Perseus

Perseus begins as a prophecy problem. An oracle told King Acrisius of Argos that his daughter's son would kill him, so he shut Danae in a bronze chamber underground. Zeus reached her anyway, as a shower of gold, and when the child was born Acrisius could not quite bring himself to murder them outright. He sealed mother and infant in a wooden chest and pushed it out to sea.

They washed up on Seriphos. Years later its king, Polydectes, wanted Danae and found her grown son inconvenient, so he demanded an impossible gift — the head of Medusa — knowing the errand was fatal. It would have been, without help. Athena and Hermes equipped him: winged sandals, a cap of invisibility, a reflective shield, and a blade that would not break.

He took the head by looking only at its reflection, and on the way home used it as a weapon. He turned the Titan Atlas to stone in one telling. He rescued Andromeda, chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and married her. Returning to Seriphos, he showed the head to Polydectes and his court and left a room of statues.

The prophecy still landed. Competing in athletic games years later, Perseus threw a discus that went wide into the crowd and struck an old man watching, who was Acrisius. He is the rare Greek hero whose story ends well anyway: he founded Mycenae, ruled long, and was set among the stars with Andromeda.