How did the tone of Oedipus change with its retellings?
Darker? Or lighter? Or changing with each telling?
Darker would be more death, more suicide, more incest, etc, while lighter would be the opposite.
Such as Oedipus' kids being Jocasta's as well instead of from another wife would be darker.
Theoi seems to have a listing of variants:
From this point traditions again differ, for according to some, Oedipus in his blindness was expelled from Thebes by his sons and brother-in-law, Creon, who undertook the government, and he was guided and accompanied by Antigone in his exile to Attica; but according to others he was imprisoned by his sons at Thebes, in order that his disgrace might remain concealed from the eyes of the world. The father now cursed his sons, who agreed to rule over Thebes alternately, but became involved in a dispute, in consequence of which they fought in single combat, and slew each other. Hereupon Creon succeeded to the throne, and expelled Oedipus. After long wanderings Oedipus arrived in the grove of the Eumenides, near Colonus, in Attica; he was there honoured by Theseus in his misfortune, and, according to an oracle, the Eumenides removed him from the earth, and no one was allowed to approach his tomb (Soph. Oed. Col. 1661, &c.; Eurip. Phoen. init.; Apollod. iii. 5. § 9; Diod. iv. 64; Hygin. Fab. 67).
According to Homer, Oedipus, tormented by the Erinnyes of his mother, continued to reign at Thebes after her death; he fell in battle, and was honoured at Thebes with funeral solemnities (Od. xi. 270, &c., Il. xxiii. 679).
Some traditions mention Eurygeneia as the mother of the four children of Oedipus above-mentioned (Paus. ix. 5. § 5; Schol. ad Eurip. Phoen. 63), and previous to his connection with her, he is said to have been the father of Phrastor and Laonytus by Iocaste, and to have in the end married Astymedusa, a daughter of Sthenelus (Schol. ad Eurip. l. c.).
Oedipus himself is sometimes called a son of Laius by Eurycleia, and is said to have been thrown in a chest into the sea when yet an infant, to have been carried by the waves to the coast of Sicyon, to have been received by Polybus, and afterwards to have been blinded by him (Schol. ad Eur. Phoen. 13, 26). His tomb was shown at Athens, where he also had an heroum. (Paus. i. 28. § 7, 30, in fin.)
