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The main characters who provide the narrative of The Camp Half-Blood Series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus and The Trials of Apollo) and companions like The Demigod Files and The Demigod Diaries. For the full list of characters, click here.

Since most of these characters are introduced in the second series, beware of unmarked spoilers for the first series.


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The Seven

    General 
  • Affirmative Action Girl: Piper and Hazel, when previously Annabeth was the only female protagonist.
  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: Percy, Annabeth, and Jason are white, Piper is Native American (specifically Cherokee), Frank is Chinese-Canadian, Hazel is black, and Leo is Latino. This is in contrast with the first series when nearly all the characters were Caucasian.
  • Battle Couple: Percy/Annabeth, Jason/Piper, and Frank/Hazel. Other characters note Leo's status as Alone Among the Couples.
  • Changing of the Guard: Percy and Annabeth are the only returning characters.
  • The Chosen Many: The prophesied "seven half-bloods [who] shall answer the call..."
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Only Percy's, Annabeth's, and Piper's mortal parents are still around, and the latter two don't exactly have the best relationship with their dads.
  • Five-Token Band: Due to Affirmative-Action Legacy, in addition to three white members, Piper is Cherokee, Frank is Chinese-Canadian, Hazel is black, and Leo is Latino.
  • Just a Kid: They are continuously dismissed by their adversaries with this trope.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Percy, Frank, Hazel, Leo, Jason, Piper, and Annabeth.
  • Rule of Seven: The Great Prophecy mentions seven demigods who will take on Gaea.
  • Semi-Divine: All of them are demigods.
  • The Three Faces of Eve : Annabeth is a wife, being kind, helpful and patient team mother who does not have any negative orientations. Piper is the seductress who uses her feminine charms to get what she wants. Hazel is the child, being caring, stubborn and bold.
  • The Hecate Sisters: Annabeth is the Mother, being the mature, practical and responsible leader. Hazel is the Maiden, having the most carefree, youthful and innocent attitude of the three. Piper is the Old One, acting as a passionate follower who is impetuous, emotional and sarcastic, but still loyal to her friends.
  • True Companions: Over the course of the series, they slowly, grudgingly grow into this. This is in full force by the end of the fourth book, where they'd willingly risk their lives for another member of The Team .


    Percy Jackson 

    Annabeth Chase 

Annabeth Chase

Played by: Alexandra Daddario (films), Alisha Newton (young; films), Leah Sava Jeffries (TV series)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_okduvn9hup1qg1e00o2_1280.jpg
"Athena always has a plan."

"The first lesson every child of Athena learned: Mom was the best at everything, and you should never, ever suggest otherwise."

The heroine of the first series and the resident brainiac, Annabeth is the literal brainchild of Athena and military historian Frederick Chase (kids of Athena are just special that way). Her pastimes include architecture, Ancient Greek, killing monsters, and practicing how to stab things. Annabeth ran away from home when she was seven and met up with Thalia and Luke; eventually they made their way to Camp Half-Blood, but lost Thalia in the process.

As a child of Athena, Annabeth is gifted with divine intellect and a natural talent towards strategy. Despite not having any offensive superpowers, she is still a competent warrior, fighting with the Celestial Bronze knife given to her by Luke Castellan. Annabeth is stern and strict, but ultimately deeply caring and loyal.

Following Percy's disappearance prior to the second series, Annabeth struggles to balance searching for him, being head counselor of the Athena cabin, holding the rest of Camp Half-Blood together, and undertaking the task presented to her in the previous series of redesigning Olympus. As such, she's mostly out of the picture for the first two books beyond briefly mentoring our new protagonists, but returns in the third, with a divine quest from her mother on her hands — to find the Athena Parthenos and return it to the gods, at whatever cost. As one of the most experienced on the team, she serves as an adviser and Cool Big Sis to the more inexperienced heroes, as well as The Leader and mastermind of all of the Seven.


  • Academic Athlete: Spends ninety percent of her time either designing buildings for Olympus, being a straight-A student, or fighting tons of Greek monsters.
  • Action Girl: Can kick a lot of ass, and is a more experienced warrior than Percy. Even with no special powers other than her wits to aid her, Annabeth is quite the terror with a dagger.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: Annabeth has had this treatment thricefold throughout the known adaptations. In the books, she is described as having blond hair and gray eyes. In the movies, Alexandra Daddario keeps her blue eyes. While the first film keeps Daddario's brown hair, the second film reverts her hair to blond. In the Disney+ series, due to Rick Riordan's preference of ability over appearance, Leah Sava Jeffries retains her black hair.
  • Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Rick Riordan describes Annabeth has having curly hair. In the film duology, Alexandra Daddario has her hair straight down while Leah Sava Jefferies in the Disney+ series wears box braids.
  • Artificial Human: She, and all children of Athena, weren't born in the traditional sense; she's a literal brainchild, born of Athena's divine thoughts.
  • Ascended Fangirl: Wants to be an architect and build monuments that will last for eons. In The Last Olympian, she gets her wish when she's chosen to redesign Olympus.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Outwits the ghosts of Mithras's followers just by making observations about the information about their worship decorating the cavern walls.
  • The Baby of the Bunch: At seven years old, Annabeth was the youngest of her surrogate family with Thalia and Luke.
  • Badass Bookworm: Loves learning as Athena's daughter, but is still capable of being a competent Action Girl.
    • First things she did in The Lightning Thief (aside from feeding bedridden Percy ambrosia and nectar, and introducing him to Luke) are teaching Percy to read in Ancient Greek and using him to distract Clarisse at Capture The Flag knowing Clarisse would target Percy specifically and therefore making it easier for Luke to steal Clarisse's team's flag thereby resulting in Annabeth's team (which included Percy, Luke and everyone not on Clarisse's team) winning.
  • Badass Family: Her mom is the Greek goddess of strategy (a subset of war), her dad is willing to fly in on a biplane to gun down monsters trying to hurt his daughter, her cousin Magnus is the demigod son of the Norse god of kingship, sunlight, and summer as well as an Einherji, a formerly dead hero who has been granted various physical boons and Resurrective Immortality in Valhalla, and she's dating the most prominent son of Poseidon in the modern era.
  • Badass in Distress: In The Titan's Curse. Not for very long.
  • Badass Normal: Comparatively. Children of Athena don't really have any supernatural powers, but Annabeth is one of the most competent and powerful fighters in the entire series.
  • Bag of Spilling: The fall into Tartarus causes her to lose her dagger, her invisibility hat, Daedalus' laptop, her backpack and basically anything that could be even a little of use.
  • Battle Couple: With Percy.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite all the hell they go through in The House of Hades, Percy continuously describes her as beautiful, though this could be justified by his bias as her boyfriend.
  • Brainy Brunette: In the first film and the Disney+ series.
  • Broken Bird: Due to the trauma about losing Thalia, and then Luke.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Her knife is used by Luke to kill himself to force Kronos to leave his body.
  • Chekhov's Skill (or Chekhov's Classroom): The Chinese fingertrap, which she teaches Frank, and is later used in her fight against Arachne.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Before she and Percy get together, she does get quite waspish with him when Rachel's around (well, more waspish than usual, anyway), gets upset with Percy when she guesses that he was with Calypso, and acts haughty towards Rachel to the point of condescendingly calling her "mortal girl" more than once. Percy's obliviousness to what her problem is, of course, doesn't help. In her first POV chapter in The Mark of Athena, she starts feeling jealous when seeing Hazel with Percy before realizing she's in a relationship with Frank.
  • Cool Big Sis: To Piper, being the older and more experienced Greek demigod. To Frank as well, in The House of Hades he remembers her being kind, helpful, and patient towards him. As the second best strategist on the team, he looks up to her.
  • Cool Sword: Gets a sword made from a drakon's bone in The House of Hades after she loses her knife.
  • Composite Character: The first film's version of Annabeth is a combination of book Annabeth and Clarisse.
  • Cry into Chest: After discovering the Athena Parthenos statue, Annabeth does this to Percy.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen:
    • Starts out as very aloof at the beginning of the first book (although she does talk to Percy and show him around Camp Half-Blood), but she slowly warms up to Percy and reconnects with her family.
    • In general, Annabeth can be cold, dismissive and even rude to people she doesn't know well, but once you earn her trust and respect, you're her friend for life.
  • Determinator: Annabeth never gives up.
  • Deuteragonist: In the original series, with her character development, her and Luke's complicated relationship, and growing romantic tension with Percy getting the most focus outside of Percy himself. Especially justified as the original series is from Percy's point of view, who grows evidently enamored with her even before he realizes he loves her. In The Heroes of Olympus sequel series, she's one of Multiple Protagonists and finally gets her own dedicated POV chapters in The Mark of Athena and The House of Hades.
  • Dumb Blonde: Inverted. See above Badass Bookworm. Don't let her hear you insult her intelligence, either. She will gut you.
  • Everyone Can See It: By The Battle of the Labyrinth, it's become obvious to everybody except Percy that she's been hopelessly in love with him for years. Her earlier Forceful Kiss and blatant jealousy over him being on Calypso's island make him begin to slowly clue in, thankfully, even if it takes another book of maturing for the both of them.
  • Fantastic Racism: Initially despised cyclopes due to what happened with Thalia. She treated Percy's half-brother, Tyson, with nothing but disdain throughout The Sea of Monsters despite him meaning no harm. While Percy somewhat understands her grudge, he's still disgusted by her racism towards Tyson solely because he's a cyclops. She gets better around Tyson after getting to know him better and for Percy's sake.
  • Fatal Flaw: Pride. Annabeth's problem is thinking that she can do anything, even when she can't, and, by extension, holding onto impossible goals. She thinks that she can solve every problem that she has, including that of her distant mother and traitorous friend. Because she thinks that she can fix these problems, she never really lets them go and move on. This is why she takes the sky from Luke in Titan's Curse, despite it having 'bad idea' written all over it, among other things.
  • First Girl Wins: If you exclude Nancy Bobofit, who doesn't show up after the first few chapters, Annabeth is the first named girl Percy meets, and the one who holds his interest.
  • Forceful Kiss: Does this to Percy in a desperate attempt to convey her feelings for him. Percy takes one year to finally understand it.
  • Friendly Enemy: With Reyna, as seen in their conversation in The Mark of Athena — despite being on opposing teams, they view each other as equals and clearly respect each other.
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: One of the contents of her trunk, along with various survival gear, her Yankees cap and Daedalus' laptop, is a teddy bear (don't tell anyone!).
  • Green-Eyed Monster: She's pretty obviously jealous of Percy's friendship with Rachel. However, this is no longer the case after Rachel becomes the Oracle and essentially removing herself from the competition. She also jealous when she guesses correctly that Percy had been with Calypso. And exhibits the early stages of jealousy towards Hazel until she quickly realizes that Hazel and Frank are a couple.
  • Guile Hero: Uses nothing but her wits and a modified Scheherezade Gambit against a giant spider.
  • Got Volunteered: For the quest to search for the Athena Parthenos, with no chance to say no to mom.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother is a goddess and her father is a mortal.
  • Has a Type: Both of the boys she developed a romantic interest in are foils for one another being headstrong leaders, The Ace of their respective age groups, snarky, and come from deeply troubled backgrounds.
  • Insufferable Genius: In the early books, she was an extreme know-it-all. She matures by the The Last Olympian.
  • In the Back: One of her favorite tactics is turning invisible and stabbing enemies in the back with her bronze knife. She saves Percy from Kelli this way.
  • Invisibility Cloak: A gift from her mother, a Yankees baseball cap that can turn her invisible.
  • I Will Find You: In The Lost Hero, the reason she's mostly Out of Focus is because she's searching for Percy.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Due to her rough past, Annabeth can be aloof and sometimes cold to people she doesn't know well, but she would move mountains for her loved ones.
  • Kick the Dog: While she was in a jealous fit as soon as Percy mentioned Rachel and her paintings, Annabeth calling Percy — her best friend and crush — a Dirty Coward was a pretty low blow, even for her, especially when all he was asking for was her advice and is understandably terrified of the Great Prophecy. It's unknown if she apologized at one point when they meet up again.
  • Kissing Cousins: Subverted. While Percy and Annabeth are technically second-cousins, the gods have no DNA to speak of and as such, Percy and Annabeth are not biologically related.
  • Laugh of Love: She laughs right before her first kiss with Percy.
  • The Leader: Is established as this when the seven heroes finally unite in Mark Of Athena.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Annabeth had always had a soft spot for Luke since she was a child, but in the end, they come to terms that they only see each other as brother and sister.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: To Percy. Finding him is her motivation throughout the first book of the sequel series. Taken to the extreme when both of them are stuck in Tartarus, having only each other to depend on physically, mentally, and emotionally.
  • Love Martyr: Downplayed. She never stops believing that Luke can be redeemed, no matter how many times he tries to kill her, even taking the weight of the sky from him in The Titan's Curse even though she knows it's probably a bad idea. That said, she's still very willing to fight him if necessary, and is never swayed by him into making a Face–Heel Turn.
  • Love Redeems: Convinced to the end that she can reawaken the good in Luke, and motivated by her history with him. It works, but not with the kind of love she expects.
  • Morality Pet: For Luke, she's the only one who the character seems to retain any humanity towards. Inverted, as Luke has still done questionable things to Annabeth, from tricking her into taking the sky for him and then using her as bait to lure her friends to having no qualms feeding her to his monsters. Annabeth reminds him of the promise he made of never hurting her, and he realizes that he broke it on his own accords, to his horror.
  • Meaningful Appearance: Gray-colored eyes are something she inherited from her mother, Athena. They portray her fierce and calculating personality.
  • Memento MacGuffin: Her knife, which she received from Luke when they first met.
  • Neat Freak: She keeps the Athena cabin spotless.
  • Noodle Incident: She knows how to tame Cerberus because her family had a Doberman when she was little. It's vaguely implied that something terrible happened to it, because remembering it makes her cry.
  • Official Couple: Eventually she hooks up with Percy.
  • Oh, Crap!: Has a minor one when she pieces together that her cousin Magnus is a demigod who has been living on the streets for years.
  • Out of Focus: In the first two books of the second series, since she's not part of the Power Trio in either one (Jason, Piper, and Leo in the first, and Percy, Hazel, and Frank in the second). Averted in the The Mark of Athena, where she provides one of the four viewpoints, and whose subplot gives the third book its name. Is this again in The Blood of Olympus, where although she's still present and important, Percy and Annabeth have no chapters narrated from their point of view, likely due to their prominence in The House of Hades.
  • Plucky Girl: After her smarts, her unyielding determination is probably her most notable quality.
  • The Pollyanna: To some extent. She's well-aware that the world is not perfect, but it's her dream try to fix that, which is why she wants to be an architect. This is also shown with how she's convinced she can make Luke good again.
  • Precocious Crush: On Luke, when she was younger. She gets over it by the end, admitting she now feels more of a fraternal love for him.
  • Race Lift: Is white in the books and films. In the musical, while the role was originated by a white woman, she's been understudied by several actresses of color. In the Disney+ series, due to Rick Riordan's preference of ability over appearance, she's played by Black actress Leah Sava Jeffries.
  • Red Herring: In The House of Hades, the reader is initially led to believe that she's the one Nico has a crush on. Then when Cupid shows up, it turns out to be Percy, not her.
  • Restored My Faith in Humanity: For Luke.
  • Reunion Kiss: With Percy, and in front of a huge crowd of potential enemy forces, no less. It's quickly turned into an emotionally-charged judo-flip into the stone pavement, but her boyfriend takes it in stride. He missed her too, after all.
  • Revenge by Proxy: Is Minerva's proxy against the Romans.
  • Ring on a Necklace: She wears her father's gold college ring on her Camp Half-Blood bead necklace. Even though their relationship is strained, they still care about each other and want to try and make it work.
  • Royal Blood: Downplayed. But Annabeth's family, the Chase family, is descended from Swedish royalty who are also said to be descendants of the Norse god Frey, making it possible that Annabeth is also a legacy of Frey.
  • The Runaway: Ran away at the age of seven, falling in with Thalia and Luke whom she grew to consider her family.
  • Scheherezade Gambit: Plays this against Arachne when trapped with her. It works.
  • Sleep Cute: With Percy in The Mark of Athena.
  • The Smart Girl: Hello, her mom's the goddess of wisdom. Most of the time to a fault. She was trusted with Daedalus's laptop and spent long hours engrossed in it while aboard the Argo II.
  • Statuesque Stunner: Considered quite attractive and, as of the Demigod Files being over 5'8, just over the cut-off point. Given said book was written a few years prior to the present of the books, she may be even more so at this point.
  • The Strategist: Athena is the goddess of war strategy, so all her children are good with tactics, and Annabeth especially so. Her plans have a way of coming together.
  • Teen Genius: Being a child of Athena, she is inherently smart. Her dream is to become an architect. At the end of the The Last Olympian, she gets her wish — she gets to redesign Olympus.
  • This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: She very reluctantly steps aside to let her cousin Magnus continue his journey to stop Fenris Wolf's from breaking free, citing that the events of Heroes of Olympus taught her that sometimes people have to face their quests on their own.
  • To Hell and Back: Is sucked into Tartarus with Percy. They get back out by walking through hell, as well as fighting it's avatar.
  • Tragic Keepsake: Her bronze knife, given to her by Luke when they were runaway demigods together.
  • Tsundere: Type A, all the way. She keeps calling Percy stupid. She tends to get angry at him, complaining how annoying he is. She gets jealous when she sees Percy with a pretty girl. She has trouble expressing her feelings for him. At one point, Percy thought she only liked him "as target practice". She mellows down somewhat later on, but still retains some of those traits.
  • The Unfavorite: Gets rejected by Athena, or rather Minerva (and her hat loses its magic!) after trying to speak up for working with Rome.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: For Percy. Her first appearance in the second series is almost attacking Jason because she thinks he knows where Percy's gone. Jason is quite reasonably terrified.
  • We Used to Be Friends: She and Luke had shared history and she looked up to him before his betrayal.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • As with all children of Athena, Annabeth does not like spiders (explained by the story of Arachne) and the feeling is apparently mutual. Having to chase a mechanical spider through the Labyrinth was not her favorite thing ever. She still manages to defeat Arachne.
    • She's terrified of the Cyclopes in The House of Hades.
  • Women Are Wiser: Justified since she's the daughter of Athena, goddess of wisdom, but actually played with. While Annabeth is certainly smarter and wiser than Percy, she is also more jaded and prideful, whereas Percy is an Ideal Hero who isn't so much stupid as he is impulsive, unfocused, and stupidly loyal. Also, there have been times when Percy was able to come up with Confusion Fu style strategies Annabeth never would have thought of. Overall, when it comes to their adventures, they are both presented as being equally important to any quest's success and both would probably die without the other.
  • You Are Worth Hell: Percy could've saved himself if he'd let her fall, but accompanies her into Tartarus anyway. She's painfully aware of this in The House of Hades, and briefly thinks that if he died, it would be her fault.

