Oh, What a Tangled Web

Question: I know it's just a myth, but is Odin arrogant, stupid, or both? He is called all wise and all knowing but the whole Norse cycle seems to be him constantly shooting himself in the foot, especially when it comes to the children of Loki, Hel especially, putting her in a place where she will be able to keep Baldur for herself and keep Ragnarok on track. Also, does Hel truly love Baldur, or is she just being mean and spiteful?

Arrogant? Probably. Stupid? No. What Odin mostly is is desperate.

The children of Loki can look like a huge blind spot for Odin; imprisoning them instead of destroying them ensures that all three will get a chance to play a role in Ragnarok, Hel by keeping Baldur, Jormungandr by killing Thor and Fenrir by killing Odin himself. Certainly the fact that they're alive and well and just waiting for their chance to demolish him and everything he owns is probably not helping him sleep nights.

But a major problem for Odin at the time that he binds the three children is that he doesn't know any of that yet. Binding them at all is in reaction to a prophecy, but it's not that prophecy; all the Aesir manage to come up with is that the three are going to be incredibly dangerous and destructive if they're allowed to continue roaming free. Add this to the gods already being very uncomfortable about things like the volume of flesh Fenrir is consuming per day, and Odin has very compelling reasons to get rid of them; but he doesn't know, at this time, that they're slated to be part of the final destruction. That information comes from the dead voelva that he visits after Baldur's dream, and it probably comes as a huge blow; learning that the creatures you just imprisoned instead of killing are going to one day break free and wreak havoc on your person has to be one of the worst things to discover via any means, let alone incontrovertible prophecy.

But why not just kill them anyway? "Going to be horribly dangerous and cause lots of trouble" seems like a good justification, right? Unfortunately for Odin, he pretty much can't. Hel, Jormungandr and Fenrir are the children of Loki, and Loki is Odin's best buddy and blood-brother; not only is killing your best friend's children kind of the king of all dick moves, but thanks to the blood-brother tag it's almost tantamount to kin-slaying, something the Norse are not okay with at all (see: Hod, Baldur, Vali). Odin can't just walk up to Loki over a pint of mead and be like, "Hey, my wife had a vision that your daughter's going to be problematic if she lives here, so I'm going to murder her." It's really not an option, especially since none of Loki's children have actually done anything yet other than make people uncomfortable.

So imprisonment is really the only safe middle ground he can go to for the three of them; Hel goes to the Underworld, Jormungandr to the bottom of the ocean and Fenrir to the depths of his cave. The later discovery that they're going to be his doom is probably horrible, but it's too late to go kill them now (especially since they still haven't done anything other than Fenrir biting Tyr's arm off, and nobody really blames him for that under the circumstances, not even Tyr, who kind of knew that was coming). For an extra dollop of fist-shaking at the sky, the whole situation is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy; had he not tossed all three of them into eternal jail, they might not be so eager to wreck his shit when released, but it's too late for that now, too. In addition, by Scion's rules, he can't kill Jormungandr and Fenrir anyway; both are Titans (albeit without ever being mentioned as belonging to a specific Titanrealm), and killing Titans, as Odin knows from firsthand experience, is a terrible, terrible idea.

As in many other dimensions, it sucks to be Odin sometimes.

As for Hel, well, there really isn't much to go on in the Eddas to tell us what her real feelings are about Baldur; she might love him, might be enforcing the laws of death, or might just be hanging on to him out of spite at the Aesir who dumped her in Helheim in the first place. There's no evidence to say that she ever met him when she was briefly in Asgard or had any kind of pre-existing relationship with him; as far as we know, she has no idea he exists except by hearsay until he ends up in her hall.

But then again, this is Baldur we're talking about; is it even possible for a lady to see Baldur and not immediately fall head-over-heels? Being loved is what Baldur is good at, and there's no reason to suppose that Hel is any less likely to cherish him than everybody back at home in Asgard. If she wasn't in love with him before he shows up, she almost certainly is afterward, and while there may be spite or adherence to rules also involved in her refusal to part with him, I'd assume some of it is a genuine desire to keep him with her. When a dude with Ultimate Charisma and Appearance waltzes into your house, of course you want him to live with you forever.

If you want to get extremely romantic about the whole situation, I've even seen some scholars theorize that Loki's slaying of Baldur (which appears otherwise unmotivated and is strangely out of place in his normally non-lethal prank repertoire) and refusal to help resurrect him later is directly intended to give him to Hel as a companion, sort of a father providing for his daughter in defiance of Odin's rulings.

It's an area with no clear answer in myth, so individual games of Scion may take many different directions when approaching it, all depending on how you want Odin, Loki, Hel and Baldur to come off as individuals.