I wasn't thinking about following Dante's path until you said it, but I suppose now that I'm back to Traveling I can make myself play the responsible adult instead.

And anyway, he started in Hell and worked his way up to this point. Going backwards isn't something I like to do in general.

From one boring perspective, it's just petty political commentary. As a poem about a mortal's idealization of the infernal and divine, however, it's quite beautiful. I believe the heroine of the piece was a Traveler for some time.

I don't recall anything like the Sithen in Dante's report, but he mainly focused on the deceased he knew in life regardless. And of course, I imagine his ideas of the purpose and structure of Purgatory were very different from a D'Angeline's.

It is a rather specifically medieval Catholic concept, in some ways. The notion of penitent redemption is present in many religions, but Dante's notion of it came about as a result of the doctrinal belief that penitent redemption is both possible and necessary after death. It worked out for me, but I can see how it would be overlooked in other depictions of the afterlife.

This Purgatory, though, is somewhat different from Dante's. It seems more like a neutral ground for the morally ambiguous - ones who fit neither the angels' nor the demons' archetype of the afterlife. It's a bit more dynamic, that way, rather than merely a mountain to be climbed by the flawed but faithful.

No one likes fighting a war on their own territory if they can help it. Purgatory's actual metaphysical real estate may be valuable in and of itself as well, or at least it seems to be to the Sithen.