    Frank Zhang 

Frank Zhang

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/frank_zhang.jpg
"Tactics. That's my gift from Mars. A battle can be won before it's ever fought by choosing the right ground."

Frank is the son of Mars and soldier Emily Zhang. On his mother's side, he is descended from Poseidon through one of the Argonauts. Due to this powerful legacy and the gifts he receives as a result, the goddess Juno decided to balance this out by tying his life to a piece of wood — should the wood ever burn out, Frank dies.

After his mother's death in Afghanistan he is sent to Camp Jupiter after spending some time with his wealthy grandmother. After Percy's arrival he is claimed as a son of Mars, much to his disdain — as tender, pacifistic Frank couldn't be more different from his militaristic, warlike siblings. Frank is designated leader of the quest to rescue Thanatos, and chooses Hazel and Percy to go with him. This quest brings him and Hazel closer together, and they are dating by the end of the second book.

Frank is at first shy and clumsy due to his own insecurity, but later grows more confident and sure of himself and his talents over the course of the series. Interestingly, because Frank's life is tied to a stick, he is the only one of the Seven Gaea is incapable of manipulating.

Due to his heritage, Frank has several powers and talents. Being the son of Mars, he has a remarkable talent for tactics and strategy, as well as being excellent in physical combat and being a natural-born battle commander. He's also very talented with a bow and arrow. Thanks to being descended from Periclymenus, the Zhang family gift — the power to shapeshift into any animal — was passed down to him as well.

Frank becomes a Praetor of New Rome in The House of Hades, and is currently serving in that capacity.


  • Achilles' Heel: His life force is bound to a stick of wood. If/when it burns up, Frank will die. He ends up deliberately lighting the stick on fire in a Heroic Sacrifice to incinerate Caligula with Greek Fire. His sacrifice allows him to defy his fate, and he survived, now no longer needing the stick to survive.
  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: Chinese-Canadian, taking over for the Italian Mars.
  • Animorphism: The Zhang family gift.
  • Bad "Bad Acting": Frank has many talents, but acting is not one of them.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Frank is a sweetheart who doesn't like to fight but as his one-man massacre of over 200 monsters can attest, he's also one of the most dangerous and powerful demi gods.
  • Big Beautiful Man: He becomes this by The Trials of Apollo.
    • Originally, his girth only made him cute and cuddly, with something boyish in his look (he reminded people of a giant baby) and his appearance being compared to a big, huggable teddy bear. In The House of Hades, he is noted to become handsomer thanks to Mars' blessing, which makes him lose his extra-weight, augments his already noticeable muscle mass, and adds a few inches to his height. As said in the story, he went from a teddy bear to a grizzly, with a rougher and more mature beauty.
    • Finally, in The Tyrant's Tomb we find out he regained his chubbiness, which coupled with his added musculature and tallness, makes him a living embodiment of this trope. As Apollo says: "He was once again a big, girthy guy, with baby cheeks you just wanted to pinch, only now he was larger and more muscular."
  • The Big Guy: Lampshaded repeatedly. It's easy to lose track of how many times the text refers to him, verbatim, as "the big guy." Further solidified with his One-Man Army stint in the fourth book.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: His dad is Mars, and considering his mom died in war, Frank's not happy about it. See Your Approval Fills Me with Shame below.
  • Determinator:
    • In The Son of Neptune, he fights to free Thanatos even if it means literally burning his life away.
    • Becomes this in full in The House of Hades, taking Jason's place as Praetor, and doing a complete 180 from his first appearance in The Son of Neptune.
    • It's directly stated by Mars that Frank will have to save the quest by helping Percy to make a Sadistic Choice that his Fatal Flaw would never let him make. He does it by never letting Percy have the choice in the first place. Frank goes along when Leo enlists him in pulling off a Heroic Sacrifice without the other Greeks and Jason interfering.
    • Outright stated that this is why Gaea wants him dead. Because of his sense of duty and self-sacrifice, he's the only one of the seven that she can't manipulate.
    • In The Tyrant's Tomb, he challenges Caligula to single combat, despite being wounded and incredibly outclassed, in order to buy time to carry out his plan. In the end, he succeeds at immobilizing Caligula so he could be incinerated by Greek Fire, even as the god-emperor inflicted a near-fatal stab wound on him. Then he ignites the last bit of his stick to set off the Greek Fire.
  • Disney Death: In The Tyrant's Tomb, he sacrifices himself to immobilize Caligula and sets his stick... and himself on fire to ignite some Greek Fire in the tunnels he had lured him and Commodus into. We're lead to assume he's been Killed Off for Real, (and for good reason) but Arion brings him back badly burned but alive enough to land on his feet. Apparently, the sheer selflessness he showed allowed him to Screw Destiny and outlive the kindling his life force was tied to.
  • Distressed Dude: Percy pulls a Big Damn Heroes to save him from the Gorgon sisters near the beginning of Son of Neptune.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Frank has to be really careful around fire. (He is understandably somewhat uncomfortable around Leo.) Justified because of his powers from his mom's side and being Mars' son and having his tactical powers, he has "too many gifts." Ergo, Fate basically decreed he have a limit.
  • Embarrassing First Name: Frank's grandmother is the only one to call him by his Chinese name, Fai.
  • Everyone Is Related: He's a descendant of Poseidon on his mother's side, making him a distant cousin of Percy.
  • Field Promotion: Jason promotes him to praetor in the midst of a battle in The House of Hades.
  • Formerly Fat: Frank is initially described as a big and burly boy, with a muscular "wrestler's body" but also enough extra-weight to have a baby-like face and be compared to a young sumo wrestler. Comes The House of Hades, Mars' blessing make him "grow into his weight", which means he gets taller, loses his "spare tire" and doesn't look "pudgy or cuddly" anymore (see Heroic Build below). However...
  • Formerly Fit: ... by The Tyrant's Tomb it is revealed that Frank's natural weight caught up with his "magical growth spurt" after the events of The Heroes of Olympus. As a result he is "big and girthy" again, and gained back his chubby "baby cheeks".
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: His first appearance is as a son of Mars in probatio, belonging to the fifth cohort. By the end of the second series he has become the Legion's Praetor and, as noted above has taken some god-damn levels.
  • Gentle Giant: After being blessed by Mars, Frank became 6'3" with the build of a professional linebacker. He's still very shy, sweet, and turns into goldfish when he panics, though he's also confident enough to threaten a (minor) god by pinning them against the wall.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "Dang it!" is considered severe profanity for him.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: The Roman god Mars took a shine to his human mom.
  • Hearing Voices: In The House of Hades it's revealed Ares's and Mars's voices have been bickering in his head for a while, and is a major factor towards his hostility towards Leo. Given how different those two facets of his father are, it can't have been pretty.
  • Heroic Build: The first thing that jumps out to Percy upon his return from Tartarus is that Frank now looks like a football lineman.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: As his father pointed out, he considers Percy better than him and constantly dumps on himself, at least until near the end when Character Development kicked in and he became more confident.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted, but it's a very narrow thing. See Determinator above.
    • Subverted again in The Tyrant's Tomb. He uses his firewood to ignite an explosion of Greek Fire to successfully destroy Caligula. Although he appeared to have been killed in the explosion, he somehow survived with all of his wounds healed.
  • History Repeats: This time, it's Meleager's story.
  • How Do I Shot Web?: It takes Frank almost until the very end of "Son of Neptune" to figure out how to activate his family's gift.
  • I Got You Covered: Frank to Hazel and Percy while they were escaping from the Zhang residence. Percy to Frank in Alcyoneus' lair.
  • Immune to Fate:
    • Mentioned as why Gaea is willing to kill him, she can't predict his future, or manipulate him emotionally. His freedom of choice and ability to change also connects to his unique talent, shapeshifting. Notably, he IS cursed with a short life, as a price for his many powers; it's just no one can predict the how and when.
    • The Tyrant's Tomb. His selflessness in attempting to sacrifice himself to kill Caligula and Commodus actually causes him to outlive having his enchanted stick burned away completely, despite being at Ground Zero for a Greek Fire detonation.
  • Lineage Comes from the Father: Played with. Even though he's a son of Mars, Frank's coolest power comes from his mortal mother.
  • Master Archer: While as a son of Mars, Frank is capable of using any weapon proficiently, his preference is a bow and arrows, and due to how easily adept he is at using it, he initially thought he was a son of Apollo.
  • Meaningful Name: His Chinese name, to be exact:
    • His family name, Zhang (張/张), means "to draw/stretch a bowstring", and by extension, can mean "archer". Frank's preferred weapon is the bow and arrow, to the point before he was claimed, he wondered if his godly parent was Apollo due to the tendency for the gods to have children with names that relate to their parentage.
    • His given name is stated to be Fai, which can have three main interpretations:
      • It is a common Cantonese romanization of Huī (輝/辉), which means "brightness". Not only is it a common given name among ethnic Chinesenote , it also alludes to his Drama-Preserving Handicap.
      • The mainland Chinese translation interprets his name as the Wade-Giles romanization of Fēi (飛/飞), which means "to fly". This interpretation of his name hints towards his Animorphism abilities and is a Shout-Out to a historical figure of the same name — in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a book that every Chinese person knows, Zhang Fei was known for two things: being not particularly good looking, and being a superb warrior, capable of scaring off entire armies by himself.
      • The Traditional/Taiwanese translation goes with 'Fai' being a contraction of 'Fa-I', which is Wade-Giles for Fǎyì (法義/法义, pronounced "Fah-yee"). (法) translates as "principles" or "law"; while (義/义) refers to the ancient Chinese virtue of "righteousness", i.e. a mixture of "honour", "integrity", and "having a moral compass" in Western terms.note  Thus, in the Traditional/Taiwanese translation, his Chinese given name roughly means "law and justice", and sounds somewhat like his English given name, which is transliterated as Fǎlánkè (法蘭克/法兰克) — it helps that many ethnic Chinese people do adopt English names that sound like their Chinese names.
  • Military Brat: His mom was in the Canadian military, and was one of the first women to die in combat, according to Frank.
  • My Species Doth Protest Too Much: He starts out as a child of the god of war who hates war while all of his siblings are Blood Knights, though Frank is actually truer to Mars's (as opposed to Ares's) stated views on war.
  • Official Couple: With Hazel. They also become a Ruling Couple by the end of The Tyrant's Tomb, after Hazel was elected to replace the retiring Reyna
  • One-Man Army: Was granted the blessing of Mars in the fourth book, temporarily turning him into one of these.
  • Scaled Up: In Mark of Athena. He can turn into a dragon at full power, meaning he isn't limited to normal animals.
  • Second Love: To Hazel, after Sammy.
  • Secret Legacy: Descended from Periclymenus, one of the Argonauts, on his mom's side.
  • Secretly Wealthy: The Zhangs are loaded, but you couldn't tell that by looking at Frank.
  • Shout-Out: To Meleager, whose life was tied to a piece of wood and was killed when his mother threw it in the fire.
  • Sitcom Archnemesis: With Leo, though it's kind of understandable as Frank's life is tied to a stick and Leo has hard-to-control fire powers. They seem to be moving past it when Leo gives him a fireproof pouch to carry his firewood in.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Is a really good shot with a bow and arrow, despite this being set in the 2010s. He even thought that he was Apollo's son, before Mars claimed him.
  • The Strategist: Got this as a power from his dad, Mars. He does most of the battle tactics when Annabeth is out of the picture.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: A less vulgar version, considering Frank's own reservations about cursing, but the intention stands.
    "Welcome to Canada, idiot."
  • Took a Level in Badass: In The House of Hades after managing to defeat every katobleps in Venice, getting taller and buffer. Hazel notes that something's different about his personality, though. And later again when Jason emergency-promotes him to Praetor, giving him command of a full Epirus ghostly legion.
    • He worries that his drastic change in appearance and demeanor will make the others treat him differently. Hazel does not mind.
  • Too Powerful to Live: Because of his inherited shapeshifting and powers from being a Son of Mars, it was decreed by the gods that Frank was too powerful and would have to have a short life, thus his lifespan was bound to a piece of firewood. Subverted when he willingly sacrificed his life by using it as kindling to defeat Nero, where the binding broke and he became free to live a full life.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: On the receiving end of this from pretty much every good guy he meets, it seems to finally sink in at the end of the The House of Hades.
  • Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Feels this way about Mars boasting about him after the war games, but subverted after Mars appears to him in Venice.

    Hazel Levesque 

Hazel Levesque

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hazel_levesque.jpg

"I'm not choosing one of your paths. I'm making my own."

Hazel's past is a long one. A daughter of Pluto, she was born in 1920s New Orleans to Marie Levesque, a struggling fortune teller. Marie had asked Pluto to give her all the riches of the earth, and Pluto had obliged by giving their daughter the power to summon gemstones. However, the gems she summoned were cursed, leading their buyers to horrible fates, and she and Marie ended up none the better. Because of this Hazel was ostracized at school save for her sole friend Sammy, whom she lost when her mother moved them to Alaska, beyond the power of the gods. There, Gaea forces Hazel to resurrect Alcyoneus, the oldest and most prominent giant. Instead, Hazel destroys the island with her powers, killing her, her mother, and Alcyoneus, and delaying Gaea's plan for the better part of a century.

Hazel gives up her chance at Elysium to save her mother from the Fields of Punishment and subsequently spends seventy years in the Fields of Asphodel until Nico di Angelo, her half-brother, comes looking to resurrect his sister Bianca. Upon learning that she'd been reincarnated, he resurrects Hazel instead, and she is brought to Camp Jupiter, where she is an integral part of the quest to rescue Thanatos. She begins a relationship with Frank.

Despite being one of the (physically) youngest on the team, Hazel is very mature, affectionate, and caring, and served as the primary source of comfort for Frank and Percy on their quest. Whenever she thinks about her past life she has flashbacks (akin to very real dreams) towards them, and can even pull others in with her.

Hazel is gifted with several powers. Beyond the aforementioned ability to summon gems, she is also able to use them in combat. She's also gifted with the power to control earth, as it's her father's domain. In The House of Hades, she learns to manipulate the Mist.


