Meneleus
- World of Darkness -- Medieval -DAV- Brujah -DAV- Helene -DAV- Peregrinus et Sanguis in Cinere
Sobriquet: Menele
Appearance: Meneleus is beautiful. Dark, tanned, hard bodied. His face starts each day with a slight stubble, his dark hard cut in a rakish back wave. Meneleus is energetic, and oh so loveable. Everything about him screams trust, kindness, compassion, and leadership.
Behavior: Meneleus is passionate, but prone to rages and jealousy, at once sure he is the Gods gift to humanity, and at the same time a scared little boy trying to make his father proud. The heights of his glory are magnified by his pettiness, because you never say no to a king.
History: Although early authors, such as Aeschylus refer in passing to Menelaus’ early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greek tragedy. According to these sources, Menelaus' father, Atreus, had been feuding with his brother Thyestes over the throne of Mycenae. After a back-and-forth struggle that featured adultery, incest and cannibalism, Thyestes gained the throne after his son Aegisthus murdered Atreus. As a result, Atreus’ sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon, went into exile. They first stayed with King Polyphides of Sicyon, and later with King Oeneus of Calydon. But when they thought the time was ripe to dethrone Mycenae’s hostile ruler, they returned. Assisted by King Tyndareus of Sparta, they drove Thyestes away, and Agamemnon took the throne for himself.
When it was time for Tyndareus’ stepdaughter Helen to marry, many kings and princes came to seek her hand. Among the contenders were Odysseus, Menestheus, Ajax the Great, Patroclus, and Idomeneus. Most offered opulent gifts. Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Tyndareus’s niece Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband in any quarrel. Then it was decreed that straws were to be drawn for Helen’s hand. The suitor who won was Menelaus (Tyndareus, not to displease the powerful Agamemnon offered him another of his daughters, Clytaemnestra). The rest of the suitors swore their oaths, and Helen and Menelaus were married, Menelaus becoming a ruler of Sparta with Helen after Tyndareus and Leda abdicated the thrones.
According to legend, in a return for awarding her a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest," Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in all the world. After concluding a diplomatic mission to Sparta during the latter part of which Menelaus was absent to attend the funeral of his maternal grandfather Catreus in Crete, Paris ran off to Troy with Helen despite his brother Hector's prohibition. Invoking the oath of Tyndareus, Menelaus and Agamemnon raised a fleet of a thousand ships and went to Troy to secure Helen's return; the Trojans refused, providing a casus belli for the Trojan War.
Homer's Iliad is the most expansive source for Menelaus’s exploits during the Trojan War. In Book 3, Menelaus challenges Paris to a duel for Helen’s return. Menelaus soundly beats Paris, but before he can kill him and claim victory, Aphrodite spirits Paris away inside the walls of Troy. In Book 4, while the Greeks and Trojans squabble over the duel’s winner, Athena inspires the Trojan Pandarus to shoot Menelaus with his bow and arrow. However, Athena never intended for Menelaus to die and she protects him from the arrow of Pandarus. Menelaus is wounded in the abdomen, and the fighting resumes. Later, in Book 17, Homer gives Menelaus an extended aristeia as the hero retrieves the corpse of Patroclus from the battlefield.
According to Hyginus, Menelaus killed eight men in the war, and was one of the Greeks hidden inside the Trojan Horse. During the sack of Troy, Menelaus killed Deiphobus, who had married Helen after the death of Paris.
Menelaus sought out Helen in the conquered city. Raging at her infidelity, he raised his sword to kill her, but as he saw her weeping at his feet, begging for her life, Menelaus' wrath instantly left him. He took pity on her and decided to take her back as wife.
Meneleus tried to get Helena to love him again, and for a time it looked like he was succeeding. But in the end, his arrogance and pride made her not want him. The two fought and raged, he held her for a time, but eventually she ran back to her father. Meneleus tried to let her go, but it always dug at his pride that he couldn't keep her. With his other wives he fathered at least four children, probably many more.
Then came Troile
Troile, a philosopher who traveled widely since the destruction of the Second City, found the scholar-king, Meneleus of Sparta, most fascinating. At the end of the night, Troile took Meneleus to her haven north of the city; there they spent the next several months deep in conversation. Finally, Troile decided that Meneleus possessed all the elements required to make him worthy of immortality. Thus, Meneleus became embraced by Troile into the Brujah.
Carthage
Troile took Menele to the Brujah utopia Carthage and eventually the pair made their havens there. He was amazed by what the Cainites of Carthage had accomplished and soon fell into the role of traveling diplomat due to his reputation as a mighty warrior and orator. It was in Carthage that Menele once again met Helena, now the childe of Minos. They were coldly pleasant to each other. Helena began to see what she had thrown away in her once husband. Menele as always longed for the amazing beauty that was his former wife. The two came together at a feast, and in an orgy of blood and passion rekindled a love they had forgotten. For a time they were an inseparable pair. But as in all things, their pride wouldn't let them forget the past. Small disagreements became arguments. Arguments became shouting matches. Shouting matches turned to the destruction of a whole villa as the two fought with each other.
When the Punic Wars began, Meneleus left the city to seek aid from the Nosferatu and Gangrel of the southern continent, therefore he was not in the city by the time the great betrayal came – some say at the hands of a beautiful Toreador named Helena, who was Meneleus' nemesis.
After Carthage was utterly destroyed by the Roman legions ,Menele hunted Helena down to the city of Pompeii. There, he voluntarily entered his first Frenzy in a thousand years, and his anger was combined with a powerful thaumaturgic ritual that awakened a spirit of fire inside Mt. Vesuvius. Everything around the volcano was destroyed, and Meneleus himself only escaped Final Death by jumping into the harbor. His Toreador nemesis also somehow survived the catastrophic destruction of Pompeii.
After this narrow escape, Menele traveled the lands of Europe and western Asia. He stayed at the edges of civilization, living among the barbarian tribes and trying to live with his guilt over the destruction of Pompeii.
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