Special Guest Blogger: Queen Cassiopeia

Bit of a chilly evening, isn’t it? Do try to spot me. I’m the one forming a rather glorious inverted, ‘W’. Or an ‘M’, depending on your perspective I suppose.
People often write to me, well, more they shout at the sky, and ask, 'How did you do it? How did you achieve immortality?' The short answer? By being far more beautiful than was, in retrospect, strictly sensible. The long answer involves a classic Greek kerfuffle, a sea monster with appallingly bad breath, and a chap on a flying horse with something to prove.
It all started, as these things so often do, on a perfectly lovely afternoon. I was in my court, feeling particularly radiant. The light was hitting my hair just so, my robes were a magnificent shade of amber, and honestly, I was a vision. I was discussing, quite civilly, the relative merits of my own daughter, Andromeda’s, beauty. Not that she wasn’t a lovely girl, don't get me wrong, but one must have standards.
And I said it. The line that launched a thousand ships of trouble and got me this prime real-estate in the heavens. I remarked that my beauty, and by extension Andromeda’s, was superior to that of Poseidon's Nereids, the sea nymphs.
Oh, the gasp! You’d have thought I’d questioned the quality of the ambrosia. Now, let’s be clear. Was it an arrogant thing to say? Perhaps, by modern standards. Was it an inaccurate thing to say? Absolutely not. It was a simple statement of fact. The Nereids are perfectly pleasant, I’m sure, in a watery, seaweed-in-your-hair sort of way. But they’re not queen material.
You make one tiny, truthful comment, and they go running to Daddy and their daddy happened to be Poseidon, the God of the Sea. A being with all the emotional maturity of a Jellyfish. He was utterly ghastly about it. Rather than, say, sending a strongly-worded letter, he did what God's do best and  threw a massive, world-ending tantrum.
The floods came first. A dreadful damp that seeped into everything. My sandal collection was ruined. Absolutely ruined. Then came the famine, which was a social nightmare.
It’s terribly difficult to host a salon when your guests are too busy gnawing on leather to discuss poetry. And finally, the pièce de résistance: Cetus.
Oh, Cetus. A great, scaly, hideous beast who was sent to devastate the coastline, a sort of living, breathing, roaring apology to the Nereids’ bruised egos. It was all so terribly dramatic. Those Greek gods, I swear, they have no sense of subtlety.
My dear husband, Cepheus, a dear man but not one for a crisis, was in a right state. He consulted an oracle (a generally awful idea, as oracles are notoriously vague and always seem to side with the Gods) and came back looking pale. Apparently, the only way to appease the great wet drama queen was to chain our only daughter to a rock to be eaten by the monster.
I admit it was a parenting low point but we were in a bind. The people were revolting (in both senses of the word), and the sea monster was getting closer. So, with the heaviest of hearts we chained poor Andromeda to the cliffside.
Now, this is where the story gets a bit… weird. Just as we were preparing for the worst and a rather dreadful state funeral, along came Perseus.
He was one of those heroes. All puffed-up chest, a cheeky grin, and riding a winged horse that left deposits all over the place. He’d just finished off a gorgon (the one with the snake-hair and the unfortunate complexion) and was looking for a bit of a victory tour. He saw Andromeda, saw the monster, and his eyes lit up. It wasn’t love at first sight, it was opportunity at first sight.
The deal was struck. A classic arrangement. He deals with the scaly pest, and he gets the girl. Saved a fortune on wedding dowries, I can tell you. There was a lot of flashing about with a sword and a mirrored shield (terribly showy) and before you knew it, Cetus was a very large, very dead problem.
So, there you have it. I made a comment, the gods overreacted, my daughter was nearly seafood, and a travelling salesman with a handbag and a horse saved the day.
Poseidon, in a final, petulant act of passive-aggression, decided my place in the heavens would be upside down, forever circling the pole star as a lesson in humility so next time you look up, see my glittering W and think of me, someone who made such a scene even the Gods threw a hissy fit and got me immortalised.