  • Action Girl: Causing precious metal avalanches and holding off the Romans atop Arion with her cavalry sword is just another day for her, being one of the seven.
  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: African-American. Finding out the Roman demigods sided with the Confederacy in the American Civil War did not make her happy, since her grandmother had been a slave.
  • All Girls Like Ponies: Horseback riding is one of her great loves. The Romans look down on her for using a large cavalry broadsword, designed for someone fighting on horseback, because a good Roman is a foot soldier.
    Hazel loved horses. They seemed to be the only living things that weren't scared of her. People hated her. Cats hissed. Dogs growled. Even the stupid hamster in Miss Finley's classroom squeaked in terror when she gave it a carrot. But horses didn't mind. When she was in the saddle, she could ride so fast that there was no chance of gemstones cropping up in her wake.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Got picked on a lot as a kid in New Orleans due to being black and her mother being labeled a witch. Camp Jupiter wasn’t all that much better as people there were wary of her for being a daughter of Pluto.
  • Artifact of Death: Capable of summoning gems and metal from the earth, but misfortune comes to anyone who takes them. These cursed rocks don't affect her Cool Horse, who eats the gold she pulls up. They're Laser-Guided Karma to her mom, who wished the "gift" onto her — ruining her life.
  • Back from the Dead: Spent 70+ years in the Fields of Asphodel after she sacrificed her place in Elysium to keep her mother out of the Fields of Punishment. Got out after Nico, after discovering that Bianca had already chosen to be reborn, rescues her instead.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Pulls up cursed riches due to mommy's request gone wrong.
  • The Big Easy: Lived almost her whole life in the French Quarter of New Orleans with her mom. Even in her new life, she originally finds it very hard not to spend half her time back there, one way or another.
  • Big Sister Instinct: While she actually considers Nico her older brother, she is chronologically older than him and very protective of him. In The Mark of Athena and The House of Hades, she doesn't appreciate anyone questioning the wisdom of saving Nico's life.
  • Blessed with Suck: Her dad's Pluto, so she has control of "all the riches under the Earth". It's a pretty sweet deal, unless a horrible curse wasn't directly tied to how valuable the metals were. So, if you aren't her, touching the metals she summons is bad for your health.
  • The Chosen One: She's the champion of Hecate and the goddess trains her in her latent magical talent.
  • Cool Horse: Is the only person the Cool Horse, Arion, will listen to (thanks in no small part to her gold-producing powers).
  • Curtains Match the Window: Downplayed; she has caramel hair and gold eyes.
  • Dark and Troubled Past/Dark Secret: Was forced by Gaea to use her powers to reconstruct Alcyoneus in Alaska.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • When Hazel and Leo are dealing with Narcissus in The Mark of Athena, she's as enraptured as any of the nymphs. Until he makes a remark about how Narcissus loves "him". Hazel turns up her nose and doesn't think anything of him anymore. She's from the 1940s, so it's a nod to how certain attitudes from seventy years ago are still ingrained in her. However, Tyrant's Tomb shows her having a good friendship with Lavinia, so either she's gotten over this attitude or she was more horrified by Narcissus', well, narcissism than his sexuality in the first place.
    • She's positively scandalized when she sees Percy and Annabeth tangled up with each other while sleeping in the stables, even though their clothes are still on. Even that degree of physical affection at that age was frowned upon in the 40s.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Daughter of Pluto. Unlike Nico, she got the "god of wealth" half as opposed to the "god of death" half. Unfortunately, her power is mostly limited to precious gems and metals. It's also the curse her mother saddled her with.
  • Face Death with Dignity: Death tells her point-blank that she should not be helping to free him, and she desperately doesn't want to die again, but she gets the job done.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Spent over seventy years wandering the Fields of Asphodel. Nico brought her back.
  • Foreign Cuss Word: "As Hazel marched up the hill, she cursed in Latin. Percy didn't understand all of it, but he got " son of a gorgon, power-hungry snake, and a few choice suggestions about where Octavian could stick his knife."
  • Gemstone Assault: How she usually attacks with her powers.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother was a mortal woman and her father is Pluto.
  • Hate Plague: The other reason why it sucks to be a child of Hades/Pluto. Wherever she goes, she is deeply feared and hated by almost everyone around her (save for her close friends).
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Killed herself and her mother to stop Gaea from raising Alcyoneus, then gave up Elysium so her mother wouldn't go to the Fields of Punishment.
  • Horseback Heroism: She loved horseback riding and trained with a cavalry sword, despite Romans disliking calvalry. She eventually gets her own steed in the form of the immortal horse Arion.
  • Instant Expert: In The House of Hades, when it comes to Mist manipulation — over the course of the book she ends up better than it than a millennia-old sorceress. Hecate, Goddess of Magic, implies this is due to her liminal status.
  • It's All My Fault: Alcyoneus coming back to life was directly Hazel's doing. Even though she was forced to by Gaea, Hazel still feels hugely guilty.
  • Jedi Mind Trick: Hazel uses the Mist to manipulate people's perception. It's how she defeats Pasiphaë.
  • Just Friends: With Leo. She eventually realizes that it isn't fair to see Leo as a replacement for Sammy, and continues dating Frank.
  • Lady of Black Magic: In House of Hades, she learns to manipulate the Mist, a skill she inherited from her mother.
  • Like Brother and Sister: With Percy.
  • Liminal Being: Doubly, owing not only to being half-mortal half-god, but having died and come back to life. Hecate (at a crossroads) tell her this gives her power over the veil between the worlds. It's also implied that this is why she is such a prodigy at manipulating the Mist.
  • Long-Lost Relative: To somebody we know well from Camp Half Blood. Seems to be a trend in the second series. Turns out to be Nico.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Levesque means either somebody who served in the household of a bishop, or just bishop. Of ancient Greek origin, curiously.
    • Also, hazel trees are sometimes called "hazel witch trees" due to the healing properties of hazelnuts.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Can suddenly do sorcery in the The House of Hades after receiving a blessing from Hecate, with this having never been brought up before and Hazel having received no previous training. It's foreshadowed when her mother reveals that she summoned Pluto with sorcery, but still somewhat out of left field.
  • Nice Guy: Her defining trait is her kindness.
  • Official Couple: With Frank. Later a Ruling Couple after being elected as praetor to replace Reyna, who resigned to join the Hunters.
  • Older Than They Look: She's chronologically 91, but died when she was 13.
  • Pensieve Flashback: Hazel has some pretty powerful "blackouts". She even manages to pull Frank and Leo into them.
  • Resurrected for a Job: Nico's intention was for her to correct her mistakes and hopefully achieve Elysium.
  • Ragin' Cajun: Lived in New Orleans until she was 13, and correspondingly has voodoo and sorcery incorporated into her backstory.
  • Rank Up: Was promoted to centurion between the second and third series. At the end of The Tyrant's Tomb, the legion votes to give her another promotion to praetor.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Technically being Nico's sister, she has shades of this for Bianca, as the latter had been Nico's first choice to resurrect before he found her. She actually has some issues with this in her chapters, though it's a non-issue by the end.
  • Self-Made Orphan: She killed her mother and herself to stop Gaea from raising Alcyoneus back in 1942.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: As the daughter of the god of wealth.
  • Two Girls to a Team: After Annabeth falls into Tartarus with Percy at the end of Mark of Athena, she and Piper are the only girls on the Argo II for most of The House of Hades. They end up bonding over this.
  • Unfinished Business: Hazel delayed Alcyoneus' resurrection in the 1940s, but he was alive and kicking by the 1980s, when he massacred Michael Varus and the Fifth Cohort and stole their eagle standard and equipment. One of the reasons Nico brought her back to life seems to have been to defeat Alcyoneus.
  • Weirdness Censor: Hecate tells Hazel she will have to learn to control the Mist to make it to the House of Hades.
  • What Could Have Been: In-universe example. Had she stayed in New Orleans, Hazel would have grown up to marry her childhood friend, Sammy.

    Jason Grace 

Jason Grace

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_oklb4pwix61qg1e00o3_1280.jpg

"I'm the son of Jupiter! I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion. I slew the Trojan sea monster, I topped the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves."

Jason is the first protagonist introduced in The Lost Hero, on a school bus with his friend Leo and girlfriend Piper — except he doesn't remember either of them, or anything, really. Some mishaps later, Gleeson Hedge, Annabeth, and Butch successfully deliver the three of them to Camp Half-Blood, with the revelation that the three of them are demigods.

Jason is claimed by Zeus, and leads a quest to rescue the goddess Hera. Along the way it's revealed that he's the younger brother to Thalia Grace and is actually the son of Jupiter, Zeus's Roman aspect. And most importantly, he learns that he's Hera's Roman representative to the Greek camp — like Percy is the Greek representative to the Roman camp, of which Jason was former praetor of.

Having been raised Roman, Jason is serious and a natural leader, although he does have his moments of good humor. However, he does struggle with the pressure of leading sometimes. Over the course of the series he becomes less aloof, more willing to open up, and more comfortable with himself and others.

As the son of Jupiter, he can control wind (and can fly as a result of this) and lightning (as well as the weather if he tries hard enough). He fights with Ivlivs, an Imperial gold coin that can change into a sword or a spear depending on which face it lands on, and later gains a gladius formerly owned by Hera at the end of The Lost Hero.


  • The Ace: Jason is the son of Jupiter/Zeus, the King of the Greco-Roman Pantheon. He was treated as the star of the legion, the most powerful demigod of the 12th Legion. He became the praetor, led the Romans to victory in the Titan War and is considered to be very handsome. Hazel refers to him as Camp Jupiter's "golden boy".
  • Ambadassador: He was switched with Percy, memory-wiped, and sent to Camp Half-Blood as part of Hera's plan to get the rival camps to trust each other through an "exchange of leaders".
  • Amicable Exes: Piper broke up with him when The Burning Maze comes in. Although the two are a little awkward around each other, they do still care for one another.
  • Amnesiac Hero: Got memory-jacked by Juno in order to set up a huge scheme to get the two camps cooperating. Half his motivation to help Camp Half-Blood was to find Hera and get his memories back.
  • Amnesiac Lover: Averted. Jason quickly reciprocates Piper's feelings, but he doesn't want to lead her on when he isn't entirely sure how he feels about her (first because of his amnesia, then because it turns out they were never dating in the first place, and then because of Reyna). As of the first chapter of Mark of Athena, he seems to have gotten together with Piper in the time between The Lost Hero and The Son of Neptune.
  • Big Brother Instinct:
    • When he finds out that Nico had/has a crush on Percy, he takes it upon himself to defend the kid whenever another group member gives him a hard time or says anything derogatory about him.
    • Also his reaction when the group reunites with Leo midway through the fourth book: Jason immediately realizes that something is wrong with his friend and asks if he's alright.
    • He's very protective of his biological sister Thalia as well, even though she's seven years older than him and a hero in her own right.
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: Jason's sword and spear (and the sword that replaces it), are all forged of Imperial Gold, which can kill wind-based monsters like the venti easily while Celestial Bronze weapons struggle to do the same. When destroyed, an Imperial Gold weapon will also detonate, creating a thirty-foot-deep crater.
  • Blow You Away: His dad's powers give him the ability to control wind.
  • Broken Ace: In The House Of Hades. He's very hard on himself and can find it difficult to connect to people, but he's getting there. Although he is the son of Jupiter, the greatest of all gods, Jason actually suffered because of this. And Jupiter is a callous father. He is in a relationship with Piper, daughter of Aphrodite that is until they broke up. And Jason is dead.
  • Butt-Monkey: Getting knocked out by a blow to the head is Running Gag throughout the series. He considers getting stabbed a nice change of pace because at least he gets to stay concious.
  • Character Development: In The House of Hades, he develops a Big Brother Instinct toward Nico and Leo, and realizes he may not truly belong at Camp Jupiter.
  • The Chosen One: The person who Annabeth would find missing a shoe from a prophecy turned out to be Jason, not Percy.
  • Chick Magnet: Many girls comment that he's very attractive, and he gets more overt romantic attention from Piper, Reyna, and Drew Tanaka.
  • Close-Call Haircut: Sciron shoots some of his hair off as a display of his prowess. With a Flintlock.
  • Cool Horse: A ventus (a storm spirit) named Tempest.
  • Cool Sword: Jason primarily fights with a coin that can turn into either a sword or a spear depending on which side it lands on. This gets wrecked by Enceladus, but Hera gives him a Roman gladius forged from Imperial Gold to replace it.
  • Demonic Possession: Possessed by an eidolon for a short while in the third book.
  • Deuteragonist: To Percy's protagonist.
  • The Ditherer: Not in general, but after his experience with Camp Half-Blood he was more-or-less, as stated several times, "an aimless wind" — he didn't know exactly what he wanted to be — Greek or Roman — or exactly what he wanted to do with his life, and he usually tried to please everyone as a leader. Part of his Character Development across the books is learning to make choices on those fronts.
  • Easy Amnesia/Laser-Guided Amnesia: Memory-wiped by Hera as part of her plan to unite the Greeks and Romans.
  • Foil:
    • To Percy. They're both The Ace and natural leaders, but Jason is comparatively straight-laced and rigid where Percy is free-spirited and rebellious thanks to their different camps and godly parents. They even look very different, with green-eyed, dark-haired Percy and blond-haired, blue-eyed Jason. Even their names contrast. Perseus means "to destroy", whereas Jason means "healer".
    • He's more serious and more successful than the ladies than his best friend Leo. Doubles as Bromantic Foil.
  • Fatal Flaw: His urge to deliberate. As the centurion of the Fifth Cohort and later as praetor, his leadership style was to listen to all sides of an argument and make a judgement after weighing all of the options. But when left to his own devices, Jason struggles to make a choice as that leadership style never really factored in what he wanted. His inability to decide whether he wants to stay at Camp Half-Blood or return to Camp Jupiter forms the crux of his conflict in the last books of The Heroes of Olympus and takes him out of comission for a solid chunk of the final book after Michael Varus stabs him.
  • Going Native: While born and raised a Roman, Jason ends up heavily embracing the Greek side of the mythological world and struggles to reconcile his two sides. He ultimately embraces being Greek completely and abdicates his title of Praetor to Frank for this reason.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a little one on his lip from trying to eat a stapler when he was two.
  • Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blond-haired, caring, and the voice of reason in The Lost Hero.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: His mother is described in the original series as an eighties starlet with a poofy hairdo. His father, of course, is Jupiter.
  • Hero of Another Story: He was the champion of Rome during the Titan Wars and probably had gone on many epic adventures as Percy and Co. did.
  • History Repeats Itself: Like the other Jason, Jason Grace ends up commandeering a ship called the Argo, leaves a relationship with one girl for another, and is part of a band of some of the greatest heroes in the world to go on a quest. And his final fate is quite the sad one as well.
  • Hunk: His handsome face and muscular body are given much attention (usually by Piper).
  • I Am Who?: Part of his Quest for Identity in the first book.
  • Icy Blue Eyes: They represent his aloofness, at least initially. The text describes them as so several times. Also, they're the only thing he has in common with his sister.
  • If I Do Not Return: He tells Apollo in The Burning Maze that if he doesn't make it out of this mission, to give his plans of new buildings for the gods to Annabeth. He dies telling Apollo to "remember" as a spear impales him. Apollo ultimately delivers Jason's temple plans to Camp Jupiter, who honoured his memory by building the temples in a weekend.
  • Ironic Name: In the sense that his name is derived from Greek ('Iason' means "healer") and he's a Roman.
  • Killed Off for Real: Courtesy of Caligula, the Neos Helios and Emperor of the West who impales him with a spear after it was thrown through his shoulder.
  • Last Words: He mouths for Apollo to "remember" the promise he made as a spear impales him.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Against Percy by Demonic Possession.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: Normally he ricochets it off his sword or javelin at the intended target. Sometimes works too well, since Achelous took this card off the table, as zapping him in the river would also have meant frying Piper.
  • Long-Lost Relative: To Thalia, his older sister. He disappeared when he was two, and they don't meet again until the events of The Lost Hero.
  • Master of the Mixed Message: Implied to have been the case with Reyna. Jason regains some vague memories of her at the end of The Lost Hero that cause him some guilt about his feelings for Piper. However, it later turns out that while Reyna had feelings for him, he only saw her as a friend. His guilt stemmed from the fact that while, according to him, he didn't lead her on, he didn't do very much to dissuade her feelings despite knowing about them.
  • Meaningful Name: Yes, just like that Jason.
  • Mr. Fanservice: A decent amount of attention is paid to his classic good looks.
  • Mysterious Past: In the first book. A new kid who calls all the gods by their Roman names, has a weapon that can slay monsters that's gold instead of bronze, knows how to fight really well and has a strange Roman motto with tick marks burned into his arm? Yeah, something's off.
  • New Transfer Student: Jason is technically one at the Wilderness School. The Mist creates fake memories for everybody so they think he'd been there for months already.
  • Nice Guy: Doesn't ever get mad when things don't go his way. Being positive comes naturally to him.
  • Official Couple: With Piper, at least until The Burning Maze.
  • Only Friend: Is this for Nico in The House of Hades, much to Nico's annoyance.
  • Raised by Wolves: Literally. He was raised by Lupa, a wolf who trains Roman heroes.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to both Leo and Percy's Red.
  • Relative Button: It doesn't show up very often, but he's extremely upset at the idea of something happening to his older sister, Thalia. When she's frozen by Khione during the climax of 'The Lost Hero' he screams that he's going to kill whoever is responsible, and doesn't seem troubled by the fact that his opponent is a goddess.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Thalia didn't mention having a brother during the previous quintet — however, it's justified in The Lost Hero that his disappearance not only would have put the Roman-Greek split in jeopardy, but Thalia's separation from him was quite traumatic for her.
  • Secret-Keeper: As of The House of Hades, he's the only person other than Nico himself to know about Nico's crush on Percy.
  • Shock and Awe: Having lightning powers, while draining, is definitely an impressive trump card.
  • Standardized Leader: Deconstructed. Despite initially seeming to fit the bill, Jason reveals that playing the "perfect leader" role left him feeling chafed. This is one of the reasons he begins to identify more with the less rigid lifestyle of the Romans and more with the Greeks.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: With Thalia. Blonde versus blackhead, calmer and following orders versus punk and hot(ter) headed, Roman vs Greek... As Reyna put it, he looks like an all-American boy, whereas she looks like someone who robs all-American boys in alleys at knifepoint.
  • Specs of Awesome: Asclepius gives him a pair of glasses with Imperial Gold frames in Blood of Olympus, then proceeds to go into a Curb-Stomp Battle against the Giants with the gods at the end of the book.
  • Straight Man: Because of his seriousness, he's quite deadpan.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: With Leo.
  • The Stoic: He's been a leader since he was young, and since his temperament sets the mood for his followers, he can't afford to get emotional. It's hardwired into him.
  • Team Dad: Acts as The Leader of the group due to his Roman upbringing being stricter than that of the Greeks', and in the third and fourth books tries to act as this for everyone else.
  • Tell Me About My Father: He asks Thalia to tell him about their mother. He isn't very happy with what he hears.
  • Tragic Hero: Jason's life has been one big tragedy, just like the original Jason. At the age of two, he was abandoned by his psychotic mom and was separated from his biological sister. He never met his dad for many years and never knew his birthday until he was sixteen. Jason had to endure the brutal training of the Roman Legion from a young age. After leading the Romans against the Titans and becoming a praetor, Jason was abducted by Hera who wiped his memory and forcibly sent him to Camp Half Blood, a potentially dangerous ground for Romans. For most of the Heroes of Olympus series, Jason was branded a traitor by the Romans. After enduring hazardous quests and finally defeating the Giants, Jason and Piper hoped to have a normal life, except his best friend Leo died. A couple of months later, Jason and Piper broke up. And in the end, Jason was fatally impaled by The Caligula literally. It doesn't help that the resurrected Leo couldn't say goodbye to Jason.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: Even the undead legions in Epirus recognize his subconscious desire to stay at Camp Half-Blood, and thus refuse to recognize him as a praetor. He realizes it himself.
  • Wrecked Weapon: Destroyed during the fight with Enceladus.

