#dfhvjfd this got... long

[littlesparklight]

I love your posts about the Trojan family! Are there any headcanons about them that you could share? (especially Ganymede and his immediate family's era cause I love those ones the most :) )

Hehe, thank you, anon! <3 I love the Trojan family, especially, of course, Ganymede's era and then Priam's one for Paris and Hektor hehe.

And I think I can do that~ I love thinking about the Trojan royal family. :D

Considering you can have basically a nymph wife in every other generation being married to a Trojan king in either branch of the family starting with Astyoche (daughter of Simoeis) marrying Tros' father, the whole family is marked by this connection. I don't really headcanon that mortals being born of nymphs has any physical/visual effects as such on them (I go with nymphs generally just looking like human women), aside from... uh, beauty "infusions"? But that doesn't mean there aren't effects! All of the following would only work in fresh water, not the ocean: -Literally all of them can either keep their breath for extended periods of time, or straight up breathe underwater. -They don't really need to learn how to swim. They might need a refresher a couple years after birth, but that's not really swimming lessons so much as "lead them into the river and let them dog paddle a couple moments, done". -They can see really well underwater, though it's doubtful anyone ever realises this is weird. Unlike being able to stay below for an extended length of time, it's far less easily noticed by others as something off from what they can do.

Xanthos and Simoeis have turned up for each and every birth of their direct or extended grandchildren in Troy or Dardanos. When it comes to Priam's children, this got restricted to those born of Hecuba (but Aesacus also got this 'blessing', since at that point his mother was Priam's primary wife). Aeneas was visited when Aphrodite handed the infant to the nymphs who raised him for his first five years on Ida. Only Paris wasn't visited at his birth - but he has, however (even if he doesn't know that she is his ultimate grandmother) been visited by the goddess-nymph of Mount Ida, Idaea, before he was reunited with his family.

There's a tacit agreement that only one daughter of either Xanthos or Simoeis will marry into the family in each generation (at most). Why it was Assaracus, who isn't the oldest son, instead of Ilus, who got to marry a nymph, is because he was already involved with her before Ilus was looking to marry. He didn't marry before his older brother, but it was obvious he and Hieroneme were going to do so, so Ilus looked elsewhere and married a mortal woman. (Laomedon "makes up" for it by being involved with two daughters of Xanthos lol (possibly three? We don't know who Calybe's father is) One that he married, one that was simply a mutual fling. save yourselves, girls!!! I suppose he has divine dick-skills or something.)

The beauty of nymphs isn't actually where the famed beauty of Troy's royal line stems from! It's undoubtedly why the daughters are beautiful, but as it's especially the sons who are given a certain beauty, it actually comes from Dardanos himself, and thus from Zeus. The first and only time divine-like beauty was conferred on one of the demigod sons of Zeus, and it uh, had effects, as we know.

I feel like Xanthos gifted Erichthonios his first mares (maybe as a wedding gift?), and this is where the whole ~horse connection comes from; the herd grew ungodly fast and Boreas, uh, taking an interest, meant the horses descended from those were particularly fine and could fetch some great prices when sold/or favour and prestige when gifted.

Ganymede kept up with his brothers and sisters' lives. He might only have ended up visiting Troy when his father died, but he was well aware of what was happening. Basically, he had a sort of long-distance relationship to his family, even if it was sort of one-sided, but it kept a connection up for him, which was important! It let him still feel involved.

Like I've mentioned before, I don't go with Tros' son Ilus founding Troy, because I lean more into the real world here. What I do, instead, is have Dardanos' son, the first Ilus, help extend and build up the already extant settlement into something greater, and it keeps building from there. Ganymede's brother Ilus merely becomes one of the greatest Trojan kings and does a lot for the city, etc. I headcanon he built a new shrine/temple to Athena for both her and the Palladium (and that the cow omen mentioned in Apollodorus has to do where to put said temple, not the city as a whole).

I originally headcanoned Kallirhoe dying with her husband, and obviously this still applies for my fic-verse. But it's also just annoying when most of what I see is how alone and depressed and without family connections Ganymede is, so I also definitely very much like the idea of Kallirhoe living quite a long time afterwards, and that she becomes one of his main familial connections alongside Xanthos, now that she's back within the divine sphere.

I headcanon the Palladium is tied to the Trojan royal bloodline specifically, through Elektra. I basically go with that it was given to her directly, and then handed on to Dardanos as he left Samothrace. (Blending a scholia and a 4th century CE source.) It does have a protective effect even in Rome, but as the blood connection to the royal family (via Aeneas and thus later the gens Julia) is extremely thin at that point, it's not at all a very strong protection.

Green is the eye colour for fresh-water nymphs! (Blue for ocean-connected ones.) Which means the whole Trojan royal family have green eyes in various shades and degree, and it is always very bright and intense colour. Around the generation of Priam's children hazel has become more usual, but even then the green element is very obvious and still more-than-mortal intense/bright.

Xanthos and Simoeis tacitly agree not to marry any of their daughters into Priam/Anchises' generation (or the one after), exactly because they can tell something is coming. It's nothing against the family suddenly, in fact especially Xanthos becomes more actively protective, but they don't want to tie any of their daughters into what might be tragedy. (It becomes far more of a tragedy than they'd assumed, however, which both affirms their choice but also horrifies them both.)