Zeus

Zeus was the King of Olympus and ruler of the Greek Pantheon, the God of the Sky, Thunder, Lightning, Storms, and the Heavens. The youngest son of the Titans Cronos and Rhea, he was the brother of Hades and Poseidon, as well as Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, whom he took as his wife. He fathered a line of deities, among them Athena, Ares, Hephaestus, and Hermes, along with many mortal and demigod children, including Hercules, Deimos, and the Spartan Kratos, the son who would one day end his reign.

Birth and the Great War#

During the reign of the Titans, Cronos was warned of a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his own sons, and so he swallowed his children one by one as they were born. When Zeus was born, his mother Rhea hid him from Cronos and gave the Titan a stone wrapped in cloth to devour in his place. An eagle carried the infant to Gaia, who raised him and gave him the strength to one day stand against his father.

Come of age, Zeus freed his swallowed siblings and declared war on the Titans, an act that betrayed Gaia, who had sheltered him. The Gods, calling themselves Olympians, fought their predecessors with great ferocity, and the battle reshaped the very land of Greece. To end the war, Zeus forged the Blade of Olympus, a weapon channelling his own blood and lightning, and used it to banish the Titans to the foulest pits of Tartarus. He spared Cronos's life rather than repeat his father's sin of kin-slaughter. The war had unleashed terrible evils upon the world, so Zeus commissioned Hephaestus to build Pandora's Box to contain them. Unknown to Zeus, Athena placed Hope within the Box to counter the evils should it ever be opened. The Box was chained to the back of Cronos, who was sentenced to wander the Desert of Lost Souls bearing the temple built to guard it.

King of the Olympians#

The Gods made Mount Olympus their residence, and the Elder Cyclopes built palaces there. Zeus met privately with his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and the three agreed to divide the world. Hades received the Underworld, Poseidon the seas, and Zeus the heavens. Though it was Hades's birthright as eldest to inherit, he yielded, and the three came to be known as the Big Three. Zeus's authority was recognized as superior to that of his brothers, and so he became King of the Olympian Gods.

Zeus took Metis as his wife after the war, but learned she would bear a son destined to overthrow him. As his father had done, he sought to forestall fate, swallowing Metis while she carried their daughter. Trapped within him, Metis gave birth to Athena, who later sprang from Zeus's split head fully armored. Zeus fathered Persephone and Zagreus by his sister Demeter, and among his mortal affairs was one with the woman Callisto, which produced Kratos and his brother Deimos. When the Oracle foretold that a "Marked Warrior," one of his sons, would rise against him, Zeus noticed the strange birthmarks on Deimos and sent Ares and Athena to seize the boy.

The making of the Ghost of Sparta#

Years later, after Kratos slew his own family through a scheme of Ares, the Spartan pledged himself to the Gods in hope of relief from his nightmares. When Ares besieged the city of Athens to win Zeus's favor over Athena, Zeus, who had forbidden the Gods from waging war on one another and feared Ares might be the Marked Warrior, allowed Athena to send Kratos against him. During the quest Kratos met Zeus within the ruined city, where the King of the Gods granted him Zeus' Fury, the power to hurl lightning. Taking the guise of a Grave Digger, Zeus also opened a passage out of the Underworld, allowing the Spartan to escape after Ares struck him down.

Kratos returned from the dead, reclaimed Pandora's Box, and used its power to kill Ares. The Gods had believed Ares the only real threat to Olympus, and so they had guided Kratos to destroy him. They forgave Kratos for the murder of his family, though they could not erase the memories, and made him the new God of War. Zeus did not yet understand that opening the Box had loosed its evils upon the pantheon, and that he himself had been infected by Fear.

The betrayal at Rhodes#

Overcome by Fear and disturbed by Kratos's destructive reign, Zeus came to believe his son was the Marked Warrior who would perpetuate the cycle of son killing father, as Zeus had done to Cronos. During Kratos's attack on Rhodes, Zeus took the form of an eagle and drained a portion of the new God of War's power into the Colossus of Rhodes, bringing the statue to life. He then tricked Kratos into pouring the rest of his godly power into the Blade of Olympus to destroy the Colossus, leaving the Spartan weakened to the brink of death.

When Kratos reached for the fallen Blade, Zeus revealed himself, claiming he meant to undo Athena's mistake and prevent Ares's fate from becoming his own. He demanded Kratos submit, and when the Spartan refused, Zeus ran him through with the Blade of Olympus, casting him into the Underworld. To punish his son further and stop his worshippers from aiding him, Zeus then destroyed Sparta before returning to his throne, believing the matter finished.

Kratos's revenge#

Kratos was far from finished. Aided by Gaia and the Titans, he returned to life, journeyed to the Island of Creation, and slew the Sisters of Fate. With command of time itself, he returned to the moment Zeus had stabbed him, emerging to strike the King of the Gods to the ground. The two fought across the sky and onto the Summit of Sacrifice, where Zeus grew to immense size and bombarded Kratos with lightning. Through a feigned surrender, Kratos disarmed Zeus and pinned him, beginning to impale him with the Blade of Olympus, until Athena threw herself between them and was slain in Zeus's place. Zeus fled to Olympus while Kratos, betrayed once more, returned through the Loom Chamber to the first Great War and led the Titans against the mountain.

The Second Great War and death#

Zeus rallied Poseidon, Hades, Hermes, and Helios to defend Olympus, holding back from the front lines while his pantheon engaged the Titans. As his brothers and sons fell one after another to Kratos, Zeus unleashed waves of cataclysm upon Greece. He confronted his son over Pandora and the Flame of Olympus, and in their brutal final battles he was at last impaled against Gaia's heart with the very Blade he had used to kill Kratos.

Yet Zeus was not finished. His astral form rose to overpower Kratos, filling him with Fear until the Spartan tapped into the power of Hope buried within him. Forced back into his body and revived, a weakened Zeus could no longer resist. As the evil of Fear left him in a stream of black smoke, Zeus offered no defense, and Kratos beat him to death with his bare hands. His body burst apart in a great blast of light, and his death unleashed complete chaos upon the Greek world, ending forever the reign of the Olympian Gods. Long after, in the Norse lands, the memory of Zeus still haunted Kratos, who came to teach his son that their past did not have to define them.