    Leo Valdez 

Leonidas "Leo" Valdez

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_oklb4pwix61qg1e00o1_1280.jpg

"Delaying death is my favorite hobby."

The son of Hephaestus and mechanic Esperanza Valdez, Leo had a happy childhood with his mother until her death. He is introduced as being Jason's best friend and Bromantic Foil. He is ecstatic at the discovery that he is a son of Hephaestus, and takes great delight in the camp machinery. He's the one that manages to fix Festus the bronze dragon (from the ancillary story The Bronze Dragon), and he, Jason, and Piper ride Festus on the quest to rescue Hera. Later, he is tasked with building the Argo II, a flying trireme that will be the Seven's main vehicle on their journey to topple Gaea.

Leo is wiry, funny, energetic, immature, and upbeat. He has a tendency to become infatuated with beautiful girls. However, he's also deeply insecure, stemming from his own past. He cracks jokes to not be overwhelmed by the negativity. Although most of the time his jokes are taken in stride, they can hurt the more sensitive like Frank and Nico, and part of Leo's Character Development is letting go of his past, maturing, and learning to fight alongside his teammates.

As a son of Hephaestus Leo is naturally extremely gifted with machines, to a notably greater extent than his siblings. He owns a magical toolbelt that can procure anything one might find in a garage (even breath mints!). He is also gifted with the very rare ability to command fire, an ability that hasn't been seen in centuries, but he is wary about using it due to his Dark and Troubled Past.


  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: He's Latino and taking his cues from his father, the Greek Hephaestus.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Mocked with Narcissus's nymphs — he pretends to be a loud and obnoxious "bad boy" who thinks he's better than Narcissus to distract him and the nymphs from noticing Hazel stealing the bronze.
  • Alone Among the Couples: In books three to five, where everyone else is paired off. That said, Leo has crucial ties to all three of the couples.
  • And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: Appears in The Burning Maze wearing a T-shirt that says in Latin, "My Cohort Went to New Rome and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt".
  • And the Adventure Continues: In the final scene of The Heroes of Olympus, he and Calypso fly off into the unknown atop Festus.
  • And This Is for...: "THIS IS FOR MY MOTHER, ESPERANZA VALDEZ!"
  • Back from the Dead: Administers the physician's cure on himself after dying while stopping Gaea, bringing him back to life. To everyone's relief and fury.
  • Bag of Holding: Leo's magic toolbelt. It can hold anything that fits into his pockets, and can produce anything that would reasonably be found inside of a garage. He can even pull out tofu to make surprisingly tasty tofu tacos. He can also whip out breath mints as needed.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Leo is the most friendly and cheerful of our new characters. He is also one of the most dangerous, having powers he can't always control.
  • Bromantic Foil: Jason's best friend. He's also louder, funnier, wirier, and more into girls.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: He talks back to his dad in a way that not even Percy Jackson would've, and he doesn't even get struck down- if anything, it actually gets him respect.
  • Carry a Big Stick: Sometimes uses a sledgehammer in combat.
  • Casanova Wannabe: Leo is fond of hitting on pretty girls out of his league. In The House of Hades, he laments not being as hunky as Jason, because that would have gotten him out of his current situation.
  • The Chessmaster: Rebuilt the body of the machine dragon Festus inside the hull of the Argo II, then installed the physician's cure into the dragon so it could bring him back to life, as Festus was the only thing capable of surviving Leo's Heroic Sacrifice when he blew himself up to take out Gaea. This also got him around the rules of Ogygia, as the island can only be found once in a lifetime by a demigod, but Leo died and then came back. Nobody figured this out, not even Annabeth, and his death only registered on Nico's radar as odd, not false.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Apparently accidentally killed his mother with his fire powers. He also had a divine grandma who (sort of) tried to kill him several times. Not to mention Gaea messing with his head.
  • Demonic Possession: He gets possessed by an eidolon, which makes him open fire from the Argo II onto New Rome and incurs the fury of the Romans against the Greeks.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Leo goes thermonuclear to kill Gaea. He got better.
  • The Engineer: Like all of Hephaestus's kids, he's good at building and fixing, but Leo's an especially prodigious one. He kept Festus going and built the Argo II.
  • Everyone Knows Morse: Leo learned it from his mother as they used it to keep track of each other when at her workplace. Only Leo is shown to know it and it doesn't serve any real plot relevant purpose except when Festus gives Leo a final message.
  • Fatal Flaw: His inferiority complex. No matter how much he does for the others, no matter how many times he's saved the day, Leo will always feel out of place next to everyone else, especially in the wake of something he believes to be his fault. He'll then push himself over the limit to make up for his (perceived or otherwise) shortcomings to his detriment, as seen in the opening to The House of Hades, where he's run himself ragged out of the belief that Annabeth and Percy fell into Tartarus because Leo used Nemesis' fortune cookie and their fate was the price for doing so.
  • First Kiss: For all of Leo's flirting, he's never been kissed until he leaves Calypso's island.
  • Foreshadowing: He's established as being a son of Hephaestus quickly, but there's still a small hint towards it. During the field trip, he makes a working toy helicopter out of pipe cleaners in a matter of minutes, and based on his indifferent reaction, he does stuff like that on the regular.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Even when Leo's doing nothing in particular, he still can fashion incredible machines. When he puts his mind to something, he can make automatons or huge warships.
  • Generation Xerox: He’s a dead ringer for his great-grandfather, Sammy Valdez.
  • Gentleman and a Scholar: Apollo praises him as a "gentleman and a genius", for not only being willing to assist in his trials, but for also inventing the Valdezinator, the musical instrument Leo traded Apollo in exchange for his help with the physician's cure.
  • Grease Monkey: As the team mechanic, he's always running around greased due to constantly fixing things.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: His dad is Hephaestus.
  • Heartbroken Badass: Becomes this around three quarters of the way through The House of Hades after he ends up on Calypso's island, falls in love with her, and then is forced to abandon her. He is noticeably different for the rest of the book, less twitchy, more serious, and well, in the words of Jason:
  • Height Angst: He is short and skinny, which does a number on his self-esteem, especially with his male compatriots all being tall and muscular save Nico.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Dies defeating Gaea, which was part of his plan all along. Fortunately, that plan also involved resurrection via the physician's cure.
  • Heroic Vow: It ends up being "the oath to keep with a final breath" of the Prophecy of Seven.
    "I'll come back for you, Calypso. I swear upon the River Styx."
  • Hidden Depths: Leo is truthfully very, very intelligent. In The Lost Hero, he is revealed to have been able to perform maths college students couldn't do at the age of eight. To make things worse, nobody seems to have realised his true intelligence, apart from maybe Annabeth who helped him build the Argo II.
  • Identical Grandson: He resembles his great-grandfather, Sammy, so much that Percy and Hazel think he's actually Sammy when they first get a look at him.
  • I Let Gwen Stacy Die: He blames himself for his mother's death, which was especially scarring.
  • In Love with Love: Leo pretty much falls for any girl who's out of his league, namely Khione and Thalia. Though, he gets over Khione rather quickly when she reveals herself to be a villain. This trait disappears after his first visit to Ogygia.
  • Infinite Supplies: That toolbelt of his is enchanted to "contain anything that could be found in a garage", which includes everything from small tools and materials, to a sledgehammer, to taco ingredients, to breath mints.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Hits an elevator button from thirty feet away by chucking a screwdriver like a throwing knife.
  • Just Friends: With Hazel.
  • Ladykiller in Love: "Ladykiller" may be a bit overstating it, but after his first visit to Ogygia, he completely stops hitting on other girls.
  • Last Words: "And by the way-I love you guys."
  • Like Brother and Sister: With Piper. Even though she's extremely attractive, he never hits on her or asks her out, and they treat each other like affectionate siblings.
  • Keet: He's fun-loving and always full of energy and good times. He's got so much nervous energy that he's got to constantly keep his hands moving. It has even been noted that his ADHD is still exceptional, even for a demigod.
    ALL DA LADIES LUV LEO
  • Kill It with Fire: When Leo starts bringing out the fireballs, start running — as Khione and Gaea herself find out.
  • MacGyvering: Being a child of Hephaestus, tinkering and building comes naturally, but he also has an infinite supply of tools (due to his tool belt) as well as his fire-controlling ability (which he uses to bake bricks and weld metal). Heck, when he crash-landed on Ogygia, literally all Leo had were the clothes on his back, his tool belt, and the Archimedes Sphere. He managed to cobble together a very slap-dash but functional personal helicopter in about thirty seconds. It chugged along for a few seconds before promptly exploding, but at least the blast saved him from becoming a bloody splat on the beach below.
  • Man on Fire: The first child of Hephaestus to be born in decades with the ability to summon fire. It only makes Leo more nervous since not only does he have a fifty percent chance of destroying the world, but he could also very easily kill another member of the seven.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: He falls in love with Calypso, a Titan's daughter and goddess who's been around for millenia.
  • My Greatest Failure: After he thought that he killed his mom, Leo didn't want to use his fire powers ever again before his quest with Jason.
  • Never Got to Say Goodbye: When he arrives at L.A, he comes across Piper and the others, asking where Jason was. Piper breaking down and holding him tightly tells him everything.
    "I didn't...I couldn't even say good-bye."
  • The Nicknamer: To his friends' frequent annoyance.
  • Official Couple: With Calypso.
  • Out of Focus: Leo spends the whole of The Hidden Oracle returning to Camp Half-Blood before returning to prominence, becoming a major character in The Dark Prophecy.
  • Playing with Fire: Leo is the first son of Hephaestus to have this ability since 1666, when said son started the Great Fire of London.
  • Plucky Comic Relief: Always count on Leo to be able to defuse the tension or solve problems by being his goofy self.
  • Playful Hacker: He apparently once hacked a copy of Mario Party 6 and added a fourth difficulty: Idiot Mode. Basically Artificial Stupidity.
  • Put on a Bus: Does this to himself in The Dark Prophecy, deciding to stay at the Waystation with Calypso and try to have a normal life.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Hazel worries about seeing him as a replacement of her first boyfriend Sammy, his great-grandfather. She seems to be moving past it by the fourth book.
  • The Runaway: Ran away from home six times.
  • Sad Clown: He smiles and jokes since its easier than being sad about things he can't change or that scare him. Subverted, since Jason notes how important Leo's sense of humor is to team morale.
  • Self-Made Orphan: This is the reason why he is initially afraid of his fire powers: when he was a kid, Gaia visited the workshop where he and his single mother were, with the firm intention of preventing Leo from becoming a powerful enemy; he used his powers to try and protect his mother, but lost control and started a fire, accidentally killing her instead. He still has his father, but since he's the god Hephaestus whom he only met at 15...
  • She Is Not My Girlfriend: Says this almost word-for-word when Calypso assumes that Reyna is the Penelope to his Odysseus (or Annabeth to his Percy, or Elizabeth to his Sir Francis Drake).
  • The Smart Guy: Even among Hephaestus kids, Leo is an exceptional engineer, being the mastermind behind the Argo II and managing to repair and install wings on Festus in only one night. Leo is also well-versed in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Greek, and Morse code, and from a very young age, Leo was able to solve highly advanced math problems that would have stumped most adults. And if his plan to sacrifice himself before returning from the dead is anything to go by, Leo is also an excellent strategist.
  • Stepford Smiler: Type A. He's upbeat and friendly on the outside, but melancholy and lonely on the inside.
    Keep moving. Don't get bogged down. Don't think about the bad stuff. Smile and joke even when you don't feel like it. Especially when you don't feel like it.
  • Team Chef: Able to whip up pretty boss veggie tacos anywhere and anytime you could possibly want them. Just ask Piper or Jason.
  • Tsundere: At least towards Calypso when he's marooned on her island. He's more affectionate after they actually become a couple.
  • Utility Belt: A thick leather tool belt with a LOT of pockets. Contains all sorts of tools and switches, bits and bobs, odds and ends, oh, and a sledgehammer. And breath mints.
  • Walking the Earth: His and Calypso's plan for the unforeseeable future. Eventually, they settle down in the Waystation.

    Piper McLean 

Piper McLean

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_oklb4pwix61qg1e00o2_1280.jpg

"Being a hero doesn't mean you're invincible; it means you're brave enough to stand up and do what's needed."

Piper is the beauteous daughter of Aphrodite and A-list actor Tristan McLean. Her dad's job being what it is, she doesn't get to spend much time with him. She also doesn't have plenty of friends at school and takes solace in Jason and Leo's company, and is shocked to learn that the three of them only thought they were friends due to the Mist. Upon arriving at Camp Half-Blood she is claimed by her mother and immediately clashes with resident Alpha Bitch Drew Tanaka. Piper despises fashion magazines, skirts, makeup, and other stereotypical girly characteristics shared by her siblings, leading her to feel out of place.

Because of her lonely background, Piper is fiercely protective of those close to her, and is very possessive over Jason. She's also insecure about their relationship and her standing among the Seven. However, Piper is willing to stand up to those who mistreat others, and is more than willing to stick her neck out for the rest of the team. She also displays remarkable empathy and is good at reading people. She slowly grows more confident in herself and in her powers over the course of the series.

Piper wields Katoptris, a ceremonial dagger once held by Helen of Troy. It shows her possibilities and visions of the future. As a daughter of Aphrodite, Piper is not that great in a fight — however, she's also blessed with the very rare power of charmspeaking, which allows her to command people to do what she wants through her Compelling Voice. She is the ex-girlfriend of Jason Grace and is currently in a relationship with a girl named Shel.


