Clytemnestra

* {Timandra} (Sister)
* {Phoebe} (Sister)
* {Philonoe} (Sister)

* Rook (Mutated Rook)

**Clytemnestra** is the legendary queen from Greco-Roman mythology, the wife of Agamemnon, and sister of Helen, Pollux and Castor. After escaping the Underworld, she was reincarnated as the Rook of Falbium Asmodeus' peerage.

## Overview

**Clytemnestra**, in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the sister of Helen of Troy. In Aeschylus' *Oresteia*, she murders Agamemnon and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had taken as a war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's *Odyssey*, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued.

## Appearance

Clytemnestra is described to be a woman of exceptional beauty, with fair skin and a voluptuous figure. She has striking eagle-like eyes and long straight hair flowing down her back like a waterfall of pure gold. Her voice is said to be "wine-deep, sweet as divine ambrosia".

## Personality

Clytemnestra is a cold, calculating, and manipulative woman who is described as always thinking ten steps before her opponents. She believes in the law of retaliation, of an eye for an eye, and that no bad deed should go unpunished.

She doesn't care about public perception of her, which many noted as strange due to her being Falbium's personal PR manager, as she believes that she is beyond "commoners' words". Much like her father Zeus, she is prideful, arrogant, and power-hungry, described by Hermes to be the "Ancient Grecian men's worst nightmare of a wife".

Despite this, she does have a caring side, though due to the tragedies that befallen her, she hides that side of her and only shows it to people she truly trusts. She loves her children, especially her oldest daughter Iphigenia whose supposed death drove her down a murderous path in order to avenge her. She also cares about her other children, even Electra and Orestes, though she doesn't like to talk about them more than she has to.

## History

### Early Life

Clytemnestra was born the demigod daughter of Zeus and Leda, and the quadruplet-sister of Helen, Castor, and Polydeuces. In an attempt to save his reputation, their stepfather, King Tyndareus, spread a rumor about how they were born in two eggs, and that while Helen and Polydeuces were divine children of Zeus, Clytemnestra and Castor were his trueborn children with Leda.

### Rape of Helen

When they were young, while Castor and Polydeuces were away on a hunting trip with King Tyndareus, Helen was kidnapped by Theseus and Pirithous and taken back to Aphidnae where Theseus' mother was supposed to groom her to be Theseus' bride when she grew up, before they ventured into the Underworld in a stupid attempt to kidnap Persephone to be the latter's bride.

As neither her stepfather or her brothers were home, Clytemnestra rallied an army by her own before attacking the royal palace and took her sister back. In the raid, she also captured the Queen-Mother Aethra as a slave and took a *labrys* formerly owned by Hippolyta as her spoil of war.

### Marriage with Tantalus

When she grew up, Clytemnestra was married to Tantalus, King of the Pisaeans and had with him a son. However, when Agamemnon ravaged the kingdom following his exile from Mycenae, he killed Tantalus and their infant son, before taking her as his wife.

### Trojan War

Even years after her marriage with Agamemnon, Clytemnestra still couldn't love the killer of her first husband and child, though she did have with him three children: A son Orestes and two daughters, Iphigenia and Electra.

When the Trojan War began with the kidnapping of Helen by the Trojan prince Paris, Helen's husband Menelaus called upon the Oath of Tyndareus and had all of Helen's former suitors come with their armies to rescue his wife. Among the armies arrived was the Mycenaeans, led by Agamemnon who was Menelaus' brother and husband of Helen's sister.

On a hunting trip with the other suitors, Agamemnon raped and killed a priestess of Artemis at Aulis, which earned her wrath upon the Achaeans. Because of this, the seer Chalchas prophesied that her anger can only be soothed by sacrificing Agamemnon's daughter Iphilgenia.

Not wanting to lose his face before other kings, Agamemnon summoned Clytemnestra and Iphigenia to Aulis under the pretense of a marriage with the Myrmidon Achilles. However, when they arrived, Agamemnon had his people take Iphigenia to the altar where she had her throat slashed as an offering to the goddess, only to be transformed into a white deer moments later, which people took as a sign of the goddess' forgiveness.

Upon the tragedy, Clytemnestra swore vengeance against Agamemnon and the Achaeans, cursing them to that their war would be long and suffering, and that the one who tricked her (Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Achilles) would suffer "pain worse than death" by the hands of the gods.

### Affairs with Aegisthus

When she returned to Mycenae, Clytemnestra began an affair with Aegisthus, a cousin to Agamemnon through his uncle Thyestes. Using him as a figurehead, she gathered political support from other Mycenaean nobles and elders. Slowly, she began to plot to place Aegisthus on the throne as the new King of Mycenae, with her being the true power and authority behind the throne.

