Creating Dordei

Guilty as charged. The seeds for the Amazon princess Dordei are to be found in the original Wonder Woman comics, when Princess Diana fooled her mother Queen Hippolyta to take a stranded American pilot back to his world and go forth as a beacon of the Amazon ways. Wonder Woman hooked me as a young girl like nothing I’d ever seen, especially the secret Amazon civilization on Paradise Island that thrived away from the rest of the world. Armed withAmazon and Hippolyta, I went charging into the research stacks (this was the late 1970′s, remember). My obsession with the Amazons had begun.

Of course Wonder Woman wasn’t a complete echo of ancient legend, and of course we were in the maelstrom of the woman’s liberation movement. Whatever character would eventually come out of me wasn’t going to be a shrinking violet. She would stand for some immutable standards and values. But she would also not be either submissive or superior to her eventual mate. She would be the balance, and she would be equal.

Dordei is not Wonder Woman and her mother Hippolyta is not the kind and wise matriarch of Paradise Island. One of the first ideas I had for Dordei was that her mother the queen was busy breaking Amazon civilization while Dordei did her best to fix Hippolyta’s messes. As The Curse opens Dordei has been struggling to keep the Amazon monarchy functioning, but not even Dordei can continue to rescue Hippolyta from herself.

The reader meets Dordei and quickly comes to understand some important aspects. Of course Dordei is strong and of course she is well-versed in the civilization of her people. She also has studied and become the High Priestess of Artemis in the Amazon capital of Themiskyra–that is to say, Dordei is aware of a greater reality. While not yet a mother in the biological sense, Dordei is a mother to her people, her kind support and encouragement helping the Amazons through some pretty bleak days.

Dordei is not defined by Arion of Iphisia, but he is her complement and her balance. His gentle power interrupts the endless chaos of Amazonia.