she saw them smiling and their eyes. Sure, at first it was her intention that it would hurt their father, her husband, but afterwards, that was not the reason. This is shown by, "Why should I, in harming them to give their father pain, make myself suffer twice as much? I cannot. Goodbye plans! But what is happening to me? Do I want to ale myself ridiculous, letting my enemies go unpunished? I must go through with this"Go into the house, children." Medea, at this point, had given up trying to make their father suffer, and now it is about trying to protect the children from her enemies, and she had a lot of enemies with all the people she"s killed. She is trying to protect her children because, without her, no one is around to protect them, not their father, and certainly not the kingdom whose King and Princess she just poisoned. 3.) The children are not shown to be old enough to be able to say they want to live or die. They are not old enough to be able to comprehend what they would have to carry should their mother only take her own life. They don"t know what their mother did, who she poisoned and what that would mean for them. 4.) There is no maybe about the kids having a better life with their father, because their father abandoned them, left them. He could not go back and claim he had kids and a wife to the king, because then the King would either object, or not care. Jason had abandoned his children, left them with their mother, to marry into royalty. Those children would not, see their father again, because even just having kids who are not royalty would cause a problem in the kingdom as well. 5.) I don"t believe I"m giving Medea too much credit in her decision making. The reason why is because Medea had went against her father (who denied help to Jason), gave up her royalty (her father was the king of Colchis), she gave up her kingdom to help him, and Jason abandons and betrays her and their children so he can marry the King of Creon"s daughter. For Medea, she would be feeling a lot of things, heartbroken, saddened, crushed, anguish, betrayal, rage, suffering, and to be able to go through the decision making process while all these feelings are roaring around inside her, is quite the accomplishment. 6.) Medea did think of her children because her "feelings clouding her judgement" is what in fact saved the children from being killed to "punish" their father because Medea did hesitate. 7.) I was not claiming it was his fault, I was only giving an example as to how it could be someone else"s fault for Medea"s actions. Speaking of who could be considered responsible for Medea"s actions, what can be said would be that Medea is not responsible in the case of her having pleaded insanity. The King and his daughter were killed by Medea, as was Jason"s uncle, and now she had killed her children and herself.