“At once the secret was revealed. There lay the gentlest and sweetest of all wild creatures,
Cupid himself, the beautiful Love-god, and at the sight of him the flame of the lamp
spurted joyfully up and the knife turned its edge for shame.”

Psyche too, at the sight, both rekindled and drooped.
She, who had been so lucky to be loved by love itself, had doubted it and betrayed it.
But let us start from the beginning.

Let us start with her.
She is, even now, the purest of the pure. If Helen, another woman famous, or infamous,
for her beauty, was driven mad by her own power over men, Psyche was instead driven
into loneliness.
She was so perfect that people preferred admiring her to knowing her.
She was so perfect that no one ever asked for her hand.

Alone, like a lonely white flower in a sea of grass, she suffered.
Then, the unthinkable happened. One deity, the son of Aphrodite, the only minor deity
known everywhere in our mortal world, fell in love with her. Eros loved her.
But he had never truly loved before, and he did what a young lover stupidly does: he tried
to protect her from everything that could ever harm her. He caged her in a beautiful cage.
Yes, she learned her magic there, but a cage is still a cage.

She acted stupidly, broke her promise to him, and paid the price tenfold. He forgave her,
but could not save her.
I believe you are slowly understanding why Psyche is fighting.
How can one of the dead meet a god again?
By breaking and bending the laws of the world.
And who can have such powers? Perhaps, the ruler, or maybe the future queen, of Hell
might.

Life

Psyche's story is very old. She might be as old as Perseus, perhaps even older.
Her tale is so ancient that no name survives, not even among the dead.
We do not know the name of her parents, even though we know they were a king and a
queen. We do not know of which land, nor does history remember the names of her two
envious sisters.

Even so, we know what matters.
She was too beautiful, and no one wanted to bear so much perfection.
Her father, desperate, consulted an oracle, who told him to bring her to a cliff and throw
her down, for she would otherwise be loved by a “beast that even the gods fear.”
Such is the power of Eros.

Her father did as he was told. To protect her. But a servant of Eros snatched her away
and brought her to his palace. There, in the darkness of the night, they loved each other,
but he forbade her to ever look at him. He was, after all, a god, and the simple sight of
him would rob her of one important thing: the ability to choose whether to love him or
not.

Psyche's jealous sisters convinced her to light a lamp and steal a glance at her mysterious
lover. She did, betraying him.
The rest is pure tragedy. Aphrodite would not allow her to see the young god unless she
passed her trials. She died in the last one, even though she had succeeded.
As often happens, when someone realizes what he has lost, it is too late.
So Eros understood how much Psyche loved him just before she died.

I must remain impartial and follow each hero without preferences. Yet I wrote of love
and for love, and a part of my hope they shall be reunited, one day.

Regalia

Psyche has her magic powers and her beauty with her. Nothing more.
I would not underestimate either of them.