Friday, August 10, 2012

Empress of the Sun

Question: How do the mostly male kings and pantheon leaders view Amaterasu when they aren't being mind-whammied by her Appearance and Charisma?

As a queen and a political power, most of the time. Because that's what she is.

Most gods are probably pretty misogynistic by modern standards, and you're not wrong to think that they probably aren't fans of the idea of female leadership among the pantheons. Certainly they wouldn't let that happen in their own houses, right? But that doesn't mean they can, or even want to, actually do anything about Amaterasu and her empire. She's still the uncontested leader of the Amatsukami; she has the might, territory and magic of a pantheon behind her, just like every one of them. While they might think it's weird or even inappropriate for the Amatsukami to have a woman in charge, that doesn't make her any less in charge, and they still have to deal with her as a political equal if they want to get anything done. Just as Zeus might secretly think Huitzilopochatli is a simplistic barbarian but not ever say so because that wouldn't be helpful to the political situation, so Horus is probably not about to treat Amaterasu poorly to her face (or even behind her back unless he's absolutely sure nobody who might tell her about it is listening) because of her sex. It would just be poor politics, and if there's one thing pantheon leaders are usually good at, it's politics.

To use a real-world example, there were plenty of male kings in Europe who didn't think Queen Elizabeth was the best choice for a ruler of England, but they still had to be polite and treat her as the power she was when they had meetings or wars involving her. Amaterasu is the same situation; whatever the gods may think of her behind closed doors, you'd better believe they don't forget that being rude to her involves being rude to all of the Eight Million Kami. Amaterasu is an empress; for the leaders of the pantheons, that's more important than anything else she might be.

No comments:

Post a Comment