Hera is the Olympian goddess of childbirth and marriage but when her husband lays with a mortal, siring a demi-god, her godly wrath knows no bounds.
Daughter of Titans
Hera is the daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Her father Cronus swallows Hera with her older brothers and sisters in hopes of preventing the prophecy that Cronus would be overthrown by one of his children. Their youngest sibling, Zeus, eventually causes Cronus to vomit them, and the gods defeat the Titans.
Zeus courts Hera, despite her initial rejection of his advances. When they are finally wed, the primordial Earth Mother Gaea gives Hera a golden apple tree, which is later relocated to her sacred orchard in the shadow of the enslaved Titan general Atlas, where it’s then guarded by his daughters, the Hesperides nymphs. Hera and Zeus’ marriage is plagued by constant bickering. Hera tolerates Zeus’ frequent infidelities for the most part, but becomes incensed when he chooses, via Athena’s plotting, to conceive his personal champion with the mortal Alcmene rather than her. Athena guides Alcmene to leave her son, Alcaeus, in a spot to which Athena leads Hera. Athena then convinces Hera to suckle the seeming foundling, her divine milk granting the boy invulnerability before he bites down on her, and she hurls him away. Hera swore vengeance upon learning the truth, and Alcmene renames the baby Heracles, AKA Hercules, meaning “The glory of Hera”, in vain hope of staying Hera’s wrath.
Olympian Goddess
Hera possesses the conventional superhuman physical attributes of an Olympian goddess, including much denser bones and flesh. She can lift 25 tons and run 65 mph. Virtually immortal, she is immune to all diseases, nearly all toxins, and can withstand extreme temperatures, pressures, and most physical harm.
Though not specifically trained in combat, she can do vast damage with powerful force bolts released from her hands, including the legendary Thunderbolt inherited from Zeus.
Among the Olympians, she is one of the best-versed of the energy-wielders, only surpassed by Zeus, Pluto (Hades), and Neptune. She can erect powerful, nearly impenetrable force fields and create interdimensional apertures.
Hera is also gifted with prophecy, and she can scan minds to see what they have seen. flight, and an ability to alter her appearance. According to myth, her milk grants invulnerability. Though Hera is a master manipulator, her feelings often interfere with her cunning strategies.
Blasphemers
Hera has always had it out for Hercules. Her first attempt to kill him is in his infancy, but it fails when he strangles the two snakes that she sends to slay him. Hera never stops her attempts to murder him. Further incensed by Heracles’ continual resistance against the influence of the gods, Hera allies with Heracles’ enemies whenever she can—even the enemies of the Olympian gods, such as the last of the Titans, Typhon, and the Japanese god of evil Amatsu-Kami, AKA Mikaboshi. In response to Hera’s many attacks, Heracles eventually changes his name to the Romanized Hercules to distance himself from her.
Hera is fickle with her allies. She joins with her centuries-long ally Eurystheus and his bodyguard Achelous to recreate Hercules’ Twelve Labors, but ultimately disassociates with both of them when her plan fails, leaving them to Hercules’ wrath.
Olympian Allies
As part of the Olympian pantheon, or the Dodekatheon—the 12 principal Olympian deities—Hera often allies with her brethren, but for Hera, blood isn’t always thicker than water, especially where it concerns her brother and husband, Zeus. Hera tolerates her his infidelities until he mates with a mortal and produces the half-god, half-human Hercules. She then makes it her mission to murder the demi-god and peace between Hera and Zeus is typically tenuous since his obsession with Hercules often irks her.
Hera’s favorite daughter is Hebe, goddess of youth, and she manipulates her son Ares into doing things for her, often going against Hercules.
Hera’s History
After Hercules’ mortal death around 1246 BC, Zeus tried to broker peace with Hera by wedding Hercules to Hera’s favorite daughter, Hebe, but her lust for vengeance didn’t cease. Hera went as far as to resurrect and grant immortality to Hercules’ estranged cousin Eurystheus, the man who sent Hercules on his original Twelve Labors, to use him as a pawn against Hercules throughout the ages.
