A bit of astronomy...

Let's start with some notes on the constellation associated to Shaina: the Ophiucus (or Ophiuchus) or Serpentarius.

It is a constellation very important, thanks to its size, number of stars and brightness; if we add that the Serpentarius is a real crossroads in the sky (in fact, it is halfway through the North Pole and the South Pole, and the spring and autumnal equinox) and that it spreads out along the same directrix of the traditional 12 zodiacal constellations, we can understand the reason why some people think that the Ophiucus should be considered the thirteenth main Zodiacal constellation.
Its brightest star (alpha Ophiuchi) is Ras Alhague; it makes an equilateral triangle with the more famous Vega and Altair, and its name in the Arabian language means "The enchanter of the snake's head". It seems that once Kepler used to take delight in watching Ras Alhague, probably… enchanted by the enchanting Snake.

The second star for its brightness and size is Cheleb, or beta Ophiuchi; but the most famous star, probably, is the one named "Star of Barnard" (by the name of the astronomer and photograph Edward E. Barnard, who discovered it in the 1916), the celestial body with the fastest motion in the sky. Someone, probably, is wondering what all that means. Well, according to the calculate of the astronomers, it seems that this star, in about 8000 light years, will be, among all the others, the celestial body nearest to the Sun, with a distance equal "only" to 4 light years.

In the commonest opinions, the constellation of the Ophiucus represents one of the son of Apollus, that is Asclepius, who, when he died, was took into the Sky by his father, so that everybody would remember his merits. In the Greek myth, in fact, Asclepius was the first doctor, and the legend says that one day, while he was in the house of his friend Ippolitus, a snake came there and killed Ippolitus. Then, another snake came into the room, bringing a magic grass in its mouth, and it raised the dead man. Asclepius took a piece of that grass, and this way he learnt the art of raising the dead people. His skill in that kind of things was so huge that Zeus, envious of his power, killed him with a lighting. The snake, anyway, became the symbol of the medicine, of the care and of the wisdom.

A beautiful picture of Serpentarius from the Uranographia Britannica by John Bevis. Click to enlarge.

The snake is an animal that has always charmed the mankind, that has always been considered magic and holy par excellence. It's not a case if it symbolizes both the Good and the Evil, and it was object of real religions (the so-called "ophiolatry").

There are many characteristics of this animal that strike human fantasy: the power of its poison, its behaviour, that make people think it is very astute, its shape, sometimes considered as a phallic form, sometimes connected to the rainbow's one, or to the ones of every curly things, its dark house, in the cavities of the Earth and, finally and most important, its power of changing and regenerating its skin, thanks to some peoples even think it's immortal.

This way, it's easy to understand why the Snake becomes, first of all, the symbol of the Good, once in the most ancient Egyptian monuments: Rah, the God of the Sun, is portrayed by a snake that twines round his head and makes the circle of the Sun like a halo; Isis brings on her head the king cobra, symbol of knowledge, sovereignty and eternal youth.
This symbol, that originally came from Babylonia and then was used by the Hellenist alchemist of the High Egypt, detected also Ammon, the God of the One and the All, who, because of his nature of chtonic being, that is of a spirit ruling over the World of the Death, was usually portrayed by the imagine of a snake twined as a circle, and biting its tail; the snake's body was made by two parts, with different colours, the one light and the other dark, symbols of the good and the evil, of the two poles of the Earth, of the All and the Nothing. This representation, called "uroborus" or, in Latin, "caudam vorans" ("The one who bites the tail"), prevents the end of the Creation sustaining and enveloping it as a continuous circle.
The two opposite souls of the snake go with many ancient Gods: Mercury especially keeps in his harms the caduceus, that is a staff upon which two snakes wrap themselves . In the legend, the God hit two snakes, while they were fighting trying to get the rule of the Earth; after having tamed them, he wrapped them upon the staff, facing each other. The two serpents, that is the Good and the Evil, the Light and the Darkness, gave him the divine power to bind and to untie, and let him create a tidy cosmos while before there was only a shapeless chaos.
In the ancient Greece, besides, the supposed immortality of the snake was often associated with the spirits of dead people; that kind of credence there's still among some African peoples, and among the Masai and in Madagascar for example.
It's often imagined like a fecund force, sensual and feminine: this way it appears in many Cretan statuettes, that portray the Mother God enchanting the Snakes, in the ancient Rome, in India, even this time, and also among the Bantuh, the Boshimans and the peoples of New Guinea, where the serpent is the symbol of the fecundity, the house and the family.
Sometimes, for example in Mexico and in Indonesia, the flying snake (in the Aztec myth named the Quetzalcoatl) is considered healer and oracle, because of its powerful poison, that can be used positively in the medicine, and its astuteness; while in Australia, besides the power of healing people, the serpent is associated - thanks to its form - with the rainbow, and so with the power of rain, both beneficial and destructive. In this country, besides, people believe that two ancestor serpents scour the land without a break and, when they stop, they quit the maiaurli, that is the spirits of the children.

