Grimm pantheon family tree

Spoilers for Godstorm, Grimm Universe, Goddess Inc., Realm Knights, Hercules Payne, Hellchild, and Tales of Terror: Goddess of Death. I wanted to spend some time on the gods in Grimm Fairy Tales, because there's a lot more going on with them than just recognizing Zeus or Hades when they show up. Once you start following the family, you find out how much of the trouble comes from things they've done to each other. Some of those problems have been going on for thousands of years. The best place to start is Zeus and his brothers, Hades and Neptune. And yes, Neptune and Poseidon are the same person here. Hades even jokes about which name he's using in Grimm Universe #1. We're not dealing with a separate Greek sea god and Roman sea god in that story. Cronus is Zeus's father, and Realm Knights brings that older generation into the modern conflict. In the ancient Greek family tree, Cronus and Rhea are children of Gaia and Uranus, and their children include Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter and Hestia. That's the classical background. I'm keeping it separate from the comic relationships rather than assuming every ancient parentage carries over unchanged. Zeus has the title and the power, but he has done a terrible job being there for his children. Godstorm actually spends time on that. He keeps paintings of them in his home, remembering what they've accomplished and what went wrong. He has surrounded himself with reminders of children he didn't make enough room for in his actual life. Perseus is one of his sons. There's a scene in Godstorm #0 where Zeus approaches him after he has killed Medusa and tells him he's proud to call him his son. Perseus has already gone through his life without knowing that. He doesn't react by falling into his father's arms. He tells Zeus that he's been alone his entire life and would rather remain alone now. That tells you quite a bit about Zeus. He shows up after the achievement, ready to claim the relationship. Perseus needed a father before that moment too. Hercules is another son, and Zeus remembers him dealing with Cerberus. The modern Hercules is Andre Payne, whose story continues in Hercules Payne. So this family runs from those old heroic stories into people living in the present. They're carrying things from their earlier lives, sometimes before they understand who they really are. Heather Angelos is Hecate, Zeus's daughter. She's also a lawyer who built a life helping people before all of her old memories came back. In Grimm Universe #1, she talks about passing the bar and her mother celebrating her first win. Those memories matter to her. She has a reason to protect people that comes from the life she's lived as Heather. Her past as Hecate includes things she's ashamed of. When she remembers them, she chooses to try to make up for them. She doesn't decide that remembering an old identity means she has to go back to being that person. Her brother Julian is Zagreus, and his reaction is much worse. In the old days, he murdered people because they worshipped another god instead of him. Zeus banished him. When Julian remembers that life, he already has anger from growing up without a father in this one. In Godstorm #4, he remembers hearing Zeus's voice when Zeus visited his mother. He had wanted that voice to belong to his father. But Zeus never stayed. Now Zeus is standing in front of him calling him his son, and Julian doesn't feel any comfort in it. Venus takes advantage of him, but the story also lets Julian make his own choices. Zeus warns him that she wants to use him in a war against humanity. Julian understands the warning and still wants the power she's helped him find. Heather tries to reach him as his sister. She remembers that they did terrible things together, and she tells him they have another chance. He doesn't want to atone. She ends up fighting him to stop him from killing their father. Even after she defeats him, she stays beside him and offers him the support that was missing before. There's another family member who has every reason to want a different outcome. Neptune's wife, Salicia, was murdered by Zagreus. Zagreus even calls her his aunt as he kills her. So Neptune isn't arriving with some distant objection to a dangerous god. This is the person who took his wife from him, and Zeus is protecting that person because he's his son. Zeus decides he has to try to help Julian. Neptune says he understands the decision, but he doesn't pardon it. He also makes clear that if Zagreus becomes a threat again, he'll stop him. They leave that conversation as brothers who understand each other without agreeing about what should happen. Neptune's grief had already caused a disaster of its own. In Grimm Universe #1, he releases Scylla and Charybdis and reaches a point where he would let everything end. Heather challenges him about the people being hurt. Eventually he recognizes that he's putting other people through the kind of loss he couldn't bear himself. To stop it, he has to turn to Hades. That's another relationship with a lot of history. Neptune once defended his brother when others thought the worst of him, but he knows that Hades's help usually has a cost. Hades gets the monsters back into Pandora's Box and restores the people who died. Then he uses those restored lives to make sure Heather and Neptune let him leave with the box. If they try to stop him, he threatens to undo what he's