  • Action Girl: She certainly doesn't start out as one, but becomes a bona fide Action Girl able to take on giants by the last book thanks to a combination of luck, raw talent, and swordfighting lessons from Hazel. Her only power is charmspeaking, but its powerful enough to daze enemies, knock people asleep, or reverse a tree's growth. And with her dagger? The giant she saved Leo from won't be messing with anyone soon.
  • Affirmative-Action Legacy: Native American. Specifically, Cherokee.
  • Amicable Exes: Despite haven broken up with Jason when The Burning Maze picks up, the two are a little awkward around each other, but do show that they still care for the other. It is also mentioned that the two did a mission together sometime before Apollo arrived at Los Angeles and that was after the breakup.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Discovers in the first book that it's impossible to mess up the magic makeover provided by the Blessing Of Aphrodite, even if she wants to.
  • Bound and Gagged: Gets captured and tied up in the first, third, and fourth books.
  • Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Largely, but not entirely, averted: Piper dresses like an average 21st century high schooler, but does wear her hair in braids, often accessorizing it with a feather.
  • Braids of Action: Normally wears her hair in a long braid down one side with a bird feather. In the last book, it's specifically a bright blue harpy feather. Annabeth has no idea where she finds the time to do it aboard the Argo II.
  • Charm Person: Like a few other children of Aphrodite, Piper has the ability to 'charmspeak' people, which basically amounts to getting people to do things you want them to do, sometimes without them knowing.
  • Conflicting Loyalty: When her father gets captured for most of the first book, she is torn between saving him (which requires pledging allegiance to Gaea) and risk his life to save the world.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Gets a moment of this in The House of Hades:
    Khione: Jason will grace my throne room.
    Piper: Clever. Take you all day to think up that line?
  • Emotions vs. Stoicism: Because she's Aphrodite's daughter, she tends to play the "emotions" part, especially when paired with logical Annabeth or stoic Jason.
  • Everything Sounds Sexier in French: It's the language of love, so she can speak it.
  • Fake Memories: Her relationship with Jason was thanks to Mist manipulation. Gets deconstructed in The Burning Maze, where it's shown that, since their relationship was essentially built on top of a lie, Piper never really felt that she loved Jason even if she did care for him, hence why she decided to break up with him.
  • First Girl Wins:
    • Introduced as the first person Jason meets on the bus and his girlfriend. It turns out they weren't dating to begin with and it was all just fabricated memories of the Mist, but over the course of the first book they have genuinely grown to have feelings for each other. Despite Jason remembering a girl he was close to back in Camp Jupiter, Reyna, he's gotten together with Piper in the time between the two books.
    • Then subverted in The Burning Maze, when the two broke up precisely because their relationship started with a lie. Piper ends up dating someone else.
  • Five Stages of Grief: After Jason is killed, Piper at first denies that it happened, then tries to resurrect him, then lashes out at Apollo, then stops talking with him for a while, before she finally reconciles with Apollo and tells him to give Jason a proper Roman burial.
  • Foreshadowing: Despite Piper having many atypical traits compared to other Aphrodite children, there were a few early hints in The Lost Hero that she's a daughter of the love goddess.
    • She is immediately described as being uniquely beautiful, even despite her apparent efforts to downplay it.
    • Jason described her eyes as being a variety of different colors that seemed to change. Children of Aphrodite have the ability to change their physical features, including their eye colors.
    • Considering her father is a famous actor who is widely renowned for being a handsome heartthrob, it's not hard to see how he attracted Aphrodite's attention.
    • Piper vividly remembers her Fake Memories with her boyfriend Jason, and Annabeth even admits that her memories are sharper than most. It makes sense that a daughter of the love goddess would have abnormally strong memories associated with romance.
    • She very briefly seems to consider becoming a Hunter of Artemis, but immediately changes her mind when she learns dating is forbidden.
  • Gut Feeling: Has pretty good instincts thanks to being more attuned to people's emotions. This gets her out of the Temple of Fear in The Blood of Olympus, as it was all about following instincts and trusting your emotions.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother is a goddess and her father is a mortal actor.
  • Happy Ending Override: The Burning Maze. She loses her boyfriend, home, and wealth, and is forced to move back to her father's ancestral homeland in Oklahoma.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Ratchets her use of her Charmspeak up to awesome levels in The House of Hades, where she uses it to defeat Zethes, Calais and Khione. Said defeat included using Charmspeak to power up the deactivated Festus. And manages to top even that in Blood Of Olympus, when she manages to use her charmspeak to knock out Gaea herself.
  • Her Heart Will Go On: Downplayed in that she already broke up with Jason by the time he dies tragically during the fight with Caligula, but she moves on from his death relatively quick, reconciling with Apollo just a few days after she blamed him for his death. In The Tower of Nero, it is revealed that Piper is dating a local girl from Oklahoma, Shel.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Several times Piper wishes she weren't a demigod so she could live a normal life.
  • Improbable Weapon User: From Mark of Athena and onwards, she uses a food-shooting cornucopia as one of her weapons.
  • Kaleidoscope Eyes: Her eyes are a mix of brown, blue, and green.
  • Like Brother and Sister: Leo's the annoying little brother she never had. She'll still kill a giant if they mess with him, though.
  • The Load: She feels like this among the Seven, being one of two members of the team without powers directly useful in physical combat — the other is Annabeth, who more than makes up for it with smarts and combat experience. Then she learns she can use her charmspeak in truly powerful ways.
    "Piper had a new entry in her top-ten list of Times Piper Felt Useless. Fighting Shrimpzilla with a dagger and a pretty voice? Not so effective."
  • Lonely Rich Kid: Her classmates don't know about her movie star father, and she's shunned because she's "different." Hence her fear and possessiveness over Jason.
  • Love Hurts: Finding out your boyfriend has amnesia and that he was never really your boyfriend in the first place is a lot to take in.
  • Magical Native American: Defied. Piper specifically mentions in The Burning Maze that she doesn't know tracking or anything mystical like that. Her only "power" from her Cherokee heritage is the snake song, but even that only really works because of her Charmspeak. She does also know her grandfather's poison dart recipe, but he invented that on his own.
  • Meaningful Name: The name is Piper. Pied Piper. The Charmspeak, y'know. In-universe, her name was because her grandfather was impressed by her powerful voice, and thought she'd be a great singer.
  • Missing Mom: Aphrodite was absent from her life for a long time, and Piper is not happy about it.
  • More than Mind Control: The key to using her charmspeak powers properly, as she works out in The House of Hades.
  • Mundane Utility: Uses her cornucopia to pop out food for her picnics.
  • Noodle Incident: "I'm...not good with cows."
  • Obliviously Beautiful: Didn't really realize how pretty she was until she was claimed as Aphrodite's daughter.
  • Official Couple: With Jason. Although in The Burning Maze, she reveals that she broke up with him.
  • Offscreen Breakup: She tells Apollo it was because Hera was the one who forced her and Jason together, and Aphrodite definitely encouraged her daughter to pursue Jason. Piper didn't feel like she had her own agency compared to Percy and Annabeth who got to choose each other, and what she says to Apollo sums it up pretty well, "People's feelings change".
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: According to Jason, she defeated a flock of harpies on her own some time between House of Hades and Blood of Olympus.
  • Plucky Girl: Piper always remains positive despite all the troubles she goes through as part of the Seven.
  • The Power of Love: Her voice is enough to revive Jason even after his brain's been fried by Hera/Juno's true form.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: To Medea in The Burning Maze. "I'd tell you to say hello to Jason for me, but he'll be in Elysium. You... won't."
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: She seems to have ingrained this into her mentality — she expresses disdain for her more stereotypically feminine mother and siblings and their corresponding ineffectiveness in battle. She later grows out of this and realizes that you can be feminine, charming and a badass.
  • Riches to Rags: In The Burning Maze. Because Caligula destroys Tristan's reputation and confiscates all of his wealth, Piper is forced to move from her luxurious home in Hollywood to her family's tribal home in Oklahoma.
  • Secretly Wealthy: Her classmates never catch on that she's a Hollywood kid. Though as of The Burning Maze, she isn't anymore, as Triumvirate Holdings used their vast influence to systematically destroy her dad's career and fortune.
  • Seers: By looking into her dagger like a looking-glass. Most of the time, it shows her the most horrible parts of her present and future. At one point, she wonders how Helen of Troy stayed sane with it...and then realizes that she probably didn't.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Downplayed — Piper is explicitly an Unkempt Beauty, but she's an utter show-stopper after she receives Aphrodite's blessing, which gives her a makeover that left Jason speechless.
  • Spanner in the Works: The Gigantes fully expected Percy and Annabeth to infiltrate the Parthenon, but they were not expecting Piper to be there as well. As a result, Piper's subsequent surprise attack buys the heroes enough time for the gods to show up and defeat their enemies, and for Leo Valdez to set a trap for Gaea.
  • Sticky Fingers: She's a kleptomaniac on record — however, this was only to get attention, and she wasn't consciously stealing, just using her charmspeak.
  • Surprisingly Normal Backstory: Piper suffered from Parental Neglect due to her celebrity father having a busy job. In comparison with the rest of the main characters, all of whom have lived through war or lost loved ones because of their demigod status, her backstory is far more mundane by contrast.
  • Tomboy: Piper despises stereotypically girly things.
  • Took a Level in Badass: She takes swordfighting lessons with Hazel in House of Hades and gradually becomes more skilled with her charmspeak, to the point of being able to put Gaea herself to sleep so she can be finished off.
  • Tsundere: Type B; she's usually pretty nice, but can be snappy.
  • Two Girls to a Team: After Annabeth falls into Tartarus with Percy at the end of Mark of Athena, she and Hazel are the only girls on the Argo II for most of The House of Hades. They end up bonding over this.
  • Unkempt Beauty: She's beautiful even while going out of her way to look unkempt and rebellious. It's a side effect of being a daughter of Aphrodite.
  • Unnecessary Makeover: An in-universe example according to Jason — she was already lovely before Aphrodite's claiming gave her a makeover.
  • The Un-Favourite: She feels like she's become this to Aphrodite after hooking up with Jason, because having successfully become the girlfriend of the guy she's in love with, she's become less interesting as a person to her mother (who outright says that she thinks of the Seven as stories, as opposed to actual people).
  • "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Rarely got to spend any real time with her dad. She stole things to get his attention, and has a game that they play in place of bonding, initially.
  • What Would X Do?: After Annabeth falls into Tartarus with Percy, Piper finds herself wondering what Annabeth would do in her situation of defeating Khione, Zethes, and Cal.
  • Yandere: Piper is completely obsessed with Jason and would kill, usually due to jealousy or fear, any "obstacle" that gets in her way.
  • You Are What You Hate: She expresses disdain towards Aphrodite kids and their cabin before learning she's a daughter of Aphrodite herself.

Other POV Characters

    Nico di Angelo 

Niccolo "Nico" di Angelo

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tumblr_olgh8jue3a1qg1e00o2_1280.jpg

"...The only person who ever accepted me was Bianca, and she died! I didn't choose any of this. My father, my feelings..."

Younger brother to Bianca and son of Hades and Maria di Angelo. After Bianca's death, Nico runs away and teaches himself to use his unique powers. After the events of The Last Olympian, Nico spent more time in the Underworld looking to resurrect his late older sister Bianca, but resurrects Hazel instead after realizing Bianca had chosen to pass on. In The Lost Hero Annabeth mentions he's been helping out with the effort to find Percy, but he otherwise doesn't appear, spending most of his time either in the Underworld or Camp Jupiter as Pluto's ambassador.

In the second book, Nico reveals his personal quest to search for the Doors of Death — however, he is captured by Gaea's forces and is held captive for the majority of the third book.

Because of his reserved, anti-social, secretive personality, he puts up several walls, some of which he is forced to tear down over the course of the series. However, he has a notable soft spot for his sister Hazel.

Being a son of Hades, Nico has several powers — he can control the earth, shadows, and can communicate with the dead. He fights with his unique Stygian iron sword.


