Tuesday 24 February 2009

The Queens of the Heart, part two - The Queen of The Howling


My initial idea for four queens of the heart came from reading about the "four angels of prostitution" in Jewish mystical lore who are the four wives of Satan... they sound like totally fun, wild gals, right? I love the idea of "angels" of prostitution... the most famous one was Lilith of course, who is well-known for having been Adam's first wife and being kicked out of the garden of Eden because she just wouldn't do as she was told and also liked being on top when she and Adam had sex... crrrazzzy. I find Lilith especially fascinating because so many versions of her have appeared in comics - Marvel and DC have various versions of her, and so do various indie publishers.

So here's my version - I was actually going to use the name Lilith, and refer to her as "The Queen of the Night" (one of Lilith's actual titles) but I recently decided to ditch any and all "real" mythological names and just make up my own. Since then she's been through various titles - I am still torn between The Queen of Blood and The Queen of the Howling. I like both and I can't decide. I imagine her kingdom as being in the middle of a desert and populated by gods who are the spirits of various animals you find prowling the desert - scorpions (like Queenie herself), bats, vultures and wolves... all the claassic "horror" creatures in other words... Actually I'm not sure if wolves are indigenous to deserts, probably not, but I'm gonna bend the rules this one time ;o)

So - the Queen of the Howling - what's her deal? She's the goddess of broken hearts, sexual and emotional rejection, cruelty and misery. She gets off on inciting lovers to treat each other bad, leading to those painful endings of relationships, and the bitterness, anguish and regret that follows... "Howling" here obviously refers to the anguished tortured feelings of tormented lovers, right? But would "Blood" (y'know, as in pain) be better? I'm still undecided...

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