Circa 1183 BC, when Eris, the goddess of discord, created a golden apple to be awarded to the fairest of the Olympian goddesses, Hera fought with Athena and Aphrodite Ourania, AKA Aphrodite, over it, but Zeus, not wanting to get involved, let the Trojan Prince Paris settle the dispute. All three goddesses bribed the prince, but only Aphrodite succeeded by promising him the world’s most beautiful woman: Helen, wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus. Enraged when Aphrodite was awarded the apple, Hera and Athena plotted revenge. When Helen ran away with Paris, an alliance of Greek city-states led by Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon, formed a coalition to attack Troy to reclaim Helen and loot the city. Wanting Troy destroyed, Hera and Athena supported the Greeks during the decade-long siege of the city. Late in the war, the time-displaced, temporarily amnesiac Asgardian thunder god Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, wandered into the conflict and sided with the Trojans. Provoked by Thor’s interference, it only took a little persuasion from Hera and Athena to drive Zeus into battle against the Asgardian, but ultimately Thor departed, and Zeus swore the Olympians would not interfere further in the Trojan War, not knowing that Thor’s evil stepbrother, Loki Laufeyson, AKA Loki, also briefly visited this era to help Odysseus devise the Trojan horse strategy used to destroy Troy.
With the fall of the Greek Empire and the rise of the Roman Empire, Hera gained new worshippers under the name Juno. Around 1000 AD, Hera uncharacteristically sided with Hercules when he asked Zeus to wage war against the Asgardians after Loki, masquerading as Thor, attacked Hercules in front of Zeus. The war ultimately ended when Zeus and Odin altered the minds of every warrior, leading each to believe they had won. Around this same time, the extraterrestrial Celestials’ third Host came to Earth, and Hera joined Gaea and the other pantheon’s mother goddesses to gather and empower 12 young humans over the next 10 centuries, guarding them until the Celestials returned to judge humanity. In recent years, Gaea presented these Young Gods as the best specimens of humanity, and the Celestials deemed them worthy, and thus, judged in favor of humanity’s continued survival.
After Hercules was grievously injured by the Masters of Evil while serving with the Avengers, Zeus sent the Avengers to Hades, but Hera, along with the benevolent Titan Prometheus and the Olympians Aphrodite, Phoebus Apollo, AKA Apollo, Athena and Hephaestus Aetnaeus, AKA Hephaestus, assisted Janet Van Dyne, AKA the Wasp, and her fellow Avengers in clearing their names. After this incident, Zeus realized how dangerous the Olympians were and forbade them from interfering with humanity ever again. Ignoring her husband’s decree, Hera later challenged her son Ares to a contest to see who could bring Hercules more sorrow, with Hera attempting to kill Hercules’ paramour, Taylor Madison, unaware she was actually an artificial construct designed by Zeus to expose Hera’s animosity. Ares told Zeus of Hera’s plot, and Zeus revealed Madison’s true nature and terminated her existence. Though Zeus’ scheming humiliated her, Hera was pleased when Hercules denounced Zeus for his manipulations and refused to return to Olympus, leading Zeus to strip Hercules of his godhood for a time. Annoyed by her husband’s continued interest in Hercules and angered when Zeus saved him from sure death at Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk’s hands, Hera continued plotting against Hercules.
After Ragnarok wiped out the Asgardians, Zeus led Hera and the rest of the Dodekatheon in a new, low-profile interaction with the mortal world, forming the Olympus Group on Earth as a front for their studies of humanity. Hera took the opportunity to recruit her centuries-long ally Eurystheus, now a rich corporate executive, and his bodyguard Achelous to recreate under her direction Hercules’ legendary Twelve Labors. Filmed for a reality show, these New Labors were updated for the modern age, but after Hercules easily succeeded in the first eight labors, an angered Hera took it upon herself to revise the final four labors. Deducing her involvement in the New Labors, Zeus asked Hera to stop hounding Hercules, but reminding Zeus that she was allowed to go after his illegitimate children as long as she had to endure his infidelities, she asked for a vote on the New Labors’ continuation and a majority of the Dodekatheon voted in favor of it. Surprisingly, Hercules succeeded in his final four tasks, even getting a flower from his deceased wife, Megara, in Hades as a sign of her forgiveness for Hercules’ losing control and slaughtering her and his children. Hera gave up and withdrew her support for Eurystheus and Achelous, leaving them behind to be punished by an enraged Hercules. Hera’s former allies seemingly died, impaling each other, in their futile attempt to murder Hercules, leaving him unaware of Hera’s involvement.