On the other hand, it's superfluous to remember all that, the snake is also the symbol of the Evil par excellence; the beast very connected, because of its shape, to phallic senses, therefore to a sexual power not always fecund and positive, but, we can say, tied to dark, primordial, bestial, lustful Forces, to the temptation of the Evil; the telluric creature, poisonous and diabolically astute, that can also change into many variants of dreadful monsters, like the Dragon, another demon and winged serpent that appears in every myth, both the occidental and the oriental one.

By the way: if you wish to visit a great site, rich of news and pics on real snakes, please visit Creander's site, devoted especially to the pythonmoluros, but also to snakes in general…
I'm quite sure you'll like it^^

The winged and plumed snake (Quetzalcoatl) of the Aztecan myth.

Statuette of the so-called Goddess of the Snakes (about 1600 a.C.). It has been discovered in the King's Palace of Cnossus, in Crete, and it represents the God-Mother of the fecundity.
Main figure of the Minoan religion, the Goddess keeps in her hands two snakes, symbols of the death and the rebirth, but they also represents, thanks to their fluttering rhythmicity, the periodicity of the lunar phases.

The two souls of the snake and its symbology, in my opinion, reflect very well the multi-faced personality of Shaina. All that, in my opinion, allowed us to think of Shaina like a sort of... snake-woman.

But let's try to be methodical, starting.
Mr. Kurumada, in the technical cards of every character, tell us some notes on Shaina; we can know, this way, that she's 16 (and so, if she was a character of the real life, would mean that she should be about 32-33 years old now), that she was born in Italy, that she trained at the Sanctuary, and that she has a sister named Geist. We also know that she was born on March, the 29th (therefore, following the occidental horoscope, she's Aries), that her weight is 47 kg and her height is m 1,66, and that the group of her blood is "B". Her armour is a Silver one, and she's protected by the constellation of the Ophiucus; her attack is called "thunder claw".

Actually, these notes are really few.
Let's begin, anyway, from the space devoted to Shaina inside the manga. It's obvious it is a short space, that doesn't allow a deep characterization; many episodes, especially those of the Sanctuary's saga, that are present in the anime, don't appear, instead, in the manga: so a lot of Shaina's thoughts on the affront Seiya offered to her breaking her mask, so the whole episode of Algor and, obviously, the whole Asgardian chapter.
Shaina's personality is developed very more deeply in the anime; and all that allows, in my opinion, to draw a first conclusion: that is, probably, Mr. Araki, or Mrs. Himeno, or some people of the Toei's production must love Shaina. In fact, she is one of the few secondary characters (I mean, not part of the Bronze Saints), who has a substantial space, and much more substantial of the role she had in the manga. Marin remains a secondary character, maybe her part is even cut in comparison with the manga; Shaina, instead, becomes richer, both in her psychology and in the number of her "appearances" inside the TV series.