  • Aloof Ally: Even when working with the crew in the fourth book, Nico doesn't talk much and prefers to stand off to the side.
  • Always Second Best: Narrowly misses being the hero of the last Great Prophecy, then Hazel shafts him out of being one of the Seven.
  • Ambadassador: Serves as Hades' main liaison to the outside world.
  • Anger Born of Worry: The one most furious when Leo doesn't immediately return after his resurrection. As he puts it, he doesn't like being kept in the dark. So when Leo comes home, Nico creates a line for everyone to punch him.
  • Animals Hate Him: Apparently, they can sense the smell of death. Porkpie the pegasus won't give him a ride because he "smells like dead people". This appears to be a shared trait of Hades' children, as Nico's half-sister Hazel has it as well.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Is this to Bianca until her death.
  • Apocalypse Maiden: Like Percy and Thalia, the idea that he could be the demigod of the Great Prophecy is considered, and Hades goes so far as to trick Nico into imprisoning Percy to ensure that Nico is the one.
  • Armored Closet Gay: He was initially suggested several times to have a crush on Annabeth, and Cupid had to drag out an admission that Nico crushed on Percy before Nico and Jason could proceed with their quest. Justified, though, as he grew up in a very homophobic time period and felt that, as a demigod son of Hades not even from this century, it would only ostracize him more.
  • Ascended Extra: Goes from Demoted to Extra in the first three books of Heroes of Olympus to getting lots of focus in the last two.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: When he declares himself the king of ghosts.
  • Badass Adorable: Is one of the youngest and smallest characters in the first series, but also one of the most badass.
  • Badass Boast: From the earlier Awesome Moment of Crowning example. Overlaps with Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
    Minos: I am the king of ghosts!
    Nico: No. I am.
  • Badass in Distress: At the end of the second book as a result of some Reckless Sidekick behavior investigating the Doors of Death himself, he gets captured by Gaea's forces. He's held captive in a jar throughout the third book until he's rescued.
  • The Bait: Serves this role in The Mark of Athena.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: His bickering with Will Solace in The Blood of Olympus is heavily implied to be this. They are an Official Couple as of The Trials of Apollo.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Adorably perky and annoying in The Titan's Curse, out for blood in The Battle of the Labyrinth.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Hazel considers him her big brother, and Nico clearly loves her a lot and seems to spend quite a bit of his time at Camp Jupiter talking to her and cheering her on.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Nico loves this so hard, most notably in The Last Olympian when he brings Hades and a massive army to the battle against Kronos just as the heroes' backs are against the wall. He also does this several times throughout The Tower of Nero.
  • Big Sister Worship: Absolutely loved his sister Bianca, and her death left him with scars he still hasn't gotten over.
  • Black Sheep: Among the demigods, being a son of Hades and all — he just doesn't fit in. Although Will Solace makes the point that a lot of this is self-inflicted.
  • Black Swords Are Better: Nico's shadow-black Stygian iron sword just happens to absorb a monster's essence when they're killed by it, preventing said essence from returning to Tartarus and ever regenerating. Neat.
  • Break the Cutie: When he learns about Bianca's death, and then even more afterwards.
    • Heal the Cutie: Gradually begins to recover following the events of The Blood of Olympus, having built a decent support system of friends, but the trauma left its mark on him.
  • Broken Ace: Nico is one of the most powerful demigods, but he's also been through quite the Trauma Conga Line.
  • Broken Pedestal: Percy was the first demigod Nico ever saw in action, and he idolized him up until Percy told him that Bianca was dead.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: He's not afraid to chew Hades out for what he regards as bad behavior. Thankfully, his father is possibly the only Olympian god that could be pestered that far without smiting his child for impudence.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: In The House of Hades, he absolutely refuses to admit he has any feelings for Percy, to the point that Cupid has to force a confession out of him.
  • Cast from Hit Points: His Underworld-related powers, such as shadow-traveling and summoning the dead, take an enormous amount of energy. If he overdoes it, he risks passing out or even fading into the shadows permanently.
  • Casting a Shadow: He can use shadows to teleport and occasionally projects his feelings and memories in the form of waves of darkness.
  • Character Development: By the time the third series starts, Nico is much more comfortable with his homosexuality, to the point where he came out of the closet to those at Camp Half-Blood and started a relationship with Will Solace. He also becomes more comfortable with touch throughout The Trials of Apollo.
  • Cheerful Child: Before Bianca's death.
  • Chekhov's Classroom: He studied the works of Dante in elementary school, which manages to come into play about 70 years later when a prophecy calls for knowledge of the poetic style of terza rima.
  • The Comically Serious: Occasionally, his frowning and seriousness at a joke is funnier than the actual joke.
  • Cool Sword: All the other demigods have to use plain old celestial bronze or Imperial gold. Nico gets black Stygian iron because he's just that special.
  • Creepy Good: He is repeatedly described as unnerving and difficult to figure out by the other demigods. His penchant for Stealth Hi/Bye doesn't help.
  • Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: He's described as having these. A natural design choice for the son of the god of the underworld.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: A child of Hades who can talk to the dead and fights with shadows and dresses in all black? Loyal to the Greeks as they come.
  • Deader than Dead: What is inflicted upon monsters that are struck down by his Stygian iron sword. Their souls get absorbed into his blade, preventing them from returning to Tartarus and resurrecting.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Has a moment of it in The Last Olympian:
    Percy: I think the river thing worked.
    Nico: Oh gee, you think?
    • Later he gets much more of this. Particularly towards Will, but really, no one is safe.
  • Death Seeker: Implied; a passing couple of lines from Battle of the Labyrinth reveals that Nico, at some point in time, was willing to sacrifice his own soul to bring his late sister back to life. As far as we're aware, he's since gotten better.
  • Defrosting Ice King: Thanks to Jason and Reyna he is considerably less prickly by the end of Blood of Olympus.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: He was raised in the 1930s, when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and morally reprehensible, which goes a long way toward explaining why he's so ashamed to admit he had a crush on Percy.
  • Demoted to Extra: In the first three books of Heroes of Olympus. He plays a large role in the fourth, and gets POV chapters in the fifth.
  • Did Not Get The Guy: The guy in question being Percy Jackson.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Shows some earth-mover abilities, especially at the end of Battle of the Labyrinth.
  • Dream Weaver: To a degree. He can travel and communicate through dreams, but not as well as Clovis can.
  • Due to the Dead: When King Minos tells him he can just summon the dead by offering them animal blood, Nico insists he will treat them with respect and offers them Happy Meals and Coke.
  • Emo Teen: A preteen version. It's not that he doesn't have a good reason for angsting, but it does get kind of ridiculous at times. It doesn't help that he has the ability to communicate with dead people, but the one ghost he wants to speak to is avoiding him and is later reincarnated.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: Not only dealing with skeletons, bones, and shadow, he also has a zombie driver named Jules-Albert gifted by his dad. A zombie who was previously a French racer when he was alive.
  • Exhausted Eye Bags: Has them in his character portrait, fitting for an Emo Teen and self-proclaimed king of ghosts.
  • Fading Away: Starts doing this in The Blood of Olympus as a result of too much shadow-traveling. He gets better.
  • Fatal Flaw: Holding grudges, a flaw shared by most children of Hades. When Nico's angry with someone, he can hold onto that resentment for months on end, and it can blind him to people's true nature. His anger over Percy "letting" Bianca die made it easy for Minos to manipulate him under the pretense of bringing her back, and his bitterness over feeling like an outcast at Camp Half-Blood ultimately stemmed from his own paranoia, as there were people at camp who would've genuinely wanted to be Nico's friend or something more in the case of Will Solace.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Averted. He and Bianca fit into the present extremely well and initially didn't even realize they were from another time due to their limited memories of their lives before the Lotus Hotel. It does cause him a bit more angst in Heroes of Olympus, but mostly because it's yet another thing that makes him different from other demigods and because it makes it harder for him to accept his homosexuality.
  • Forced Out of the Closet: By Cupid. Nico was dragged out, kicking and screaming as Cupid forced him to confess that it wasn't Annabeth he had a crush on, it was Percy.
  • Foreshadowing: At the end of the Battle of the Labyrinth, during the massive battle, Percy notices some monsters break off from the large group and head towards the camp. He calls to Nico to stop them, and Nico summons some undead to take the monsters down. Among the undead: Roman Centurions. At Camp Half-Blood.
  • Gayngst: In The House of Hades, it turns out at least part of his broodiness and desire to stay away from others stems from his (unacknowledged and repressed) feelings for Percy Jackson.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: His dad is Hades.
  • Hates Being Touched: Hates touching others, too; the only person he seems to show any physical affection towards is Hazel. Begins to get over this by the end of The Tower of Nero.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: Downplayed, as he's never on the side of outright evil, but he repeatedly switches between helping Percy and working against him depending on the situation. By the end of The Last Olympian he's pretty firmly good, but people still struggle to trust him in Heroes of Olympus due to his history of changing sides.
  • Heroic RRoD: Overuse of his underworld powers causes him to flicker like a ghost, and could make him permanently fade into the shadows. Transporting the Athena Parthenos across the Atlantic nearly does it. Six months later, he's still recovering.
  • Hide Your Gays: Very downplayed, but although his feelings for Percy are addressed directly, the words "Gay", "Homosexual" or any equivalent are never used, referring it only indirectly as "What I am" or similar phrases. He is also the only couple that is not outright stated to be one (only heavily implied) and gets a No Hugging, No Kissing treatment.
    • In The Trials of Apollo, Will explicitly refers to Nico as his boyfriend and Apollo approves of them being a couple, but words like "homosexual" still aren't used, and they're not seen showing any PDA more explicit than leaning on each other. However, Nico is not a cuddly person by nature and probably would take a while to get used to public affection, much like his sister, Hazel.
    • Averted at last in The Tower of Nero with plenty of Character Development in tow, when the narration explicitly states that he is gay, openly refers to Will as his boyfriend, and snuggles with said boyfriend at the Campfire at the end of the book.
    • And finally shot to hell in The Sun and The Star which puts a lot of focus on his relationship with Will, has them kiss quite a lot and involves some deep conversations about sexuality.
  • Hopeless Suitor: In The House of Hades, it's revealed that he had a crush on Percy that started in The Titan's Curse, while Percy and Annabeth have mutual feelings for each other.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • He's entirely aware of the hypocrisy when he tries to convince Reyna to talk to him about her problems and when he congratulates Hazel for making the most of her second chance at life. He's genuinely annoyed when he realizes he should take his own advice.
    • When Will suggests Nico speak to Dionysus about his dreams, Nico asks him if Dionysus can even get through a conversation without "sarcasm, an insult, or a combination of the two?" Will completely murders him by responding, simply, "Can you?"
  • I Work Alone: Mainly because he feels ostracised and tends to push people away. Will Solace tells him off for having this attitude.
  • Incompatible Orientation: With Percy.
  • Ineffectual Loner: Nico doesn't really like people and prefers to work alone, but he's forced to work with the Seven anyway. Not that he really minds.
    • Downplayed, as he can be pretty effectual while working alone as seen in both The Battle Of The Labyrinth and The Last Olympian.
    • He gets particularly ineffectual over the course of The Blood Of Olympus, as he's pushing his powers to the brink. He would not have survived the quest without assists from Hedge, Will, various pegasi, and especially Reyna.
  • Informed Loner: He believes that no one likes him for being a son of Hades and that they were trying to push him away, only for the other campers to point out that he was the one pushing them away. By the start of Trials of Apollo he's an accepted and relatively well-liked member of the camp.
  • Interspecies Friendship: Develops this with Bob the Titan and the Troglodytes.
  • Looks Like Cesare: Increasingly since the previous series. Leo describes his eyes as sad and tired, and accounts this to him having stared into the depths of Tartarus.
  • Loner-Turned-Friend: In the previous series, he started out as a friend but became a loner due to Bianca's death. When this series starts he's still aloof and closed-off but willing to work with the heroes, and even becomes the team's Sixth Ranger of sorts in the fourth book.
  • Made of Indestructium: His Stygian Iron sword is described as being virtually indestructible.
  • Meaningful Name: His surname is di Angelo, and his father is the god of the afterlife. It's a weird mix of this and an Ironic Name since angels live opposite to the Underworld and are associated with light, while both Nico and his dad have power over darkness.
  • Meditation Powerup: The Death Trance allows him to survive with limited air by eating one seed a day to survive. The seeds in question being from pomegranates grown in Persephone's garden.
  • Messy Hair: His hair is always overgrown and shaggy.
  • Mind Rape: It is heavily hinted that this is what Nico went through as a prisoner of Gaea, to give an idea of how broken Nico was when he was finally rescued, Percy delivers this thought:
    Nico's eyes looked like shattered glass. Percy wondered sadly if something inside him had broken permanently.
    • The narration of The Tower of Nero also acknowledges that he went through this when in isolation with King Minos.
  • Missed the Call: Percy got it instead of him.
  • Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: He's seen as creepy by the Romans (and most characters, really) but he does genuinely care. While the Greeks (including even Percy at some points in the first series) tend to treat him kind of badly, his loner status is also helped by his assumption that they would that kept him away. This probably has to do with Nico's sexuality and his divine parentage making him feel like an outcast in every possible way. Will is the first one to put his foot down and make it clear that they would be happy to have him around.
  • Morality Pet: Hazel. Even at his grumpiest, creepiest, most anti-social nadir, Nico is still affectionate to his sister. When Frank can't imagine Nico acting out of love for anybody, he still thinks Hazel would be the exception.
  • Moving Beyond Bereavement: His arc in Battle of the Labyrinth revolves around accepting his older sister's death and how it wasn't Percy's fault. By the end of the book, he and Percy end on good terms, while Nico goes to look for more information about his family.
  • Murder by Inaction: In the fifth book, he allows Octavian to kill himself in a manmade comet attempting to stop Jason, Piper, and Leo from defeating Gaea when he could have very easily stopped him, and comforts himself with the thought that some deaths shouldn't be prevented.
  • Necromantic: Platonic, non-villainous example; he really wanted to resurrect his older sister Bianca.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Lampshaded by Reyna when he sends powerful dreams to the mortals aboard the Mi Amor, hoping to keep them asleep, she wonders if he's always had that ability.
  • Nice to the Waiter:
    • Hestia notes that Nico was one of the first demigods to bother talking to her in ages.
    • Unlike Percy, Nico visited Bob the Titan and spoke with him often, and apparently talked Percy up to him. It serves the dual purpose of saving Percy and Annabeth's lives in Tartarus and getting Percy to realize that he's neglected not just Bob, but Nico himself over the years.
  • No Badass to His Valet: Every demigod, even Hazel, views Nico as frighteningly powerful and at least somewhat creepy—every demigod, that is, except Will Solace, who's more apt to bicker with him. When Nico passes out from shadow-traveling in The Hidden Oracle, Will merely snarks that he's "going to get the Lord of Darkness here some Gatorade."
  • Official Couple: With Will Solace as of Trials of Apollo.
  • Older Than They Look: Bianca and Nico were born in the 1930s, but he and his sister were put in the Lotus Hotel by their father. This kept them from aging until the Prophecy came up.
  • Omniglot: Speaks Italian, English, Ancient Greek, and Troglodytish, as far as we know of. He also appears to have some passing understanding of Portuguese.
  • One-Man Army: By the end of Heroes of Olympus, he has no problem taking out six other demigods from Camp Jupiter while groggy and weakened from the overuse of his powers and occupied with protecting Will Solace. He also escaped Tartarus by himself, when Percy needed a ton of help to do so, and can easily smash through Gaea's Earthborn.
  • Only Friend: Jason is this for him in The House of Hades (as Hazel is also his half-sister and his crush on Percy has complicated their friendship quite a bit.) Nico is Alice-1 and Jason acts as Bob-2. This is because he is Creepy Good and a Socially Awkward Hero, and intentionally pushes people (including Jason) away.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Nico is not so easily frightened. But in The Last Olympian, when May Castellan begins freaking out from her visions of "[Luke]'s fate", Percy notes how Nico looks just as scared as [Percy] was. And when she starts shaking the son of Hades' shoulders, the latter nearly let out a "strangled scream" and was very eager to leave the house.
  • Opposites Attract: Seems to be the case between him and Will Solace. While Nico is pale with dark hair, and the son of the god of the Underworld, Will is tan with golden hair, and his dad is the god of the Sun, and he has some degree of Light 'em Up powers.
  • Pass the Popcorn: Has everyone who wants to punch Leo (after Leo's Back from the Dead experience) take a number.
  • Perky Goth: Dresses in black and leather, and is the son of Hades. Despite this, he can be a pretty friendly, if somewhat dour and sarcastic, guy.
  • Personality Powers: Moody, antisocial, and dour? Fitting for the son of the god of the underworld, who has death and shadow-related powers.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: As a child of Hades, he can instantly open fissures to the Underworld, bring down entire mountain fortresses, and slaughter small armies on his lonesome.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: He is one of the shortest and (biologically) youngest of the main demigods in the series, second only to Hazel. Nevertheless, as a child of Hades, he is one of the most powerful demigods on the planet, being able to take on at least six other demigods on at a time while going out of his way not to kill them and slaughtering a great chunk of Gaea's forces in the House of Hades by himself while weakened and groggy from overusing his abilities.
  • Power-Strain Blackout: Prone to these when he overuses his powers, and consequently spends a significant chunk of The Blood of Olympus unconscious.
  • Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Delivers a pretty good one to Lycaon in Blood of Olympus
    Nico: Come get me, you mutt! Or do you have to stay like a good dog until your master shows up?
  • The Promise: At the end of the third book, Percy makes him promise to lead the rest of the Argo II to Epirus to retake the Doors of Death before falling into Tartarus with Annabeth.
  • Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: He was described as olive-skinned in the first series (as his mother was Italian), but his skin paled to white after he spent more time in the Underworld.
  • Red Baron: "The Ghost King", courtesy of the prophecy of The Battle of the Labyrinth.
  • Rescue Romance: His crush on Percy started way back in The Titan's Curse when Percy saved him and Bianca from Dr. Thorn.
  • The Resenter: He resents both Greek and Roman camps for driving him away, but specifically resents Percy and Thalia for surviving the quest in The Titan's Curse when Bianca didn't. Doesn't help that Thalia went on to become leader of the Hunters, which Bianca had joined before her death.
    • Also averted in the case of Annabeth dating his crush. He finds himself utterly unable to resent her, because she's always been kind to him.
  • Sixth Ranger: Joins the crew of the Argo II and goes off with them to rescue Percy and Annabeth at the end of the third book.
  • Socially Awkward Hero: Being a child of the most antisocial god doesn't bless one with good social skills.
  • Shameful Source of Knowledge: He knows what a katobleps is because he had its Mythomagic card.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Was diagnosed with PTSD sometime off-page during the third series, following his years-long Trauma Conga Line involving two wars, where he was captured as a prisoner of war during one of them, and his first friend without romantic complications dying in another war, which he felt happen. It is also implied that he does not associate waking up in dark places with good things, in The Tower of Nero.
  • Ship Tease:
    • Played with rather epically. He is depicted as being shy around Annabeth, which Percy interprets as him having feelings for her. Come House of Hades, we learn that he was actually jealous of her, as his true crush was on Percy himself.
    • Has this with Will Solace, the head of the Apollo Cabin in The Blood of Olympus, with whom we see an eventually Relationship Upgrade with.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: Does this often, to the chagrin of his companions.
  • Superhero Speciation: Had some instances of Dishing Out Dirt in the first series (notably, splitting the ground open to swallow up some skeletons attacking Percy and throwing up a wall of black rock in the Labyrinth to stop some pursuers), but now that this is his sister Hazel's main ability, he sticks to his "god of death" skill set.
  • Tell Me About My Father: Nico's quest in The Last Olympian is to make his past make sense, and the only way he can do that is to convince Hades to tell him about his mom.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Yes, the cute, excited little ten year old turns into one of the most badass characters in the series.
  • Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Downplayed. He may not be the poster child for happiness, but in the third series he's noticeably more lighthearted and less grouchy than in the previous two series. He even smiles on occasion!
  • Touch of Death: Has the ability to invoke this as of The Tower of Nero, where he turns an enemy mortal into a skeleton to save Apollo, which he can control.
  • Transflormation: Got turned into a dandelion plant by Persephone in a "family spat" sometime before "The Sword of Hades" and gets turned into a corn plant by Triptolemus in The House of Hades.
  • Trauma Conga Line: His mom died when he was about 9. His big sister left him to join the Hunters when he was ten, then died. He then spent about six months being manipulated by the ghost of Minos, and spent most of his time in the Underworld. He had to keep knowledge of the two camps to himself. When he went into the Underworld to free his sister, she'd already reincarnated. Then he went into pretty much literal hell and got captured by the giants, who nearly killed him by keeping him in a jar with little air and no food or water. While trying to get the Athena statue across the world, he nearly killed himself from overexertion of his powers. And that's not even counting his crush on Percy, which he hated himself for, and then got outed for. And when you thought it was over, in The Burning Maze Jason, Nico's first friend besides his sister without romantic complications, dies. He didn't take it well — he got diagnosed with PTSD after all of that.
    • And that's not going into the fact that he basically killed Bryce Lawrence using said trauma in The Blood of Olympus, sending him to the Underworld out of sheer rage and pain.
    • The Tower of Nero also manages to summarize all of this in a single paragraph to demonstrate how resilient he is, for surviving everything he has been through and still trying to live his life.
      He had been born in Mussolini's Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He'd emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He'd been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He'd wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he'd struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man.
      Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.
  • Troubled, but Cute: At first he's just an annoying cute little bro, then his sister dies. He stays cute.
  • Tsundere: He comes off like this in some of his interactions with Will.
  • The Un-Favourite: In The Last Olympian, Hades makes it blatantly obvious that he liked Bianca more than Nico. However, The Blood of Olympus later shows that Hades deeply cares for Nico, suggesting that this is no longer the case.
  • We Do Not Know Each Other: To Percy in The Son of Neptune, who barely buys it. When confronted, he states that it's not his place to help Percy remember who he is.
  • Why Can't I Hate You?: Feels this way about Annabeth, as she's both his romantic rival and one of the people who's consistently nice to him.
  • Wrong-Name Outburst: He almost calls Hazel Bianca, and actually did call Reyna Bianca at one point.
  • Your Soul Is Mine!: His sword, forged from Stygian Iron, has this property, being able to absorb the essence of the monsters he slays to prevent them from reforming in Tartarus.
  • You Should Have Died Instead: Hades implies this regarding Bianca, although he eventually comes to love and appreciate Nico on his own merits.

    Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano 

Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reyna.jpg

"I mean to save this camp, Percy Jackson. Things are worse than you realize."

A daughter of Bellona, Reyna and her sister Hylla were born in Puerto Rico to an affluent family. Through unfortunate circumstances they became employees of the sorceress Circe, seen in The Sea of Monsters. After the spa is destroyed and she parts ways with her sister, Reyna joins Camp Jupiter and eventually becomes co-praetor alongside Jason. As leader of Camp Jupiter Reyna is wise and calm, but has been struggling with leading the camp by herself while trying to keep Octavian from gaining power. She puts the camp's welfare over that of her own, and judges people with how they can assist the camp.

As a daughter of Bellona, Reyna is skilled with weaponry and combat and can lend her strength to allies or followers. She fights with an Imperial gold spear and dagger.


