The Seven Kingdoms

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray was one of my favorite books when it came out. I was perusing through it the other day hoping to read out some inspiration for a book I'm working on, and the name Circe jumped out at me - and it was one I remembered from The Odyssey. From what I remember of that book, Circe's role involves turning all of Odysseus's men into pigs, turning them back when she realizes she has no power over Odysseus himself, and waylaying them for another year so that Odysseus can knock her up (do not get me started on him).

So I looked into her background a bit more. She was the Daughter of the Sun, and her many talents include sorcery, metamorphosis, necromancy, and a lot of knowledge involving herbs. After killing her husband, she was exiled by her father, who was Helios, to the island of Aeaea, which is where Odysseus ends up with her.

Suddenly, someone else's name made a lot more sense to me. My epiphany for the day:
                                                                    
                                                                  Cersei

My most recent television addiction would have to be Game of Thrones, which I discovered this last summer and am eagerly awaiting the third season (as well as the time to read the books it was based on). Anyway, the woman pictured above is Cersei, pronounced the same way as the Daughter of the Sun's name. Cersei is the queen of the seven Kingdom's of Westeros, rules from the sunny, island like city of King's Landing, and her powers include seduction, poison, and the murder of her husband's closest advisor, as well as a few other things I'll fail to mention on purpose. She's one of those characters you love to hate, and after digging a little deeper into the Greek Circe's background, the name the author chose for her is quite fitting.