curds-and-wheyface:

Odin, his wife and his children: A Theory.

[Thor: Ragnarok spoilers within]

I’ve seen some posts about how Loki and Hela look alike and people are all “Sorry Thor, who was adopted again?” and I get that it’s tongue in cheek but still, it got me itching to make this post.

Basically – I feel like we can all assume Hela was pre-Frigga, right?? She sure as hell ain’t Frigga’s.

Odin loved Frigga, she was so precious to him and she was so good, there’s just no way she’d have sat back and let Odin take their kid off to cruelly conquer all those realms as described by Hela.

So we can surely only assume that he was happily pillaging realms with his daughter at his side right up until the moment he laid eyes on beautiful, compassionate Frigga. And. You know. He’s just getting a bit old for all of this, isn’t he? He’d like to settle down with the love of a good woman.

So he pulls back a bit from the pillaging, he’s trying to woo this stunning creature who’s so kind-of-heart and caring that there’s no way she’ll accept him unless he becomes a more benevolent leader, more gentle, more a protector of realms than a destroyer of realms, and he finds that he totally cool with that. It’s doable.

Only his kid’s like “Oh, Hel no.”

All thirsty for blood and battle and victory, just as he raised her. But she doesn’t fit his aesthetic now that he’s trying to be A Good King TM.

So he puts his kid in a box and starts again. Slate wiped. Together Odin and his new wife have a golden-haired boy, takes after his mum. Odin’s going to do it right this time, he’s going to raise this boy up good and strong and kind.

Except he can’t quite forget his first born, who he did love despite her failure to fall inline with his changing idealogy, and so when he finds that little baby on Jotunheim, helpless and alone, and decides to extend his newfound kindness to him…

Well. Maybe it’s no real coincidence that the glamour he gave him looks just a little bit like his firstborn.

I’m not at all sure that Loki’s Aesir appearance is a glamor that Odin put on him, though. I favor the theory that he’s a born shapeshifter and his instinct was to take on a form that his rescuer would find appealing and that would motivate him to care for baby Loki. So why did he end up looking the way he did? 3 possibilities: (1) that’s just how his Jotun genotype translated into Aesir phenotype; (2) he transformed into what a biological son of Odin might have looked like; (3) he took on an appearance that resembled Odin’s lost child.