Broken Homes

Question: So, what's the relationship between Xochiquetzal and Tezcatlipoca nowadays? I've heard some claims that she's the Smoking Mirror's wife now (one of four), but not all sources seem to agree.

Not good, in our opinion. There's room to go either way, though.

For those unaware of their sordid past, Xochiquetzal was once seduced by Tezcatlipoca, god of masculinity and seduction among his many other talents (and since she's also the goddess of love and sex, sparks were bound to fly). It depends on the teller of the tale whether this was a mutual affair, she was blandished into it or he even physically kidnapped her. Even if it was voluntary, the problem with this was that she was also married at the time, to Tlaloc, who happened to be serving as the third sun; her disloyalty so upset him that he caused the rain of fire that destroyed the Third World, and forced everyone to restart creation and elect a new sun again. It was a pretty big debacle, and Xochiquetzal summarily ceased being associated much with Tlaloc, who gained a new wife in the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue.

However, Xochiquetzal also ceases being associated with Tezcatlipoca in any meaningful way as well. The god is said to have wives, but those wives' identities are hard to pin down, given as various different names in different sources or not elaborated on at all, often left as identifiers of his association with wealth and masculinity rather than characters themselves. The idea of four wives comes from the ixiptla cult, in which a Tezcatlipoca impersonator was assigned four "wives" who were impersonators of four goddesses including Xochiquetzal, but it's hard to be certain whether they meant that Tezcatlipoca literally had four wives or whether that was just the convenient number for the ritual (after all, four is the magic number in Mesoamerican religion; if you asked them how many there were of anything sacred but undefined, they'd probably say four). It's also very possible that he wasn't necessarily believed to be married to those particular goddesses, but that they were there as representatives of concepts associated with the ixiptla's death and offering to Tezcatlipoca; under this theory, the women represent life-giving forces (sex, crafts, salt and fertility of the earth) and the ixiptla represents humanity making use of them, and the Xochiquetzal impersonator is there as a representative of sex propagating humanity rather than a wife in the human sense.

At any rate, Xochiquetzal certainly has an affair with Tezcatlipoca, but thereafter they split so thoroughly that they might as well not even be in the same pantheon anymore. Xochiquetzal's stories never mention even a whisper of Tezcatlipoca; she acts as a free agent, seducing mortals, producing flowers and generally acting like an unattached, swinging single lady. She's much more often associated with her brother Xochipilli when with anyone, since they share a lot of real estate as gods of fertility and fun. Tezcatlipoca, similarly, never has another myth in which the flower goddess is mentioned, and goes about his business being a solo giant pain in everyone's ass.

This doesn't necessarily mean they aren't married; after all, married couples in Aztec myth generally don't do a whole lot together, and their marriages were probably conceived of as partnerships between deities of related concepts (Tlaloc as rain and Chalchiuhtlicue as water, for example) rather than relationships that made much of a narrative difference to the exploits of the gods. But it also leaves us with seriously no way of knowing whether the Aztecs considered Xochiquetzal to have remained with her illicit lover or stayed single after her spectacular divorce, so either option is available.

In our games, we assume the flower goddess is unattached, the better to ply her trade as goddess of sexy lovefests without anything getting in the way too much, and that there's a lot of simmering uncomfortable sentiment still breweing between her, Tlaloc and Tezcatlipoca, none of whom are happy with one another (well, except Tezcatlipoca, he probably gives no fucks). Sowiljr is currently trying to get her betrothed to Tonatiuh in the hopes of settling the godrealm down and replacing some of the gods lost in the great Norse debacle of several years ago, although how successful he's going to be will depend on his resistance rolls, her willingness to settle for a god she didn't choose for herself and Eztli's hold on her temper.