Polytheus

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Polytheus
Species	Naga
Sex	Male
First Appearance	All that glitters
Allies	N/A
Location	Polytheus' Island
Voice actor(s)	Jamie Watson (S1) Daniel Davies (S2) Tomas Spencer (S3)

Polytheus is a recurring character in Mia and Me. He's Centopia's travelling merchant.

Appearance

Though it isn't stated in the series, his design is inspired on three different creatures: nagas, gorgons (more specifically, Medusa) and rattlesnakes. Being part snake, as Mo says when describing him to Mia, he has a long, slender body and a tail with a grey rattle at the end. His scales on the majority of his body are green, with lighter green concentric circles distributed in random places, though his underbelly, palms, chest and face are consistently white. He has yellow eyes, and six snakes that come out of his head, giving him a resemblance to Medusa. He wears gold accessories, including bracers on each forearm and shoulder pads with brooches over his pectorals.

Character

Polytheus is an unpredictable, mysterious creature and the only merchant in Centopia. Both good elves and evil ones often make deals with him, because he has a wide variety of merchandise for sale, including objects he's crafted himself, such as tiaras with crystals from the Crystal Cave or water fountains made out of old, broken sculptures, as well as winter or summer clothing, and rare items like a piece of Centopia's crystal heart and a pink imitation glass that greatly resembles it. He's known to haggle and accept the offers from whoever's the highest bidder, no matter what purpose they want his stuff for. Polytheus lives in an isolated green castle, with serpent-shaped columns, where he hoards all his treasures, located in his own small island in the middle of the sea.

Personality

He can't be trusted to only do what's morally right, as he only ever has his own interests and wealth in mind. He is considered a maverick and you never truly know which side he’s on. He justifies his lack of a firm allegiance to neither elves nor dark elves (such as Panthea, Gargona, etc.) saying that he has no interest in politics, even if the evil ones' bad deeds affect both him and his pet.

Despite his great interest in increasing his wealth, he also proved to have a strong sense of honour. When Mia was trapped behind a wall of rocks, his first impulse was to escape from the cave on his own and leave her behind, but when she asked whether he was a man of his word or not, reminding him that he owed her a favour for saving him from a carnivorous plant earlier that day, he felt conflicted, struggled internally with those opposite ideas but finally gave up and chose to help her. He even sacrificed a golden statue he had found to lift the rocks a bit higher so Onchao could escape as well. Polytheus also stated (and proved) on the third season, that he, as an honest businessman, can't abide thieves, so he wouldn't give Gargona and Dax the crystal heart piece in exchange for something they didn't obtain through honest means.

It's very clearly shown in all three seasons that Polytheus is very lonely and friendless, due to him not caring much about others as much as he cares about his wallet. On Choosing Sides, he casually states that no one visits him if not to buy/sell something; on That's What Friends Are For, he only discovers that the crystals in the Crystal Cave reflect the image of one's best friend when the elves tell him, and his reflection only changes to someone else (Mo) after he receives a gift in that very same place; on Phuddle Moves Out, he remorselessly manipulates Phuddle, telling him that his enterpreneurship makes him very busy and lonely, to get him to do what he wanted, and immediately told him to leave when he was done. When Dax threatens him on the same episode, Polytheus remarks the fact that he delivers, they pay, and then they're all off their separate ways, acknowledging the complete absence of a bond between them.

A contradiction of his friendless state is his appreciation for his pet, Buttercup. He cares deeply about it, though he can get exhasperated and call it stubborn when it refuses to do as he says.

Relationships

Mia

• Mia and Polytheus are neutral to each other, sometimes he helps her but sometimes he helps the enemy, it always depends on who can give him the best payment. Just like she feels little to no sympathy for him due to his treacherous tendencies, he does seem to be slightly more fond of her than of other elves. He outwardly says that she's the least problematic of the three (compared to Mo and Yuko).

Mo

• Mo and Polytheus have a neutral relationship. Mo describes him as someone you can't trust, but will resort to asking for his help if nothing else works or if it's completely necessary. On Friendship Day, Mo pities Polytheus when he confesses that, after spending a while staring at the crystals in the Crystal Cave, he realized that he doesn't have any friends who care about him; hearing this, Mo decides to give him a gift he had initially picked up for Yuko, wishing him a good friendship day at the cost of losing the only thing he had to give her. Immediately afterwards, Mo shows up instead of Polytheus' reflection, becoming his first friend ever. After this episode, their relationship goes back to normal and remains unchanged, though, as seen when he didn't accept the scarce gold he could offer and his eternal gratitude in exchange for his piece of the heart crystal.

