Who Is Kratos's Father?

Kratos's father is Zeus, the king of the gods. Kratos learns it at the end of God of War II, when Athena throws herself in front of his blade to save Zeus and tells him as she dies. His mother was a mortal Spartan woman, Callisto, so Kratos was born a demigod. (God of War II; God of War: Ghost of Sparta)

Callisto and Sparta#

Kratos and his younger brother Deimos grew up in Sparta with their mother, Callisto. Neither boy was told who their father was. Ghost of Sparta shows the price of the secret. A prophecy warned of a marked warrior who would bring about the fall of Olympus, and Ares and Athena came for Deimos, who had birthmarks on his body. Kratos tried to stop them and was struck down, left with the scar over his eye. (God of War: Ghost of Sparta)

They had taken the wrong brother. The prophecy meant Kratos, who later had Deimos's markings tattooed on his own skin in his memory. (God of War: Ghost of Sparta)

The secret Callisto couldn't tell#

In Ghost of Sparta, already the God of War, Kratos goes looking for answers and finds his mother alive in the Temple of Poseidon in Atlantis. She tells him that his father brought her there, that Deimos is still alive, and that his father had forbidden her to speak of any of it. When Kratos presses her to name him, a curse twists her into a monster, and Kratos has to kill her. Dying, she thanks him for setting her free. (God of War: Ghost of Sparta)

The game never lets her say the name. Players who came to it after God of War II already knew the answer; Ghost of Sparta was released three years later but is set before it. (God of War: Ghost of Sparta; God of War II)

Athena tells him#

At the start of God of War II, Zeus turns on his son. At the siege of Rhodes he tricks Kratos into pouring his godly power into the Blade of Olympus and kills him with it. Kratos comes back from the Underworld with the help of the Titans, reaches the Sisters of Fate, and goes back in time to the moment of his death to take the blade from Zeus. (God of War II)

As he moves to kill Zeus, Athena steps in front of the blade. Dying, she tells him the truth. Zeus is his father. Zeus had overthrown his own father, Cronos, and was afraid Kratos would do the same to him, so he turned on Kratos to break the cycle. Kratos answers that he has no father, and swears that if Olympus stands in the way of his revenge, Olympus will die. (God of War II)

Father and son#

In God of War III that is exactly what happens. Kratos climbs Mount Olympus and kills god after god, many of them his half-siblings, among them Hercules, who resents Kratos as Zeus's favoured son. In the final fight Kratos beats Zeus to death with his fists. The full feud is covered in why did Kratos kill Zeus. (God of War III)

The series sets this up as the cycle of patricide: Cronos swallowed his children to escape a prophecy and was overthrown by Zeus, and Zeus, by trying to stop his son from doing the same, gave him every reason to. (God of War II; God of War III)

Hints in the first game#

The first game drops a hint without naming anyone. When Kratos climbs out of his own grave, the old Grave Digger tells him that Athena is not the only god watching over him. The game never says who the Grave Digger is, and the line reads differently once you know who Kratos's father is. That is our reading, not something the game confirms. (God of War (2005))

Kratos as a father#

The question hangs over the Norse games too, with Kratos now on the other side of it. In God of War (2018) Atreus asks whether his father had a mother of his own, and Kratos says little about his family. The games make his fear plain: that he will become to his son what Zeus was to him. See Atreus for how that turns out. (God of War (2018))