The Corleones of Olympus

In a recent response to a question about the recurring theme of limitations on kings from u/kneecapsnathan, I made an allusion to the 1972 American film, The Godfather. u/henrythefifth replied that he was impressed that I could loop The Godfather in to LO, which got me thinking more about The Godfather, which in many ways is closely related to Greco-Roman myth itself (Mario Puzo basically made up just about everything about the Mafia therein, and the similarities you see now with Cosa Nostra and the Puzo version are because the Mafia copied the book.) It is hardly a stretch to think of LO as either an exploration of how little differences at crucial points, can make changes in outcomes, or an alternate ending to The Godfather.

The setting of LO (as distinct from Greco-Roman myth) has a similar setting to The Godfather. The main dramatis personæ are all family, all men, and part of a violent hereditary business. The father controls the business, and is concerned about what will happen if he passes the business to his sons. In the case of Vito Corleone, he believes that Sonny may be too illtempered; Cronus is worried his children will literally emasculate him (this we have to extrapolate from myth). At least one son is ambitious and wants his father’s power.

The characters have similar relationships and characteristics at the beginning of the story. The father (Vito|Cronus) is intelligent, powerful and bloodyminded. The ambitious son (Sonny|Zeus) is violent, intemperate, rapaciously sexual and rampantly unfaithful to his wife. The dumdum (Fredo|Poseidon) is only marginally better than his older brother, but his bad behavior is tempered by his incompetence, and while in-universe people may think of them as equivalently malevolent the reader dismisses some of their behavior because they are stupid. The “good one” (Michael|Hades) has all the positive capabilities of his oldest brother, but a much stronger sense of morality, and is probably the most intelligent, and certainly the best educated of the whole family.

The backstory follows a similar pattern. The ambitious son’s actions remove the father from power, and the ambitious son takes over as leader. The good son, though not really involved in the upbringing of his brothers, helps his ambitious brother consolidate his power, by doing some very bad things. Once the ambitious brother is in power, the ambitious son sends the smart brother far away.

The point where LO and The Godfather become uncannily alike is the middle act of The Godfather and the main story of LO. The good son meets a (I am not making this up) village girl from Sicily and falls deeply in love. In The Godfather (still not making this up) her name is “Apollonia.” They are both ancillary parts of the family business, but decide they will run off. The Sicilian girl is, both in LO and in The Godfather the redemption of the good son. As long as the Sicilian girl is in the picture, the good son has no reason to engage in the bad behaviors so prevalent in his family.

The break point, between LO and The Godfather, and where the stories become “alternate versions” of the same story, is when Apollonia dies. A coup removes the ambitious son and the father returns, much weakened, to power. The “good one” has no reason to go back to the family business, until his brother is out of power (dead in The Godfather), and the Sicilian girl dies. Without something to keep him “normal” the good son returns, to help his father, and prevent the dumdum from becoming a liability to himself and the family. The good one goes back to his old girlfriend, eventually marrying her, and becomes increasingly important to the family power structure, because he is capable and intelligent, and the loss of the Sicilian girl (along with the violence he has participated in along the way) has denuded him of some of his humanity. The Godfather ends with the good one (Michael) ascending to power as heir to his father, and becoming all that he despised. We know that is not how LO will end, even though the ending of the story is a long, long way away..

There are two main differences between The Godfather and LO, narratively speaking. First, the father has a more or less positive relationship with his sons. Vito is distant, but not actively hostile, and although Sonny’s speaking out of turn is an indirect contribution to Vito’s attempted murder, Sonny is not directly implicated. Second, the Sicilian girl dies. Apollonia is not much of a character in either the book or the movie, but her importance to Michael is tough to overstate. He is transformed back into the kind, and basically normal person we see at the beginning of the film by her presence, and when she departs he goes “full Corleone.”

The more important difference between LO and The Godfather is the loss of the Sicilian girl. As Rachel Smythe has written the story, I could easily see LO ending more or less like The Godfather if Persephone were killed. In fact, should Hades be fully deprived of Persephone, especially if she were clearly wanting to be with him, I would be shocked if it didn’t result in an all out war of wrath, with Hades leading the charge, and laying waste to everything in his way, until he was king of the universe.

If The Godfather and LO are parallel stories that diverge at one point, the main interpretation could be the importance of a good spouse (wife), and how pivotal interpersonal relationships can be. In both The Godfather and LO the ambitious son really mistreats his wife. Neither of them are physically abusive, but neither is faithful to their wives, listens to them, or treats them as equals. The dumdum is somewhat without any meaningful ability to begin with, and is just as unfaithful, and therefore adds nothing to his abilities with the abilities of their wives. The main difference is the “good one.” Persephone will redeem Hades like Apollonia could have redeemed Michael, but without the Sicilian girl, neither seems capable alone of escaping the pathologies of their families. Together, however, we shall see a relationship that is literally of epic proportions.