This is the reason because I'll base my unofficial analisys more on the anime than on the manga.

Before examing Shaina's personality, let's consider the way her body looks like, and the changes that there are in the anime in comparison with the manga. No modifications, of corse, about the mask that every female Saint has on her face: probably Mr. Kurumada thought to give the female Saints a mask on their faces just because, this way, he was able to play till the end with the possible blood ties between Seiya and Marin, who could be the missing Seika; thanks to this escamotage he was able also to add a bit of romance in a manga that, perhaps, applied to a manly more than feminine public. And he made all that possible, of course, imposing the rule of " Love or Death" on the ones who would view the face of a female Saint. So Shaina, like the other female warriors, has her mash, her armour, that looks like the one there's in the manga but maybe it's a bit more threatening in the anime (its shoulders are bigger, the helmet is heavier and it looks like a real snake), her hair isn't dark any more, but green, like a real… snake-woman. Some variations the illustrators bring in her costume: it is, as I've just said, more austere than the one of other female warriors, but not wanting in a touch of sensuality and femininity that in the manga didn't appear: Ladies and Gentlemen, here they are! The stiletto heels^^

In the personality, is further stressed her double soul, the double face of the snake and, therefore, of the snake-woman: the hidden femininity and sweetness on the one hand, the masculinity and coldness of her visible behaviour on the other hand.
All that it's already evident in the first episode of the series, where we hear that Shaina is a powerful woman at the Sanctuary, and she doesn't accept the Pegasus' armour is committed to the one who wasn't her pupil. Actually, here already appears one of the most prevalent features of the character: the willing to be always a winner.

We must remember, in fact, that Shaina doesn't stand to have any weak sides, as a woman and as a warrior, and she knows the love for Seiya is HER weak side: so she decides to kill the Pegasus Saint, she tell everyone she hates Seiya, but she's conscious that she won't be able to finish a mission become too much personal; and she knows, especially, that her heart betrays feeling and sentiments the words don't show. The choice to give the character a double soul, romantic and brave at the same time, and especially Shaina's tendency - psychologically very realistic - to tell things she doesn't really think, and, instead, to hide her real feelings, it's outstanding in a cartoon.
Another remarkable fact, in the choices of the producers, are the scenes of jealousy that we could watch: it's difficult imagining another anime where the jealousy has been showed in a such passionate and impudent way, like in the famous scene of the (almost) kiss between Seiya and Saori, when Jamian attacked our heroes. All that matches very well with the irascible and not much reflective mind of Shaina, who's surely determinate to follow till the end her choices, both as a warrior and as a lover, with no hesitations. She's also a spellbinder, an enterprising woman: she often decides to attack herself the foe when the situation is critic, so that she stirs and drags to the action her companions-in-arm, while they more carefully prefer playing for time, and she often finds the rightest solution when it's necessary acting in a hurry and good. So, not only she saves Shun's life in Asgard, in the fight against Syd and Bud, but she's also who decided to end the game with Neptune. And she's the one who find the way to oppose the attacks of the God of the Sea, protecting many times Seiya with her body, while he was shooting the golden arrow of the Sagittarius.

She's generous with her companions in arm, and she shows not only an outstanding purity of feelings (she's able, in fact, to sublime the love for a man till the sacrifice of her own life) but also a certain reserve of her emotions. Of course, her declarations of her love for Seiya are always explicit, that's undeniable. But all those things happen only when the lives of the Saints are hanging by a hair. For the rest her relations with Seiya are represented by things not told but known. On the stairs of the 12th House of Fish, for example, Shaina remembers to Seiya that she's an enemy of his, and that she still has to balance her accounts with him; and when he shows to be astonished at those words of hers, because he thinks of the sacrifice she had done for saving his life from Aiolia's attack, she bows her head adding that she wants him to don't let Ares kill him. In this scene, in my opinion, there's much of their relationship. If Seiya is pure, open, positive, predictable and never ambiguous in his attitude, there's always in Shaina a certain complexity, a deep torment, an evident scission between a sweet soul and an indomitable and resolute look.