  • Abdicate the Throne: In The Tyrant's Tomb, she resigns as praetor, nominating Hazel to replace her position.
  • Abusive Parents: Apparently, her and Hylla's father was one, which was why they ran away from Puerto Rico to Circe's retreat.
  • Action Girl: As the daughter of a war goddess, she's very handy in a fight.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Is described as tall and dark-haired, with a mature and regal aura which she puts to good use as the leader of Camp Jupiter. Deconstructed as she has a Dark and Troubled Past, so she puts up a mature facade and does not allow herself to show weakness in front her subordinates, as they look to her for guidance.
  • Ambiguously Bi: She mentions in The Tyrant's Tomb that other people have tried to set her up with both men and women, and her only issue seems to be with the amount of pressure being put on her to date someone. Overlaps with Asexuality, as this can also be seen as her being interested in neither men nor women.
  • Badass Cape: As praetor, she wears a purple one. You gotta look good when you're kicking ass.
  • Badass Family: She and her sister are daughters of the war goddess, Bellona. One of them at a time is awesome, but when they team up, monsters should run screaming.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Her Official art makes her look almost like a villain.
  • Big Sister Instinct: Develops this kind of relationship with Nico in Blood of Olympus during their quest. She even has to remind herself at one point that he isn't her little brother.
  • Braids of Action: She wears her hair in a braid.
  • Broken Bird: She's hardened from her past and not all too optimistic about herself, though she hides it with stoicism.
  • Canine Companion: She's got two dogs that accompany her around.
  • The Chains of Commanding: She's been a praetor of the legion for years and shouldered the burden of leadership on her own after Jason disappeared. Then she had to lead the legion into an unnecessary war she didn't really want to fight, while having to deal with a power-hungry rival who wants to usurp her position. After the Giant War, she had only a brief period of peace before she had to deal with another invasion of Camp Jupiter by the emperors Caligula and Commodus along with Tarquin. All this is on top of her own personal problems with her family and her love life. Small wonder that she resigns as praetor and joins the Hunters after defeating the emperors. Even the Hunt must seem relaxing after all she's been through.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: While not named, she actually appeared as early as Sea of Monsters.
  • Cool Big Sis: Eventually, she becomes an older sister figure for Nico during their quest with Hedge to deliver the Athena Parthenos.
  • Comforting Comforter: She thinks about doing this when she's protecting Nico, but decides that he might think it was patronising.
  • Despair Event Horizon: First she lost her home to and was imprisoned for months by pirates in Sea of Monsters, then was forced to go on the run with her sister, whom she eventually parted ways with. Which was bad enough. Then in Mark of Athena, after waiting for her love interest and best friend, Jason, to return to her and having to carry on the praetorship all by herself for eight months, Jason coming home with a girlfriend in tow and war breaking out between the Greeks and the Romans within the same hour has pretty much destroyed Reyna's hope that anything good will ever happen to her again.
  • Determinator: One of her best traits is her will to power through, and it's part of what makes her such a good leader (as she can pass this on to her followers). Despite losing nearly everything in The Blood of Olympus, she refuses to give up on her quest.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Knowing that Camp Jupiter will soon be attacked, she tells Percy to find her sister Hylla and ask her to help.
  • Friendly Enemy: To Annabeth. They're similar in that they are determined, competent leaders who want the best for their camps, and they even seem to get along fairly well when interacting in The Mark of Athena before everything goes to hell.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Her mother is Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, while her father was a mortal soldier.
  • Heroic BSoD: She suffers from this after seeing the ghosts at her old home in San Juan, right after being forced to leave Hylla behind to delay Orion.
  • Interrupted Bath: Got an Iris-Message from Hazel and Percy while in the baths.
  • Lady of War: Fits the personality traits, being calm, aloof, collected, and kickass with a spear. As a bonus, she's also the daughter of Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, specifically.
  • The Leader: As the praetor for Camp Jupiter.
  • Living Lie Detector:
    • Her solid gold and silver guard dogs serve as this, too, which makes them very useful when she's interrogating someone.
    • Her pegasus, Scipio, is one too. Which makes it all the more tragic when he is killed in the fourth book.
  • Meaningful Name: Her name is a derivation of the Latin 'Regina' ("queen, counsel")note . Fittingly, she's the regal "queen figure" for Camp Jupiter.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Her loyalty is to Rome and Camp Jupiter above all else. When Octavian brands her a traitor for daring to go to the ancient lands she pushes through with her quest because it will benefit the camp.
  • No Full Name Given: For the first three books, her surname isn't revealed at all. It's revealed she doesn't reveal it to just anyone due to her unfortunate initials.
  • Nerves of Steel: She's very restrained, and works very hard not to let any disturbance she might feel show. Even when she's falling into an active volcano, she convinces Nico to shadow-travel them away and boosts his strength to do so.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Her greyhounds, Aurum and Argentum. Their names are Latin for 'gold' and 'silver', which aptly describe their colors and are the metals the dogs are made from.
  • One-Woman Army: Piper is convinced of this, at least.
  • Personality Powers: The daughter of a war goddess with the power of Super-Empowering. Fittingly, she's a strong, stoic leader figure.
  • Plot Hole: In The Tyrant's Tomb, Reyna mentions that other people have tried to set her up with both men and women, and after her quest with Jason, everyone knew what Venus had said to her except for Jason, and they gossiped about her, giving her pitiful looks and giving her advice on who she should date. However, this is contradicted by the fact that none of this was even alluded to in the previous series, with no one paying any mind to or even mentioning Reyna's love life (aside from Orion, to taunt her), not even in Reyna's POV chapters where her feelings for Jason and Venus' words were brought up more than once. Regarding what Venus said to her, no one other than Reyna and Venus themselves should know what they talked about since Reyna kept the whole thing to herself and Venus was tight-lipped about it as well even when speaking to Hazel, Annabeth, and Piper. Not to mention the fact that Roman gods don't really interact with their children and legacies, especially not for gossip, in contrast to the Greek gods who at least interact with their children a few times.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: The praetor of Rome, as well as a spear-wielding badass.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Unlike Octavian, she's willing to listen to our heroes, and seems okay with negotiating for peace between the Greeks and Romans — until a possessed Leo fires on Camp Jupiter. Still, because of her tentative friendship with Annabeth, she doesn't skewer the protagonists on the spot, instead letting them proceed with their mission.
  • Romantic Runner-Up: Jason gets together with Piper instead of her, and although she doesn't openly bring it up, it's obvious she's not very happy about it.
  • Ruling Couple: She points out it might have happened with Jason if he stayed, then offers this to Percy.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Her abusive father ended up becoming a mania, a spirit of insanity. At one point he knocked Hylla unconscious with a chair, so Reyna grabbed the nearest weapon — an Imperial gold sword — and ended up "killing" him to protect both herself and her sister. Reyna considers this to be Patricide, even when Nico tells her that dispelling a ghost is not the same thing as killing a man.
  • The Stoic: As a leader of Rome, being serious and unemotional is practically hardwired into her.
  • Super-Empowering: As a daughter of Bellona, she can lend her strength to her allies and followers.
  • Supporting Leader: Not in the main cast, but as the praetor she's supposed to lead the Romans.
  • Took a Level in Badass: A cape of all things does this in The Blood of Olympus, when the Athena Parthenos upgrades Reyna's cloak into an aegis.

    Apollo 

Apollo

The god of the sun, poetry, prophecy, and medicine, and Artemis's younger twin brother (but don't bring that up). He speaks to the Greeks through the Oracle of Delphi.

Greek Form

Played by: Dimitri Lekkos

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/apollo_9.jpg
Click here to see Lester Papadopoulos. 
"I'm the sun god. I always return at dawn."

AKA Lester Papadopoulos, according to his junior driver's license. One of if not the most arrogant, self-centered, and cocky of the gods, though his past failures weigh on him more than he lets on. He has been obsessed with haiku ever since he visited Japan. Considers himself a great poet, though he is actually terrible at it.

The eponymous protagonist of The Trials of Apollo, in which he becomes mortal as a punishment from his father Zeus, and must quest to restore the ancient sources of prophecy, hopefully earning back his divinity in the process.


