Although often used interchangeably, the words “fate” and “destiny” have distinct connotations.

• Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or “inevitable” and unavoidable. Classical and European mythology features three goddesses dispensing fate, known asMoirai in Greek mythology, as Parcae in Roman mythology, and as Norns in Norse mythology. They determine the events of the world through the mystic spinning of threads that represent individual human fates.
• Destiny is used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and to that same sense of “destination”, projected into the future to become the flow of events as they will work themselves out.

In other words, “fate” relates to events of the future and present of an individual and in cases in literature unalterable, whereas “destiny” relates to the probable future. Fate implies no choice, but with destiny the entity participates in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens willfully.