A Pantheon Divided
Let me strongly disclaim that this is not some sort of political statement, nor am I in any way defending the Nazis or racists or whatever. This is purely a hypothetical for the Riordanverse, with Percy thrown in because Pertemis. Partly inspired by Look Who's Back, a fantastic movie which is one of my top ten of all time. It's a comedy though also sad at times about a hypothetical what if Hitler woke up in the 21st century. It starts off as a comedy with some Borat like scenes of him walking around Berlin and people giving this hitler impersonator funny looks, then it turns kinda sad and heartwarming as Hitler meets people of races he previously hated, Jews, Gays, etc who are all so nice to him and make him rethink his life. He eventually ends up deciding he doesn't want to be the bad guy anymore and honestly it's so heartwarming.
A Pantheon Divided
Part 1 - The Definition of Misguided
Blindness. Misunderstanding. Scapegoats. Failure. Words like these rang through the mind of Perseus, god of Heroes, Loyalty, Swordsmanship, Demigods, Battles, etc. Perseus, the most misguided god, the most misunderstood, the most misunderstanding. Many claimed it wasn't his faulted, peer pressure and loyalty and two millennia of misinformation swayed him to the wrong side. He was the Robert E. Lee of Olympus. It's greatest god yet one of its most infamous.
So what was the story behind Perseus? What makes him such a controversial figure among Olympus? In the modern society, newcomers to Camp Half-Blood no longer revere their king, they boo and jeer at him once they learn of his past. Some of his own daughters have never forgiven him for his past decisions.
The Romans used to rule the world. Not literally of course, but everything that mattered was under Roman influence. The Americas were stagnant, everything below the Sahara did not influence the rest of the world, even Asia was quiet. But Europe, Europe was never quiet, and Europe was Roman!
They didn't even rule all of Europe, but today Europe is definitely Roman. The Russians, who live in a land not even on Roman maps, once claimed to be it's successor. The Francs, the Britons, the Germanics, who were once worthless Barbarians to the Romans, have evolved from Rome's ashes. They base themselves off of Rome, they speak branched-off versions of Latin, their kings worshipped Rome for fifteen-hundred years.
But then something happened, something that would change the course of history. The Romans could have ruled the world. They could have expanded to even Russia, the entire Sahara, through the silk road to Asia further than Alexander the Great. The British colonised India for the Spice Trade, Rome could have done it too, and China. The Americas could have been discovered by Romans, they could have been the ones to land there and start settlements. But that did not happen. Rome was on a constant slope upwards. Not even forty years after the death of Caesar, he was born. A baby who would change the world. The son of Cosmos, Jehovah, all of the gods combined, just God. He was the son of God.
After that it was all downhill. Sure, Rome would make campaigns and it would expand and contract for many more centuries, but the year of 0 B.C. would be the last of Rome's true godly greatness. Centuries later, the last pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, would gloriously die in the Battle of Samarra, fighting for his gods. The last true Emperor of Rome.
And who were the gods to blame for all this? Would mighty Jove declare humanity too far gone and wipe them out once more? Believe it or not, he tried. He called a meeting after Julian's death. The Fates had declared it. The last pagan emperor, the last true emperor, was dead. Rome had fallen, and in its place Christians strung its body up and pretended it still breathed for public image. The name Rome held great weight in Europe, why make a new Empire when you had just what you needed lying dead on the floor?
Jove suggested they do it. The gods would show revenge to the heretics by striking them down. The plagues of Diana and Apollo, the floodwaters of Neptune, the mortal dead rising once more in Pluto's name, the forges of Vulcan collapsing in a fiery apocalypse. This was to be Earth's fate. We would not be here today if the gods went through with it. Our monotheistic bloodlines would have been extinguished and our DNA formulas would not have been able to once again be formed.
But one of the council, he who showed compassion for humanity, raised his hand to halt the enraged and betrayed gods. Bacchus told them it shouldn't be the Christians they prosecuted. Wiping out all of humanity would enrage other pantheons that had sprouted up. Why would they exterminate the race they had come so far with when there was an easier target. A group small enough to get the other humans to overwhelm yet large enough to satiate their bloodlust. He meant, of course, the Jews.
Bacchus spoke for an hour of the things they had done. How weak they were, how evil they were, his words told stories to prove they were a detriment to society and the gods heard. The gods listened. The gods acted.
It was the gods who elevated anti-semitism. They whispered into the ears of kings, the ears of the church, the ears of the emperor. Jews had always been prosecuted alongside Christians by the Romans, but now the Christians would make sure the Jews knew their place in society.
And so history went on. The world evolved. The Romans fell, the West arose. The Americas were discovered and the natives were slaughtered. Wars were won and wars were lost. But the 20th century is where it got interesting.
Anti-semitism had always been around, but it skyrocketed across Europe during the 19th century. Authors and intellects were scapegoating the Jews for anything that went wrong. They wrote of them in books, they denounced them in the churches, they targeted them systematically. Nowhere was this more true than Central and Eastern Europe. Long story short, 1933 Germany was not a good time to be Jewish, but boy it was going to get a whole lot worse.
The gods tended to stay out of mortal wars unless it was for something major. Half of them supported Napoleon during his conquest of Western Europe, praising him as the third coming of Alexander or the best chance they had of an Empire like that of Rome. Half supported the Confederates in the Civil War, preaching their right to secede while slavery was never an issue on their table. Half joined the Central Powers in WW1, looking upon Austria-Hungary and Germany as victims of the Serbians and the Russians.
But it was the second world war that would prove their most trying time since the Trojan War 3000 years previous.