Explore the pantheons

Wife of the sage Gautama, deceived by Indra in her husband's form and cursed to become invisible, in later tellings, a stone, until the touch of Rama's foot released her. Every era has retold her story to argue about her innocence.

Daughter of Oedipus, who buried her outlaw brother in defiance of the king's decree, choosing divine law over human edict and death over obedience, the West's founding drama of conscience versus state.

Cretan princess whose ball of thread led Theseus out of her father's Labyrinth. He sailed off with her and left her sleeping on Naxos, where Dionysus found her, married her, and set her bridal crown among the stars.

The huntress suckled by a bear, first to wound the Calydonian Boar, unbeaten in the footrace no suitor survived, until one raced her scattering irresistible golden apples, on Aphrodite's advice.

Trojan princess granted prophecy by Apollo and cursed, when she refused him, never to be believed. She foresaw the horse, the fall, her own murder in Agamemnon's house, and was dismissed as mad each time.

The princess who chose the mortal Nala over the gods themselves, recognizing him because he alone cast a shadow. When ruin scattered them, it was her wit, announcing a second swayamvara no true husband would allow, that drew him back.

Born full-grown from a fire altar, wife of all five Pandavas. Her public humiliation in the dice hall, saved from disrobing by Krishna's grace, becomes the moral engine of the entire war.

Daughter of Zeus and Leda, the most beautiful woman in the world, whose flight, or abduction, to Troy launched a thousand ships. The tradition never settles whether she was cause, captive, or pretext; in one version she never went to Troy at all.

The princess who married Satyavan knowing he had a year to live, then followed Yama himself as he carried off her husband's soul, and argued the god of death, boon by careful boon, into giving him back.

Daughter of a sage and a celestial nymph, secretly married to King Dushyanta, who, under Durvasa's curse, forgot her entirely until a lost ring restored his memory. Mother of Bharata, after whom India is named.

Daughter of the earth, found in a furrow by King Janaka, and wife of Rama. Abducted by Ravana and held in Lanka, she remains steadfast through captivity and ordeal, revered as an avatar of Lakshmi and the ideal of constancy.

Sister of Krishna, wife of Arjuna, carried off with Krishna's own connivance, and mother of the doomed young hero Abhimanyu. The Pandava line survives through her grandson Parikshit.

Lakshmana's wife, left behind for fourteen years. In popular tradition she slept her husband's share of sleep as well as her own, so that he could stand guard unsleeping, the epic's quietest sacrifice.