Oedipus is a complex man: an obsessive riddle-solver whose desire to get to the bottom of puzzles has won him the kingship of Thebes and also ushers in horror as he determines his true genetic origins. He’s risen to become a wise, empathetic, and beloved king—the savior of Thebes and the conqueror of the riddling Sphinx. But he eventually learns that his efforts to avoid the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother have been for naught—in getting away from his adoptive parents to prevent this fate, he has in fact enacted this nightmare onto his birth parents. None of his heroic actions saves him from a horrific downfall. Instead, they’re a part of that downfall—steps in a dance he doesn’t know he’s doing. Though he’s offered many chances to turn back and look away from the truth, Oedipus pushes on. His ruin is an image of the purest human suffering.

Jocasta, Oedipus’s mother and wife, is a woman beset by tragedies. As a young mother, she learned that her son was fated to kill his father and marry her, so out of desperation, she asked a servant to expose her newborn to death. Later, her beloved husband Laius was killed while on a spiritual journey.