When the Japanese/Shinto god of evil Mikaboshi attacked Olympus, all Olympians worked together to fight off Mikaboshi and his minions, although even during this dire situation Hera couldn’t resist the temptation to harm Hercules by not warning him of an attacking monster. Though the Olympians prevailed over Mikaboshi and his minions, Zeus perished at the evil god’s hands. Upon Zeus’ physical death, Hera inherited his divine powers and shares in the Olympus Group, becoming the corporation’s new CEO and allying herself with Pluto, who fashioned and fused a mystical stone bracelet to the arm of Typhon—a powerful enemy of the Olympians gods—to enable Hera to use him as her enforcer; twisted with hatred, Hera even became Typhon’s lover.
Tired of humanity, Hera financed Athena’s former pupil Pythagoras Dupree to create the Continuum technology. The technology leeched matter from the real universe through a faith-fueled portal into a bubble universe that would replace the real universe upon completion as soon as Hera had led her followers to the new universe and closed the portal from the other side. After sending the Amazons after Poseidon to force him to sell his shares to her, Hera called a meeting with the other Dodekatheon members, telling them they were relieved of their positions within Olympus Group. Her plans were interrupted when her daughter Hebe tried to save her husband, Hercules, by tricking Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin (but at the time known as Iron Patriot) and his Avengers into a confrontation with Hera’s alliance, allowing Hercules, Athena, and genius Amadeus Cho, AKA Brawn, to escape. After tossing Hebe out a fortieth-story window at Olympus Group as punishment, Hera continued with her plans.
When Athena and Amadeus Cho learned of Hera’s plans from Dupree’s notes, they allied with Hercules and the Avengers to break into Olympus Group to stop Hera. Meanwhile, Hera released mesmerized human thralls upon Earth to start a viral ad campaign for Continuum that drew humans like moths to the new, but non-existent, product, leaching their faith through the Continuum portal to create the new Earth Hera desired. While her loyal warriors fought the Avengers, Hera took Typhon and the reincarnated, teenaged Zeus to the Continuum Chamber to present her plans to the young Zeus, but her husband, having learned humility via his recent experiences, talked Hera out of her scheme. When she ordered Typhon to shut down the Continuum portal, the Titan turned on her and revealed that he intended to do his mother, Gaea’s, bidding by finally destroying the gods and creating a pure Earth without life. With their combined forces, Hera and Zeus attacked Typhon with an electrical blast, but the stolen Aegis breastplate Typhon wore absorbed the attack. Typhon then used the absorbed energy to blow off Hera’s head. After Typhon slew Zeus as well, the former royal couple of Olympus were reunited in death as lovers. Thanatos, the god of death, took their spirits with him. Hercules apparently killed Typhon, and Athena destroyed the Continuum portal with Hercules trapped in that neo-realm, apparently destroying him.
Although Hera and Zeus perished, Mikaboshi desired to end everything as the Chaos King, and he didn’t let them rest in the spirit realms. Instead, he enslaved them, but Hercules came to their rescue. After the Chaos War, Hulk blamed the Olympian gods for their lack of action for how Hulk brethren’s suffering and sought their help to cure Richard Jones, AKA A-Bomb, and Elizabeth Ross, AKA Red She-Hulk. Hera and Zeus refused, Hera on account that Hulk didn’t even believe in the gods and Zeus blamed the Hulk for the consequences he brought on himself.
When Nyx, the Queen of night, attacked Olympus and slayed all the gods, they were soon reborn as their true selves, as the Dark Olympians, more savage and warmongering than before. Their uncontrollable and ruthless wrath was met by the Guardians of the Galaxy, who attempted to stop them. They succeeded in defeating the raging gods but at the sacrifice of Peter Quill, AKA Star-Lord, who ended up with their power. He seemingly died but banished the Dark Olympians to another dimension for hundreds of years. Though they eventually returned for blood. The Olympians met the Guardians once more on Daedalus-5 with their ally Hercules, who hadn’t been present for the initial massacre at Nyx’s hands. Hera faced Guardians member Groot and seemingly perished in the battle.