  • Adaptational Wimp:
    • Apollo, master of all oracles and arts, god of healing and light, killer of predators and vermin, embodiment of beauty and perfection, unleasher of plagues and defender of truth... is depicted for most of the book series as a goofy comic relief, an incompetent Brainless Beauty, and an air-headed, superficial ditz.
    • Paradoxically avoided in The Trials of Apollo, which heavily plays on the Beware the Silly Ones and the Ditzy Genius, but also strongly enforced as Apollo is reduced to a powerless, average-looking, ordinary human teenager wrecked with self-doubt, low self-esteem and haunting memories of a shameful past.
  • A God I Am Not: By the end of The Hidden Oracle, he says that he does not want to be Apollo at the moment, because he blames himself (as Apollo) for everything that has happened at Camp so far in the book.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: He initially believed that troglodytes were a myth. Himself being a Greek god. Nico lampshades this:
    Nico: A god is telling a demigod that something is a myth?
    • Then Nico proceeds to point out that trogs, as light-hating creatures, would go out of their way to hide from a sun god.
  • Always Second Best: In healing. Unusually for an Olympian, he's fine with not only his immortal son, Asclepius, but also his demigod son, Will, being more skilled than him.
  • Amnesiac God: Downplayed. He knows who he is and what landed him on earth, but the human brain he's stuck with just can't hold over four thousand years of memories, which leads to some frustrating lapses. He also has no idea where he's been for the past six months.
  • Appeal to Flattery: Leo uses this tactic to get his help later.
  • Ascended Extra: Goes from being a side character to a main character.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: After angsting about his new human body for a while, he realizes that he has the body of a completely average mortal teenager, as that is what he is supposed to be.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Apollo has a tendency to go on random historical tangents in the middle of the action. Often during tense moments, he also mentions he can't help but imagine something random, such as Nero in a maid's uniform. Given almost all the demigods have ADHD, it makes you wonder if the gods have it, too.
  • Beware the Silly Ones:
    • As a god in the first series, Apollo comes off as a pretty chill guy who likes to spout bad poetry and lets a teenager drive the sun chariot for fun. But make no mistake, Apollo is one of, if not the most powerful and important of the second-generation Greek gods, and much more powerful than most of his siblings. His only competition on that front would be Athena. In mythology, he won the first Olympics, and he even beat his siblings at their respective specialties, beating Ares at fighting and outracing Hermes. With his massive combo platter of abilities, he's not someone to offend. Also, he's the plague god.
    • As a mortal, Apollo's silliness in his narration and self-critique can distract from the fact that he's actually pretty effective. As a mortal, he's able to keep up with demigods. On top of that, what he lacks in powers, he makes up for in trickery. Additionally, merely tuning his instrument can bring other campers to tears.
  • Big Brother Instinct:
    • He has a bit of this for Artemis, considering how he defied Zeus's orders to give advice to Percy and his friends on how to save her. This is despite him being younger than Artemis, a fact he cheerfully ignores.
    • Has this in spades in Trials of Apollo, especially towards Meg. She might annoy him at times, but he doesn't hesitate to throw himself into mortal danger in order to protect her.
  • Break the Haughty: His book series is basically one long session in this forcing him to really look at himself and realize what an awful jerk he was/is.
  • Brought Down to Badass: Yes, it's a big power lost to go from Olympian God to human teenager. But he still has the skills he gained from millennia of life experience (Magic Music, archery, knowledge of healing, multilingualism), the ability to form a connection with oracles, Dreaming of Things to Come, and a minor Healing Factor. It's far more than most mortals get, not that you'd know from all his complaining about it.
  • Brown Note: Not intentionally, but he off-handedly mentions that when he's going all out, people are so elated by his music that they explode. This is how he kills Commodus the second time around. Apollo tries strangling him like he did the first time, but he's so massively pissed off that his primal scream literally dissolves Commodus to dust in his hands.
  • Bungled Suicide: Tries to kill himself in an attempt to save his friends in The Burning Maze. He stabs himself with an arrow, but misses his heart, so he's easily saved. In the end, two out of three of his friends live.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Played for Laughs in Trials of Apollo. In Apollo's narration, he'll just offhandedly mention major historical events in a very irreverent way.
  • Butt-Monkey: As Lester, which is likely part of his punishment. If there is an opportunity for something to go wrong for him, preferably in a humiliating or undignified way, it will almost certainly happen.
  • Character Development: Throughout his series, he gets this in spades, with a big dose of Break the Haughty and Took a Level in Kindness.
  • Cloudcuckoolander:
    • As a human he can act like one. Though it's less noticeable than most cases since the story is told from his perspective, sometimes he acts in ways that seem strange to outsiders (e.g. waving a jacket around and yelling "Blowfish", or trying to give Meg The Talk in the middle of a conversation).
    • Drinking from both the Lethe and Mnemosyne simultaneously (in preparation for meeting the Oracle of Trophonius) definitely turns him loopy for a good while, while he tries to get a grasp on who he is and everything else around him.
  • Classical Anti-Hero:
    • At least, at the beginning of the series. He's vain, not (yet) self-sacrificing, and lacks most of the powers most of the other characters have.
    • He’s also an Anti-Hero compared to most of Riordan's works. Most of Riordan's heroes are All-Loving Heroes who have simple motivations for doing good, who grow through the stories to have a wide arrange of powers. Their flaws are typically minor. Besides a little snark, they are relatively stoic, rarely crying or expressing grief or fear. They also tend to be self-proclaimed "losers" or not "cool kids" that are well-respected in the magic world for their abilities. If they have a character arc, it's usually growing in confidence. Apollo, on the other hand, is a very flawed person, who's learning to be better and have a wide array of powers at his disposal for the bulk of the story. He also expresses a wider array of emotions, even crying from grief and stress. However, as he grows in the story, he learns to overcome his flaws, acting in a way closer to a traditional hero.
  • Combat Medic: Healing is part of his domain, but he's also a competent fighter.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Having to keep up with demigods and monsters with a wide array of magic and abilities, Apollo will do what he has to in order to win. From hitting people with his ukelele, improvisational performances, to threatening suicide, Apollo does what he can.
  • Combo Platter Powers: Archery, music, medicine, plague, the sun... His career as a god has been varied.
  • Cool Car: He likes the sun chariot in the form of a sports car. And he lets fifteen-year-old girls take it for a spin.
  • Cowardly Lion: As Lester, he's very quick to run for the hills and save his own butt, but also very quick to stand up and defend his friends, especially as Character Development kicks in.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Apollo is an extremely snarky narrator. He sometimes gives Percy a run for his money in how snarky he is. He tends not to be as snarky out loud, but occasionally, it's clear he can't help himself:
    • When Meg first meets Chiron:
      Meg: He — he really is a centaur.
      Apollo: Well spotted, I suppose the lower body of a horse is what gave him away?
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: In his narration, particularly in the first book, Apollo has a very weird view of history and morality at the beginning of the series. Justified in that he's a Greek god, which seem to have their own culture and sense of morality. He grows out of this.
  • Ditzy Genius:
    • Apollo, initially, was easily manipulated. However, while it's not necessarily useful for fighting monsters, he does have an extremely wide array of knowledge, even in his limited mortal brain. He knows how to play every instrument. He's also an expert on the history of music, given the relatively obscure (to modern people) acts he references at the drop of a hat. Not only is he familiar with just about every period of history of the west, but remembers little obscure details from those times. He knows chemistry and has medical knowledge. He speaks at least nine languages. On any regular human character, a character who plays a bunch of instruments, speaks that many languages, and has deep knowledge in that many fields, would be a cliché TV Genius. Justified that Apollo's a god.
    • Apollo is probably also a Ditzy Genius compared with the other gods. As a god, he acted relatively silly in his two appearances. While other gods all likely speak the same amount of languages and experienced part of history over thousands of years like he has, Apollo has a much wider array of specialties than other gods, including music, art, music, poetry, and mathematics. He's also the god of knowledge.
    • As his character development kicks in, he begins to be less ditzy. He also is a bit of a Guile Hero.
  • Doting Parent:
    • For an Olympian. He admits that it took him seventy-five years to notice his son Louis XIV had died, but he found when he went to check on him during The French Revolution. He also expresses pride in his son Asclepius for being a better healer than him — which is a lot. considering the gods tend to vaporize anyone that is particularly better than them — and saying that all gods want a doctor for a son, and he is lavish with praise for Will, Kayla, and Austin.
    • As part of his Character Development, he guiltily realizes he, like most gods, mostly ignored them in the past and dotes in order to be better.
  • Dumb Blond: Played with.
    • He usually takes the form of a blond-haired teen, and he's very easily manipulated.
    • Ironically, as a mortal, even before most of his character growth, he's pretty good at manipulating gods the same way he can be manipulated. One example in The Hidden Oracle is when he manipulates Pete the geyser god by giving him marketing advice.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Well, his constant complaining to Zeus and the rest of the Olympians may account as a very mild example, but a more straight example is when Meg's adoptive father is revealed to be Nero, a descendant of his. He... doesn't take this well.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Even when he was a god, where he was a vain jerk, he hated slavery (and not just because Zeus made him a human slave as punishment twice, his priests had previously had a means to free slaves) and was horrified by what the members of the Triumvirate did during their respective reigns.
  • Expecting Someone Taller: To himself, after seeing his new mortal body.
  • Extreme Omnisexual: Admits in The Tyrant's Tomb that he "had spoken of love to women before. And men. And gods. And nymphs. And the occasional attractive statue before I realized it was a statue."
  • Fainting Seer: Ironic for the god who causes them, as a mortal, he becomes one. It sometimes takes people a few hours to notice he's passed out.
  • Formerly Fit: Played with. In The Trials of Apollo, Apollo becomes technically formerly fit since he goes from a muscular god with zero body fat to a flabby and unathletic teenager. Apollo makes a great deal out of this, constantly cursing his flab and weight throughout the books, but Apollo's distress over being "fat" is brushed aside by other characters as him greatly exaggerating his condition: he has a hard-time understanding that having a perfectly chiseled six-pack is not how a human body naturally looks like, and that he is actually average instead of overweight. It doesn't, however, remove the fact that he still has a potbelly and prominent love handles — as seen in The Burning Maze, when he gets stuck in a gap under a loading-bay door, while other characters such as the skinny Grover Underwood or the stout Coach Hedge easily slip through it.
  • Geek Physiques: Fits this trope in his human form of Lester Papadopoulos. Unathletic and flabby, with an acne-covered face, messy hair and prominent love handles. Subverted, however, as most of the characters consider him average-looking; only those that knew Apollo from his beautiful and flawless divine appearance treat his human form according to this trope (including Apollo himself).
  • God in Human Form: Courtesy of Zeus, who blames him for the problems faced in The Heroes of Olympus and turns him into a mortal teenager.
  • Good Flaws, Bad Flaws: A subversion in contrast with Riordan's other works. Most of Riordan's heroes "fatal flaws" are either flaws that make them seem nicer or more heroic, or relatively minor flaws. For example, Percy's flaw is personal loyalty, which makes him just seem more like an All-Loving Hero. Leo, Piper, and Frank's flaw is low self-esteem, which makes them just seem humble. Even the flaws that are genuine flaws, like Annabeth's hubris and ambition, don't really prevent her from making good decisions. On the other hand, Apollo has what's generally seen as "bad" flaws — he is vain and he struggles with empathy. These don't make him a villain; they're just flaws he works on throughout the series.
  • Greater Need Than Mine: Turns out his divine powers work this way when he's mortal — he can only access them if it's to save someone else's life, but not if his own is in danger as well.
  • Guile Hero: Given his lack of powers in contrast with most characters in this universe, Apollo sometimes uses manipulation to solve problems rather than fighting. Most notably, in The Dark Prophecy, when Apollo is confronted by Nanette and a team of Blemmyae, he's injured, Meg's unconscious, and he's outnumbered; he tricks Nanette into being blown up by her own bomb.
  • Have You Seen My God?: By the start of the first book, he's been missing for six months.
  • Heartbroken Badass: He hallucinates many times about his two greatest loves, Daphne and Hyacinthus. He is shown to blame himself for their deaths and asks the hallucinations for forgiveness, and not to leave him again.
  • Heroic Bastard: Becomes heroic as the series progresses. Like a lot of his siblings, he was born out of wedlock.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: As his series goes on, his massive ego is slowly replaced with a horrible case of self-loathing, believing that every terrible thing that's happened on his quest is his fault and that he deserves every bad thing that happens to him.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of the final book, in his final fight against Python. Apollo manages to kill him by grabbing him by the tail and pulling him down all the way past the Underworld and Tartarus to the edge of Chaos, but he loses his life and nearly dissipates his essence into Chaos. He gets better.
  • Hollywood Pudgy:
    • Invoked and parodied. When Apollo first discovers that he has flab he complains that he's fat. Meg quickly sets corrects him by pointng out that he's not fat, he's average.
    • Subverted subtly in The Burning Maze: after complaining for two books about his flab in ridiculous ways, Lester ends up getting stuck in a barely-opened loading-bay door due to his love handles. It is especially jarring because two other characters could easily go through the gap, and one of them is Coach Hedge.
  • Hollywood Homely: An in-universe example. When in turned into Lester he depicts himself as monstrously ugly for... having acne and a bit of flab. Other characters have to regularly point out that he is just average and that his former godly beauty is abnormal for a human for him to accept that he might not be as horrible to look at as he thought.
  • Hopeless Suitor: His series ironically has him playing this role, twice. First to Jimmy, a Yoruba demigod for whom he develops a crush during The Dark Prophecy, before he casually slips he has a girlfriend. Then to Reyna in The Tyrant's Tomb, to whom he actually proposes a relationship, to amusing results.
  • Hot God: This applies to most of the gods, but special emphasis is given to Apollo (and Aphrodite, but that's a given).
    Thalia: Wow. Apollo is hot.
    Percy: He's the sun god.
    Thalia: That's not what I meant.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: Quite literally. Apollo goes from a divine warrior with nigh-unlimited strength to a weak teenager stuck in a dumpster.
    "I'm not lord of anything!" I wailed. "I'm a stupid ugly mortal teenager! I'm nobody!
  • Humanity Ensues: In Trials of Apollo, to his dismay.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Part of what makes the character so complex. Even at his most prideful, he put all his value on his looks and his powers, and doesn't have any inherent sense of self-worth. Thus, when he loses those things, he sees himself as worthless. He takes minor flaws or mistakes extremely hard, and blames himself for everything.
  • Jerkass Realization: Being turned mortal (and the adventure it sends him on) gradually forces Apollo to reflect on his immortal life and all his previous failings.
  • Just Woke Up That Way: When he first comes to, he's falling to Manhattan in human form.
  • Lack of Empathy: Apollo doesn't seem to have this innately at all. However, rather than being a fatal flaw, it't just something he works on.
    • While sometimes he misses what others are feeling in silly ways (AKA "Percy Jackson will be excited to see me!") because of his situation, he generally has a surface understanding of what people are feeling. However, what he does lack is he doesn't often have an intrinsic reaction to other people's feelings. Additionally, his understanding of people's feelings are often superficial. Rather than being vilified, Apollo's lack of affective empathy is just something he works on.
      • A good example of this is his narration of Hemithea's story. He sees two sisters of his girlfriend fleeing from their murderous father. He does understand that it would look weird and manipulative if he tried to go on a date with the sister right after her sisters die; so, he can rationally understand how other people feel, to some level of complexity. But does he feel any pity or sadness for their terrible situation? No. He saves the sisters' lives because they honor him, as that causes him to see that as an obligation to save them. So as a god, he did have a sense of morality, even though it's rarely driven by others' feelings.
    • A rare sympathetic portrayal of a lack of affective empathy. Frequently, lack of affective empathy is used to show that a character is a monster, a sociopath, or a villain, and they're usually past saving. That's not the case here. In a lot of ways, it's kind of a disability for him, as it makes it harder for him to connect with other people, even when he clearly does want to connect with others. However, rather being something that's immutable, it's simply something Apollo has to work on more than the average person since it doesn't come automatically to him.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: While his punishment is not fully deserved (see Mis-blamed below), he did his fair share of misdeeds that come to bite him on the ass during his time as a mortal. At one point, his quest involved facing a minor god he used to bully and a Sybil he cursed for not wanting him, while being attacked by a species of bird he also cursed in an incident that involved him killing his pregnant girlfriend for cheating on him. He realizes the whole task was designed to crush him under the weight of his Old Shames. invoked
  • Light 'em Up: At the end of The Dark Prophecy, he briefly turns into pure light for a microsecond.
  • Living MacGuffin: As a mortal, because he's mortal. In addition, each primary antagonist in each book of his series has a different reason to want to capture him:
  • Meaningful Name: Say what you will about "Papadopoulos," it's the single most common name in Greece. Which, y'know, kinda fits for a ex-Greek God.
  • Mis-blamed: In-universe. Zeus holds Apollo responsible for the Prophecy of Seven coming to pass, since Rachel Dare spoke it immediately after he blessed her with the power of the Oracle. Zeus ignores the fact that the Romans had the prophecy for centuries.
  • Momma's Boy: Has a very close relationship with his mother, Leto. Not so much with his father.
  • Mortality Ensues: "Hey, I'm just stating the obvious. If this is Apollo, and he dies, we're all in trouble."
    My smile faded. I reminded myself I was no longer a spectator. These ants could kill us. Easily.
  • Narcissist:
    • Apollo regards himself as perfect and deserving of all praise and being above the other Olympians, including Zeus. He views demigods as tools to make himself look good and is willing to kill them without hesitation if he thinks it will benefit him. The only people he cares about are his mother and sister Artemis' the latter is the only one he is shown to respect and listen to. This bites him big time whenever he angers Zeus, who is more powerful than him.
    • This is to the point of self-delusion: he assumes others will automatically like him, remembers doing more for them than he actually did while forgetting why they would be mad at him, and misremembers events so he looks better. His banishment is supposed to help him grow out of it.
  • No Badass to His Valet: Inverted in Trials of Apollo. Frank is pretty much the only person who does still respect Apollo as a former god.
  • Not Me This Time: He twice insists that he didn't flay Marsyas alive for claiming to be a better musician than him. While Apollo's narration is usually suspect, he may be telling the truth this time, since he proudly recounts some of his other less admirable moments.
  • Not That Kind of Doctor: While his domains do include medicine, the specific skills required to create the physician's cure fall under the purview of his son Asclepius.
  • Omniglot: Apollo speaks at least nine languages. On page, he speaks English, Latin, Ancient Greek, ancient Minoan, ancient Colchian, and Italian. He also speaks, at least, French, German, and Spanish, as Olympus was once located there. Justified, as not only is he a god, but he’s had thousands of years to learn them. He also mentions he never learned Portuguese because he didn't want to put in all the effort studying it, which implies he doesn't pick up languages with ease, unlike a typical Omniglot.
  • Papa Wolf: He was ready to declare war when Nero kidnapped Austin and Kayla. He also mentions killing the Cyclopes who created the lightning bolt that killed one of his children.
  • Please, Don't Leave Me: Says this while talking to hyacinths, which symbolize Hyacinthus, who he just saw in a dream. The hyacinths weren't there before.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: He and Artemis are extremely different in appearance and temperament.
  • The Power of the Sun: God of the sun, natch.
  • Pride: Apollo has an excessively high opinion of himself and abilities even when compared to other major gods. This gets him in major trouble in the last book.
  • Proud Beauty: As stated under Hot God, he's one of the most beautiful gods and he knows it. He even refers to himself as "the paragon of masculine beauty."
  • The Proud Elite: As one of the head gods, and having good looks, Apollo definitely qualified as this when he was a god.
  • Really 700 Years Old: 4,612 years old, to be exact. Not that he's counting. He's around the age of the pyramids of Giza, but looks like he's 16 in his series. There's an interesting moment where he realizes Calypso is much older than him.
  • Really Gets Around: As in the source material tends to be this, though this is toned down in the series proper first because the cast is too young/committed/related to him. In his own series, he gets the additional motivation of having a teenage body that automatically gets awkward and insecure around anyone attractive. It bites him in the ass when he can't remember fathering Georgina. Needless to say, her moms were not pleased.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Parodied. His being the god of poetry is Played for Laughs, with him spouting haiku at the best of times.
    Apollo: Green grass breaks through snow,
    Artemis pleads for my help,
    I am so cool.
    • When Artemis points out that the last line is only four syllables, he changes it to: "I am so awesome."
    • His own series has Haiku instead of chapter titles, one of which he makes up in that very chapter.
  • Refuge in Audacity: He does this sometimes when he's doing his Guile Hero bits, such when he distracts the Blemmyae by giving a monologue.
  • Rise of Zitboy: A self-inflicted one, as shown by his over-reaction when he is forced into the body of an acneic teenager versus how nobody else than him points it out.
  • Royal Brat: Can come off a bit as this, pre-Character Development. On the other hand, his father's pretty abusive, so it's arguable how much he was ever actually spoiled.
  • Running Gag: Doesn't like being called "man". So naturally, Percy goes with this one. When that seems to be gone for good, Rhea comes up and continues the gag.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: Due to becoming an Adaptational Wimp and having shades of being a Brainless Beauty, Apollo is depicted as constantly bragging about himself, boasting about things he either greatly exaggerates or completely invents, and being susceptible to flattery — even to the point that we learn in The Trials of Apollo that he lied about many aspects of his feats and legends (see Self-Made Myth below). In Ancient Greece, Apollo was the god of truth and the punisher of liars, hence his role as a god of oracles (who told the truth about the future) or his occasional antagonism with Hermes (a notorious thief and liar). That being said, this is also the same series that lampshades Zeus being the god of justice.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: While on Delos, the twins are free of the madness caused by the demigod schism, but unable to affect the outside world.
  • Seen It All: Apollo generally has this vibe pre-character development, as he's not only watched humans die over and over, but he's also seen entire civilizations die, and the world become unrecognizable, over and over. He grows out of it, appreciating the value of people more. On the other hand, when things go wrong, he also starts to have this vibe, thinking what else can go wrong. invoked
  • Self-Made Myth: Apollo acknowledges that he did not defeat Python as easily as the myths portray, and he had nightmares about Python for centuries afterwards. The reason the myths portray the battle as such is mainly because that is the version he told the storytellers.
  • Sibling Seniority Squabble: With Artemis, alluding to conflicting accounts on who was born first.note 
  • Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Even before the Character Development in his series, he hated slavery. Notably, even before Zeus forced him to work as a mortal slave, his priests at Delphi had a ritual where he would get slaves and then free them.
  • Targeted Human Sacrifice:
    • According to a prophecy, if the New Hercules sacrifices Apollo and "the girl" during the re-naming of Indianapolis, he'll successfully conquer the rest of the Midwest.
    • In the next book, Neos Helios wanted to kill Apollo and absorb his divine essence in order to become the new god of the sun.
  • Team Mom: As Apollo matures, he has shades of this with Meg. For example, Does This Remind You of Anything?
    "Meg!" I chided. "Sit back and buckle up, please. Grover—" I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the satyr chewing on a strip of gray fabric. :Grover, stop eating your seat belt. You're setting a bad example."
  • Teen Genius: An interesting example. Apollo knows at least 9 languages, can play every instrument known to man, has extensive general history, music history, art history, and medical knowledge, and is in the body of a sixteen-year-old. If he met regular humans and they caught his many, many references, they probably would think he's this.
  • Tempting Fate: From The Last Olympian: "Percy, I wouldn't worry too much. The last Great Prophecy about you took nearly seventy years to complete. This one may not even happen in your lifetime." Fast forward a year, give or take, and Percy's in the middle of another Great Prophecy, the onset of which Zeus blames Apollo for.
  • That Thing Is Not My Child!: Octavian is his (Roman) descendant, a fact that Apollo openly laments in Blood of Olympus. He wishes he could have Frank as a son instead.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: While Apollo was mostly nice to the protagonists, he was still a cocky playboy and commited his fair deed of divine dickery in the past. His time as a mortal forces him to face these flaws and grow from them. When he regains his power, he internalizes these lessons and becomes a more humble and responsible god then he was before.
  • Turn the Other Cheek: Surprisingly, given he's a Greek God who aren't exactly known for their forgiveness, but Apollo is actually remarkably forgiving. He is usually the one in the cast advocating for mercy for the team's enemies. It's especially notable because he's more forgiving than characters who are generally seen as more heroic/moral than him, such as Leo, Jo, and Emmie.
    • Despite betraying him in The Hidden Oracle, Apollo forgives Meg immediately and without a second thought, sympathizing with her situation.
    • In The Dark Prophecy, he advocates rescuing Lit and giving him sanctuary, despite the fact that Lit was previously hunting him down to kill him. He has to convince basically everyone else, from Leo, Hunter Kowalski, Sssarah, Jo and Emmie, who all just want to leave Lit to die.
    • After Piper knocks out a Big Ears in The Burning Maze, they decide what to do with him. Meg says they should kill him, but Apollo advocates for leaving him be.
    • In The Burning Maze, Apollo also lets Crest go while on the boat.
  • The Un-Favourite: Apollo's father is pretty abusive towards him, and clearly shows preference for Artemis. This even happens pre-series (in the Greek Gods book): when Artemis was born, she went to Olympus, and Zeus immediately offered her a birthday present; Apollo was not given the same treatment. In Blood of Olympus, Zeus blames Apollo for the Giant War, while Artemis is one of the only people who can cool her father's anger.
  • Was It All a Lie?: Pretty much his response to discovering the reason why Meg befriended him in the first place.
  • Weirdness Magnet: As a mortal, he keeps attracting old foes looking to take advantage of his weakened state. It took his party six weeks to fly a few states over (from New York to Indiana) because they got attacked so often. For reference, it usually takes 2-3 days to drive that distance, and that's with traffic.

Roman Form

Though Apollo's Roman form exists, he has yet to appear in the series proper. What we do know comes from his past reactions with Octavian, a Roman, and a handful of flashbacks to the Roman era.
  • Adaptational Intelligence: If the memories we see are any indication, his Roman form is/was much wiser than his Greek one, advising reflection and forgiveness to one Roman emperor.
  • Appeal to Flattery: Octavian convinced him to give his blessing by flattering him and promising to make him the favored god of the Romans.
  • God Was My Co-Pilot: He briefly pretended to be human to get close to a specific mortal who was going mad, in order to try to help that person realize the error of their ways and change. He posed as Narcissus the wrestler, and he was trying to save Emperor Commodus.
  • Kill the Ones You Love: He did this to Commodus when the latter went truly insane.
  • Shoot the Dog: He killed Commodus when the latter went truly insane. This action was taken only when he found out that the person in question was going to massacre a large number of innocent people, including some of Apollo's own priests.
  • That Thing Is Not My Child!: Presumably holds the same attitude towards Octavian as his Greek form, as mentioned above.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He gave his blessing to Octavian's plans to make Rome strong again, without realising that his descendant planned to wage war on the Greeks, making him partially responsible for the gods' incapacitation.

Short Story POV Characters

    Dr. Howard Claymore 

Dr. Howard Claymore

A mortal living in Keeseville, New York. A scholar who gives lectures when he's not writing and finds his life and everything he knew turned on its head after meeting Alabaster Torrington. Shows up only in a short story, Son of Magic, at the end of The Demigod Diaries.


  • Agent Scully: Absolutely refuses (until forced) to believe in anything like gods, monsters, or magic.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: He can understand Latin, which gives him an edge when Lamia uses Latin spell incantations, as he can make pretty good guesses what's about to happen. His observations of how quickly Lamia can pull herself together after being wounded also works to his advantage, or seems to. See Unwitting Pawn.
  • Badass Normal: Fights Lamia with just a 9mm pistol and Good Old Fisticuffs.
  • Break the Haughty: Starts out convinced that there's nothing but what he can empirically prove is true.
  • Determinator: Started with no advantages in life, but still was able to get a PhD and become a successful author, and has no intention of letting gods or monsters get the better of him.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Attacks Lamia one final time to give Alabaster time to escape.
  • Promotion to Parent: Becomes one after his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Properly Paranoid: His outer fence is well away from his house, which has a state-of-the-art security system, and a gun in each room. And he knows how to use them, too.
  • Spirit Advisor: After his death, Hecate makes him one for Alabaster.
  • Unfazed Everyman: Thought he's only just become aware of the existence of gods and monsters, he just considers then another problem to be solved through his usual, logical method.
  • Unwitting Pawn: After defeating Lamia, he goes off to find Alabaster, unaware that Lamia let him win and then followed him to the demigod's safe house.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Holds his own against Lamia and shows no qualms about beating her up while she keeps trying to regenerate.
  • You Remind Me of X: Hecate tells him that he reminds her and Alabaster of Alabaster's father, which is definitely not a coincidence.

    Luke Castellan 
A son of Hermes who served as the viewpoint character for a short story in The Demigod Diaries. For related tropes, see here.

Alternative Title(s): The Camp Half Blood Series Narrative Characters, The Camp Half Blood Series Narrative

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