In ancient Greek stories, Medea is a princess from Colchis, a land far from Greece, and she knows magic. She helps Jason win the Golden Fleece: she uses her knowledge against the king’s tests and against the dragon that guards the fleece, then she runs away with him. They have children. Later Jason decides to marry another woman, a Greek princess, to make his own life safer and grander. Medea is left with almost nothing. In the famous telling she kills that woman, and then she kills the children she had with Jason — a revenge so terrible that her name still means a love that turns to something people can barely look at. Though actually, she is not only a monster in every telling: early in the story she is the one who saves Jason, and some writers treat her as a foreign woman the Greeks used and then tried to throw away. The child-killing is the part later plays made unforgettable. People say the name when they talk about betrayal, rage, and a woman who will not go quietly.