### The Agamemnon

After ten years of warfare caused by her curse, Troy finally fell and the Achaean armies finally returned home, led by Agamemnon himself, much to Clytemnestra's disappointment. As the city welcomed back its lords and soldiers, celebrations and sacrifices were held throughout the city for the veterans' honor, though the nobles all held their breath as they awaited her actions, knowing that she wasn't a forgiving woman and her revenge would happen.

When Agamemnon returned to the palace, he walked on the carpet of sacred garments that she had laid on for him, before introducing Cassandra, a prophetess and former Trojan princess who he had taken to be his concubine. Feeling pity for the girl, Clytemnestra excused her to the altar where she cried out prophetic visions of the events to come, of the death of Agamemnon and her own shared fate, though no one bothered to care as they believed she had gone insane with grief.

Later on in the night, while forcefully assaulting Cassandra in the bathtub, Clytemnestra snuck behind him, and with the *labrys* she had taken from Theseus a long time ago, she decapitated Agamemnon. Before the scene, instead of being scared like she thought she would, Cassandra only asked that she had mercy and killed her right there, as she had no desire to live anymore now that her kingdom had fallen and her family destroyed, which Clytemnestra obliged.

As the doors finally opened, she walked out among the standing nobles and described the murder in details, showing no sign of remorse or regret, before announcing that Aegisthus would become the new king of Myceanea and this was a revenge both for her Iphilgenia and for Aegisthus' father Thyestes, who was tricked into eating his own sons by Agamemnon's father Atreus.

### The Libation Bearers

Many years later, Orestes and his cousin Pylades returned to Argos to exact vengeance on Clytemnestra, as an order from Apollo, for killing Cassandra. Upon arriving, Orestes reunited with his sister Electra who was bringing libations at Agamemnon's grave, and with whom they devised a plan to kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Upon returning to the palace, after the feast welcoming his return had finished, Orestes killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra while they were asleep. Because of his crimes of matricide, he became the target of Tisiphone and the erinyes and had no choice but to flee from the palace.

### The Netherworld

When her shade came down to the Realm of the Dead, Clytemnestra was judged and sentenced to be among the shades of the Fields of Asphodels, as although she had committed murder against her husband, it was justified in the eyes of the gods. Thousands of years later, due to a war between the Greco-Roman Underworld and the Egyptian Underworld, the clashing of the two realms caused disturbance within the Greco-Roman Underworld's natural magic, causing several of its shades to regain its consciousness, with her being one of them.

Seeing this as an opportunity, she snuck out of the Fields of Asphodels and began to travel across the Underworld, before somehow travelling through the borders and entering the Netherworld when the Devil Civil War was going on. Through unknown events, she met and swore servitude to Falbium Glasya-Labolas, and when the war ended in the Anti-Satan Faction's favor, she became his advisor, disguising herself as a nameless wandering shade that accidentally got caught in the conflict.

Centuries later, after the Evil Pieces were created, she accepted Falbium's offer and became one of the first members of his peerage, taking an entire Mutated Rook. However, due to her secretive lifestyle, not much is known about her to the Netherworld's public, and the majority of devils came to call her by the alias "Golden She-Devil" due to her golden hair and eyes.

## Equipment

**Labrys** (ラブリュス, *Raburyusu*): A large double-bitted axe made from Imperial Gold and is imbued with the divine power of Ares. It was a gift to the Amazonian Hippolyta before Theseus stole it and Clytemnestra then, in return, took it as a spoil of war when she came and rescued Helen. Due to Ares' blessing, it will always remain absurdly sharp and can easily cut through giant stone boulders as if they are soft butter.

**Rook Piece** (戦車の駒, *Sensha no Koma*): Clytemnestra was reincarnated using a Mutated Rook Piece, which grants her an immense increase in her physical strength, endurance, and stamina. In addition, it also acts as pseudo-magical foci that allows her to wield the Glasya-Labolas Clan's magic circle to cast her demonic magic.

## Trivia

* Depending on the spelling, her name either means "famed for her suitors" or "famous plotter".
	+ Her name was originally *Klytaimḗstra* (Κλυταιμήστρα) without the *-n-*. The present form of the name does not appear before the middle Byzantine period.
* She inherited most of her characteristics from her father Zeus.
* She is bisexual, with a preferrence for females due to her past with her male lovers.
* She has never watched any of the Oresteia and doesn't have the intention to watch any of them.
* She is a professional axe-thrower and is often contributed as the, secret, inventor of the sport.
* As a former shade, she is incapable of entering the mortal world without necessary charms.
* Despite being known as the Queen of Mycenae, she mainly lived in a private palace in Argos.
* She's one of the few people the Furies are genuinely terrified of.
* According to Athena, had it not for her curse, the Trojan War would have ended *much* sooner.
* It was believed that Agamemnon already knew his fate was sealed the moment he returned.
* The asteroid 179 Klytaemnestra is named after her.