Faye: Laufey the Just, mother of Atreus

Laufey, known to her family by the alias Faye, was a Jotunn warrior of Midgard, the second wife of Kratos and the mother of Atreus. Though she lived among mortals as one of them, she was in truth a Giant of Jotunheim who concealed her nature from her own household. Across the realms she was remembered as Laufey the Just, a heroine who aided the weak and stood against the cruelty of Odin and the Aesir. Mimir, who never met her, named her among the greatest of the Jotnar. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

The heroine of the Jotnar#

Laufey was among the finest warriors her people ever produced, possessing strength and precision enough to draw the attention of Thor, the strongest of the Aesir. As a heroine of the Jotnar she aided the weak and opposed Odin and his kin. She once fought Thor in Vanaheim, a battle that tore apart a valley and destroyed a village, leaving behind a frozen mark of lightning where Mjolnir met her axe; the duel ended in a stalemate. She possessed the Jotunn gift of precognition, foreseeing her own death and the events that would follow it. She was also a master of concealment magic, casting a barrier around her home that not even Odin could pierce while it stood. (God of War Ragnarök; God of War (2018))

When the Aesir hunted the Giants from Midgard, Laufey remained behind as the last Guardian of the Jotnar there. She cooperated with Tyr to hide the Realm Tower that led to Jotunheim, an act that cut her off from her homeland in order to shield her kin from Thor's slaughter. The brothers Brok and Sindri forged the Leviathan Axe for her. Her fellow Giants hoped she might restore balance to the realms after Thor's slaughter, but she chose instead to place her hope in her family. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

Marriage and motherhood#

Faye met Kratos in Midgard long before their son was born. Ragnarök shows only the place where they first met and fought; in time they came to know one another and fell in love. In time they built a house in the Wildwoods, where Kratos confided his past and hid the Blades of Chaos beneath the floorboards. Faye learned of his nature as a god and of his history, and she kept both secrets from their son. (God of War Ragnarök; God of War (2018))

Years later she bore a child. She had wished to name him Loki, but Kratos convinced her to name him Atreus. Faye raised the boy and taught him to hunt, to read the Nordic tongue, and to recognize the languages, gods, and creatures of the Nine Realms. She crafted his bow from yew, sizing it so he would not outgrow it, sturdy enough to serve as a blunt weapon. To Kratos she was a beloved wife whose counsel he came to wish he had heeded sooner. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

Death and the path she set#

Before she died, Faye instructed Kratos and Atreus to cremate her body and scatter her ashes from the highest peak of the Nine Realms. Unknown to them, that peak lay not in Midgard but in Jotunheim, where a mural recorded her life and a prophecy concerning her son. She also instructed Kratos to cut down specific trees marked with a glowing golden handprint, knowing this would dispel the protection around their home and alert the gods to her presence. Odin, believing her still alive, sent Baldur to find her, and so drove her husband and son toward Jotunheim and the truth. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

When Kratos and Atreus finally reached Jotunheim, they discovered the mural and learned that Faye had been a Frost Giant who foresaw everything before her death. After Ragnarok, Angrboda led them to a hidden Jotunn shrine that revealed more of Faye's choices. She had turned against her own people to protect her family, arguing with her kin in the first scene of the mural, and she had destroyed the final triptych of her son's shrine so that he and his father would not know their fate and could forge their own path. In Kratos' dreams during Fimbulwinter, Faye returned to him, urging him that the culmination of love is grief, and that he should open his heart to the world so that he would find every reason to keep living in it. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)