Now, let's have a look to men in Shaina's life. Surely, they are at least four.
Her relation with Cassios must be, according to what we can know, deep: Cassios was her pupil, so it's natural that they lived together many moments, and that there was affection between them. Actually Cassios loved her master; anyway, when he died, the pain for Shaina was so deep that she decides, as usual without thinking too much, to go to the 12 Zodiacal houses, to help Seiya and try to avenge her pupil. She is stopped by Aiolia, who, hitting her with a fist, whispers that he can't allow her to risk her life fighting against Ares.
The relationship with Aiolia is rather ambiguous; not on Shaina's side, but on the Golden Saint's side. Many people think there's, more probably, a tie between Aiolia and Marin. But, if we analyse the scenes inside the cartoon, I think are more numerous the moments the Leo Saint spend with Shaina rather than with Marin. First of all, at the Sanctuary: there's a scene in which Shaina beats the stuffing out of Marin. Aiolia aids the Aquila Saint, but it seems he doesn't want to oppose or however to placate Shaina's aggressiveness. He keeps calm, he doesn't want to interference; maybe the relationship between Aiolia and Marin is not a real love-story. I wonder also if, when Aiolia saves Shaina's life after her sacrifice in the wood near Tokyo where he had attacked Seiya, he's driven only by his nobleness of soul; and the reason why he opposites Shaina so violently and overbearingly when she tries to avenge Cassios. Maybe the answer is that Aiolia too is charmed by the enchant of the snake-woman. In which limits, we can't know.
Another figurehead of the series is Algor. As he appears, it's evident he wants to please and serve Shaina; during the attack where Shiryu becomes blind, he tries to protege Shaina many times and, at least in the Italian version, he goes so far as to call her "My queen". Argor's apparition, anyway, is so short and little that we can't deduce nothing more than an attraction, not mutual, of that Saint for Shaina.

Finally comes Seiya, the most important man. Many times I've wondered - Seiya's fans, please excuse me… I beg your pardon^^ - the reason why Shaina loves him in a such unremitting way. Especially because the Saint seems to be contained about the way he shows her love and affection (since I think that he shows her love, although in his personal "contained" way), and prevalently he is busy in other kind of things like, for example, saving Athena and the World. The only way I can answer is: Seiya is the Hero of the series. He's not particularly handsome: in a world with a lot of shapes and colours for the hair, a lots of mysterious, deep and beautiful eyes, his hair is very common, and so that his eyes. He's neither very clever, nor strong, because without the help of the other Saints, he wouldn't be able to win the enemies. He doesn't have the same charisma of Ikki, who arrives for a few moments, with short but blazing and unforgettable apparitions, ready to solve the situation when it is very critical. Mr. Kurumada himself said in an interview that Ikki, not Seiya, is his favourite male character. And, nevertheless, Seiya is the Hero.
Maybe Mr. Kurumada has chosen a common Hero to let us dream… a person rather normal, so that the spectator can identify himself with Seiya. And maybe just the fact that he's always so "normal", so reassuring, so predictable, but noble and always ready to the sacrifice and to an outstanding care whatever he does, allows us to draw Seiya near Shaina very well. To imagine he's complementary to her. Calm whenever she's impulsive. Simple whenever she's problematic. In a word, is he maybe the real and unique Enchanter of the Snake?

Here we stop. You are probably wondering the reason why I've devoted a site to Shaina, who is only one - not the most important - of the characters of the beautiful animation series "Saint Seiya". The answer is really simple: because I'm a woman. And I think every woman, more or less, has desired to be, or to have been, at least for a few time in her life, like Shaina: beautiful and winning and strong and dominant and passionate and indomitable.
And half a Witch and half a Fairy, of course.