This story covers important parts of many characters’ stories: King Minos of Crete, his wife Pasiphae, his daughter Ariadne, Prince Theseus of Athens, the architect Daedalus, and of course, the Minotaur.
We start with Pasiphae, as she makes the same dumb mistake that so many make in Classical Mythology. She compares her beauty to that of the goddess Aphrodite, who, in retribution, makes Pasiphae fall in love with her husband’s prized bull. Pasiphae constructs a wooden frame in the shape of a female cow so that she can seduce and have sex with the bull. She becomes pregnant with and gives birth to a Half-Human Hybrid.
He has the body of a man and the head of a bull and is called the Minotaur (aka Prince Asterion). King Minos is ashamed of the strange child but doesn’t want to kill it lest it make the gods angrier. Instead, He has the celebrated architect Daedalus build an impossible Labyrinth and seals the Minotaur within.
Every nine years, King Minos forces the Athenians to offer seven young men and seven young women to be sent into the Labyrinth. On the third occasion, Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, arrives to end the killing of his people. He disguises himself as a peasant and volunteers to be sent into the maze.
He meets Ariadne, Minos’s daughter, and she falls in love with him. She gives him a thread and tells him to unravel it as he walks through the maze. To return, all he has to do is rewind the thread.
Theseus enters the maze, defeats the Minotaur (saving the Athenians), and finds his way back out of the Labyrinth. Victorious, he takes Ariadne and sets sail for the island of Dia. Here, he ditches Ariadne before sailing home.
Ariadne’s story ends happily, as the god Bacchus comes to comfort the crying girl on the shore. To console her, he takes her crown and places it in the sky, where it becomes the Corona Borealis.
Theseus, on the other hand, forgets to fly the white sails on his ship (which would indicate to his waiting father that he is alive). His father, distraught, commits suicide.
The Minotaur is the Trope Maker for Our Minotaurs Are Different.
Other Tropes in “The Minotaur”:
- Princess Classic: Ariadne for the most part. She is young, innocent, beautiful, and pure of heart.
- Really Royalty Reveal: The moment Theseus emerges from the maze, takes Ariadne, and leaves.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Both Theseus and Ariadne- Theseus is making an active, brave attempt to help his subjects, and Ariadne helps him despite her father’s wishes.
- Trail of Bread Crumbs: The thread that got Theseus out of the Labyrinth.