Yuko

• Yuko and Polytheus are neutral to each other. They don't hold any grudges nor respect for the other; Yuko dislikes him, considering him "slimy" and untrustworthy, whereas he ignores her for the most part.

Violetta

• Polytheus never interacts directly with Violetta while she's in Centopia nor does he ever voice any opinions about her. On one episode, he sees Varia flying away from Mia while they were arguing nearby, and he overhears Mia calling her "Violetta" instead of her made-up elf name, which intrigues him, thus becoming one of the few Centopians to hear her real name. When he mentions that to Rixel, the elf brushes it off saying he must have misheard her calling her Varia, convincing him without much effort.

Rixel

• Polytheus is rather apathetic about Rixel's goals, but the merchant provided him with gadgets and information when offered something valuable enough for him. On one occasion, when the elf took Gurga to Polytheus' home to ambush Mia and her friends, the merchant got angry at him for nearly setting his home on fire in the process, and he held a grudge against him until the next episode, telling Rixel, who had just visited him again to make a deal, that he didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore due to the damage he had caused. He was easily swayed, though, when Rixel offered him something he deemed interesting, putting his issues with him aside for his own profit.

Dax

• Dax and Polytheus are business associates in season 3. Polytheus agrees to providing them with some goods in exchange for their generous payments. Dax only cares about him as long as he gets what he and Gargona want, and will readily insult him (calling him an "overstuffed lizard") and going as far as threatening to get physically aggressive if he doesn't do as they say.

Gargona

• She makes deals with Polytheus on different occasions throughout the series, from season 1 to 3. Since they're neither allies nor enemies, Polytheus doesn't owe her allegiance and only helps with her plans when she offers generous pays for it, in which case he'll gladly provide her with trinkets she can use against the elves or valuable information about possible weaknesses of the elves/winged unicorns. Gargona knows very well that he's the only creature in Centopia that dark elves can buy, so she never even considers attacking Polytheus or getting him to do something by force. He holds little to no respect for her as he often messes with her just for fun, wrapping his tail around her, and, on one occasion, covering her mouth with his hand so she wouldn't contradict him in front of Panthea.

Phuddle

• Phuddle and Polytheus are on neutral standing throughout most of the show, never getting any major interactions with each other until season 3. He seems rather uninterested in the pan, and, as such, can get easily annoyed by him (for example, when he didn't stop playing his drum during the fake ceremony the elves had organized for him). One quality that he acknowledges from the pan, though, is his inventive abilities. In the episode Phuddle Moves Out, Polytheus finds Phuddle in an emotionally vulnerable state, and sees in him a chance to get something that Gargona and Dax had asked him for. The merchant manipulates him by pretending to feel sympathy for him to get the pan to create an umbrella that is repellant to the lemonade the elves use against the villains. After taking him to his island, pretending to lose and win, respectively, a couple of games of Ladybug Leap, Polytheus convinces him to make this invention, acting like he needs it for himself, instead of for his previously agreed deal. He tells the pan to go away when he finishes his transaction with Gargona afterwards, making it clear that he never really cared about his feelings. Luckily, Phuddle had realized his ruse on time and added a special button to the umbrella that foils Dax and Gargona's plans.

Buttercup

• Buttercup is Polytheus' turtle and best friend. He cares about him a lot, and always travels with him when he goes out on business trips. Though their relationship is very close more often than not, they're known to have arguments sometimes. For example, if Buttercup feels to hungry to keep walking, he'll stop on his tracks and refuse to go any further, even if Polytheus insists and pulls on his leash. They had a major fight on Season 3 when Buttercup raided their food reserves right before his owner came back with an empty stomach; after being insulted for his gluttony, Buttercup ran away and left Polytheus worried sick about his wellbeing. When Mia and her friends intervened, bringing the two together again, they had to convince the merchant that he was wrong as well and that he had to apologize, which he ended up doing, getting a much needed reconcilitation hug at the end.

Trivia

• Polytheus is a neutral character. Sometimes he assists the elves, and sometimes he assists the antagonists.
• All three of his voice actors gave him some sort of distinguishing feature to his speech:
  • Jamie often spoke with a British accent;
  • Daniel recurred to the Snake Talk trope for him;
  • Tomas usually rolled his r's.
• Starting on season 3, when things turn out well for him, he thanks "the merciful spirits of avarice", in a similar fashion to how one would say "thank God" or "thank goodness".
• When visiting the Elf Crater for the last time on season 3, Polytheus claims to abhor soup and prefer sugar (more specifically, Phuddle's lemonade), though earlier on the same season he found the soup that Mo, Yuko and Mia had prepared for him with Ambrosial Sweetroot "delicious".
  • If that wasn't a consistency error, chances are he only liked that soup because of that spice, and otherwise he hates regular soup.