Hera

Hera is the Greek goddess of women and marriage, and the wife and older sister of Zeus from Disney's 1997 film Hercules and its television series. She is voiced by Samantha Eggar.

Origin
In Greek mythology, Hera was known as the Queen of the Gods, wife and sister of Zeus, the King of the Gods. Hera was the goddess of marriage and women. Hera was Hercules's step-mother and his enemy. When Hercules was born, she sent 2 serpents to kill him, but he was found instead playing with them as if they were toys. She also is involved in the origins of the Milky Way when Zeus tricked her into nursing Hercules and she tore him away from her once she recognized who the baby was, severely wounding her.

Hercules (film)
In the 1997 film Hercules, Hera is portrayed as the mother of Hercules. In actual mythology, Hercules' mother was a mortal woman (Zeus, despite being married, had children with numerous other women), and the jealous Hera acted as an antagonist to Hercules (much like Hades in this version).

In contrast to this, the Disney version portrays Hera as a loving and kind mother to Hercules. She appears to be somewhat overprotective of him, as evidenced when she objects to her Husband Zeus letting the newborn Hercules play with his thunderbolts. She is voiced by Samantha Eggar. Hera does not seem to be as unfriendly to Hades as the other gods in the series, as shown when she persuaded Zeus to attend Hades' pool party.

Powers & Abilities
Hera possesses the conventional attributes of the Olympian gods.

Powers

 * Superhuman Strength : Like all Olympians, Hera has superhuman strength.
 * Immortality : Like all Olympians, Hera is immortal and therefore will never die.
 * Omnipresence : Like most of the Olympians, Hera is able to be at two places at once.
 * Magic : Like most of the Olympians, Hera possess the ability to use magic. Hera has demonstrated this ability by teleporting, changing her physical size and manipulating clouds.

Abilties

 * Hera oversees marriage.
 * Hera is able to throw Zeus' thunderbolt.

Trivia

 * While she loves her husband, Hera often serves as both Zeus' conscious and his voice of reason, persuading him in matters that he approaches with less than appropriate actions.
 * Hera was one of the most heavily re-interpreted Olympian Gods in Disney's version of the story. In the original Greek Myth, she was not Hercules mother, but rather his stepmother, after Zeus had an affair with his mortal mother. She was known to have hated Hercules with a passion, going so far as to try to kill him on multiple occasions. She was ultimately the cause of what caused Hercules to kill his wife and children, leading up to his 12 labors.
 * Interestingly enough, Hera was originally going to be the villain of the film instead of Hades in the now discarded early scripts, when the film was going to be more faithful to the myth (much like Elsa's case in Frozen): in this draft, Hera out of jealousy after finding that Zeus had married a human woman named Alcmene (Herc's biological mother in the myth) plots to overthrow him and take over Mt. Olympus by stealing a powerful artifact known as the Kronos Stone and using it to free the Titans from their underground prison as revenge. When Hera learns that Herc will one day try to defeat her and the Titans, she sends two poisonous snakes (who would eventually become Pain and Panic) to kill the boy, but Herc easily defeats them with his bare hands. As Hercules grew older, Hera orders her own son Eurystheus (who would eventually become Hades in the final film) to capture and enslave Hercules while Hera would go to use the Kronos Stone to free the Titans, and the only way to defeat Eurystheus and achieve his freedom was to perform the Twelve Labours. After succeeding in all twelve labors (Hades was originally going to be his ally instead of his archenemy) and defeating Eurystheus, the Titans are unleashed and succeed in helping Hera take over Mt. Olympus and cursing the other gods and sing their own villain song (which eventually became "We're the Titans", see below), only to end up betraying Hera and leaving her alone while they proceed to wreak further havoc and Hercules has to try to defeat the Titans to save Zeus and the other gods. Hera was even originally going to resemble either the Evil Queen, Maleficent, and/or Cruella DeVil. However, this original concept was abandoned for being too dark and becoming the film we see today, while the original script was ultimately found by Renaissance Films and used for their own (and more faithful) take on the myth.
 * Many knockoffs of this film following the Disney film's release especially Renaissance Films' Hercules and Xena: The Battle for Mt. Olympus, an animated sequel to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess (which infamously featured the villain song "We're the Titans(, We're the Best)") are ironically more faithful to the original myth right down to featuring an evil Hera, and in an even more ironic twist, the Disney Wonderful World of Knowledge series book "Myths and Legends" (released in the 1970s) featured a more faithful version of the Hercules myth, also complete with an evil Hera. This means that this version of the character is one of the only adaptations of the Hercules myth that do not show her as the main antagonist.

Appearances

 * Hercules and the Apollo Mission
 * Hercules and the King of Thessaly
 * Hercules and the Pool Party
 * Hercules and the Return of Typhon
 * Hercules and the Parents' Weekend
 * Hercules and the Tiff on Olympus