Well, since you asked:

What I love about this myth (and most myths, really) is that there are so many ways to approach it, so my interpretation is very much based on my own feelings and preferences. And for me, it’s all about Persephone as both maiden and queen. 

Because in the end, she’s both. She doesn’t have to give up one for the other, and that means a lot to me. As the daughter of Demeter, she represents spring and youth and innocence. As the wife of Hades, she’s a figure of power and death and experience. But when you put those two aspects of her together, you get Persephone, who moves between both worlds rather than being tied down by either of her relationships. I love interpretations where she eats the pomegranate seeds on purpose, because it means she’s figured out how to keep both sides of herself without sacrificing anything.

As for her relationship with Hades—I understand why some people are uncomfortable with a story that ends in a marriage between a young girl and the man who abducted her, but I tend to look at the myth as an archetypal framework rather than as a literal series of events. The myth is so open to different interpretations, and it’s much more interesting and exciting to look at Persephone as a figure with agency rather than as a victim. Because then you get a young girl who goes through a journey of self-discovery through her own darkness and comes out as a fully integrated person. She becomes Queen of the Underworld as well as a goddess of spring—she rules over both life and death. She gets power out of it, power that she wouldn’t have as just Demeter’s child. There’s a reason the image of the pomegranate is so powerful, and it’s because it represents a choice, a willingness to shed innocence for experience and power, and to become a part of the darkness. Pomegranates are messy; their seeds leave a stain. Once you eat them, there’s no going back. Except, of course, that Persephone does go back. She negotiates with the darkness. She doesn’t give herself completely to anyone. She allows herself room for mobility, for duality. And it’s that duality that makes her whole.

The other aspect of the story that gets to me is simply the meeting of two seeming opposites. I’m almost always attracted to Beauty and the Beast stories, romances where light and darkness meet and influence each other. Hades as a somber figure of death falling in love with the joyful innocence and beauty of Persephone is, I think, appealing to a lot of people. And it’s not just Hades being drawn to Persephone, but the other way around, too. Light to darkness, darkness to light, until you get something in the middle that isn’t completely darkness or light, but a mixture of both. I fall for it every time.

Hope that helps! Good luck with your story!