So, uh, that hiatus ended up being a lot longer than I thought that it would be. I’m back now, though, and today we’re going to be looking at the conception and birth of Helen of Troy.

Spoiler alert: it involves divine bestiality.

So, to start off with, we have Leda. Leda is an Aetolian princess who is currently married to Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. Things are looking pretty sweet for her, at least up until one of the worst fates that can befall a woman in Greek mythology happens.

Zeus sees her and decides that he’d really, really like to hit that.

But he can’t just go down all godly like and take Leda down to bone town. Nope, he decides that he’s going to turn into a swan and see if she likes to boink poultry. Zeus, buddy, pal, we really gotta talk about your penchant for turning into animals in order to seduce human ladies. It’s just fucking weird, bro.

Anyway, this works for some reason, and bird Zeus and Leda get it on. Now, it should be pointed out that the level to which this is consensual is somewhat debatable, since Zeus isn’t really known for taking no for an answer. But for propriety’s sake lets just say that Leda is apparently really into birds and leave it at that.

At any rate, Zeus’s god sperm does its job and Leda gets knocked up from the bird fuckery. And since Zeus was a bird when they did the deed, she ends up laying a couple of eggs, because that’s how biology works. The eggs hatch and out pop two sets of twins: the aforementioned Helen and her sister Clytemnestra, and their brothers Castor and Pollux.

It should be noted that a couple of these kids are actually Tyndareus’s, though. Which ones is somewhat debated, but it’s generally accepted that Clytemnestra and Castor were mortal, whereas Helen and Pollux were more on the divine side. Not sure why all of them popped out of eggs if half of them weren’t Zeus’s kids, but that’s mythology for you.

That’s not the only version of this story, though, because it’s the nature of myths to have a bunch of different versions. In this version, Leda actually isn’t the biological mother of the four listed above, but the goddess of vengeance, Nemesis. It’s basically the same, otherwise: goose Zeus bones Nemesis, then Nemesis lays a couple eggs that she promptly abandons. A shepherd finds the eggs and presents them to the queen. Out pop the kids, which Leda and Tyndareus raise as their own.

As for what happens to the kids, we generally know what’s going on with Leda. Clytemnestra marries Agamemnon, whom she kills in retribution for him sacrificing their daughter. Castor and Pollux end up becoming the Gemini constellation.

And the lesson here is that Zeus apparently thinks that ladies are really into boning animals. And that Renaissance painters really liked depicting that.

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