just done. He understands exactly what they won't risk. Hades also calls Heather his niece. That gives another direct connection between the generations, beyond just knowing that he and Zeus are brothers. His own daughter is Angelica Blackstone, Hellchild, who is half-god and half-vampire. Their relationship has its own conflict in The Unholy. Hades also has a romantic relationship with Liesel Van Helsing. Those connections carry this family into other parts of the Grimm universe, rather than keeping the gods in their own corner of it. Hera belongs in this discussion too. Godstorm #4 has a flashback where Venus approaches Zeus romantically and he rejects her, telling her that he's going to marry Hera. He tells Venus to respect Hera as her queen. In the present, Venus explains that she hasn't forgotten being rejected, despite all the people who have loved her since. That doesn't excuse anything she does. It does explain why her resentment toward Zeus is so personal. Her campaign to regain worship and control over humanity is also tangled up with something she has carried against him for a very long time. Venus works with Ares, who is quite happy at the prospect of a bloody war, and she uses Julian as part of her plans. She also answers to the Being in Godstorm. When her plans fail, he punishes her violently. So even while she's manipulating the people around her, she's involved with something that can turn on her too. Goddess Inc. expands the family through their modern lives. Zeus is Gregor Brontios. His daughter Athena is Sage, and Artemis is Jules, Detective Hauser. Apollo is Landon Solis, and he and Jules are twins. Their closeness makes it harder when Venus draws Apollo into her plans. Jules initially protects him from police scrutiny, but eventually has to fight her own brother. Jules also has a personal reason to hate Venus. Her husband, Clayton Hauser, was previously married to Venus. He's the sculptor described as the forger of steel. Venus murders him and takes his heart. By the end, Jules wants Venus dead, while Zeus chooses to imprison her in the Underworld instead. Zeus's sister Audrey Galloway is living as a chef in Paris. She and Caspian are secretly together, despite telling Zeus they had separated. Caspian carries a trident and fights beneath the Seine. Audrey and Caspian initially want to stay out of the conflict, but they get involved and help restrain Rhys during the final battle. Rhys is the God of War and Venus's lover. His jealousy makes him turn on Apollo, and his imprisonment in the Underworld has destroyed his loyalty to his father. These aren't dependable alliances. Venus has brought together people whose anger and desires can turn them against each other. Then there's Enver, the queen-mother figure. Both Sage and Rhys address her as Mother. She's secretly helping Venus punish Gregor, and her severed hand is used to lure him into the trap. But she intervenes when Venus goes after Jules. Punishing Gregor was part of the agreement; harming the daughter wasn't. That betrayal comes from inside the family, and even it has limits. Enver is prepared to help bring Gregor down, but she won't simply stand aside while Venus does whatever she wants to his children. There are names in this modern cast that invite comparisons with the familiar Greek gods. Clayton's role suggests Hephaestus, Audrey's suggests Demeter, Caspian's suggests Poseidon, and Xavier is the party-boy DJ. I would keep those comparisons separate from explicit identifications. A familiar role doesn't establish every marriage, parent or sibling from the old myths, and I wouldn't use it to fill in gaps in the comic family tree. There is also an important part of the supernatural world that doesn't belong on Zeus's family tree: the Order of Death. The 2021 Goddess of Death annual explains that Madam Morana once held power over life and death across the realms. She became crueler as her power grew, causing famine, madness and war. The Keepers finally stopped her. They could destroy her body, but not the power she had accumulated. They divided that power among beings chosen from the different realms. That's how the Order of Death was formed. The Judge was placed at its head to guide and mediate, so that no one member would follow Morana's path again. Abaddon is the Reaper of Myst. Thanatos is the Reaper of Neverland. Ankou is the Reaper of Oz. Pesta is the Reaper of Wonderland. Keres is the Reaper of the Nexus, Earth. That's a shared responsibility and a shared source of power. It doesn't mean they're all biological siblings. There's also a continuity detail to keep in mind: Goddess Inc.'s ending has Keres say that Thanatos is one of her names. The later annual lists Thanatos and Keres separately, serving different realms. Those accounts don't line up neatly, and I wouldn't erase either one to make the chart look simpler. The comics give them their own history. The Keepers are another level of the cosmology again, described in that account as beings who shaped reality. So when I look at the gods in this series, the family chart is only part of it. Perseus wants distance from Zeus. Heather wants to change and tries to help her brother do the same. Julian feels abandoned and becomes dangerous. Neptune has lost his wife and has to watch her killer receive another chance. Hades knows how to turn his relatives' concern for others into something he can use. Those are the relationships that make the family worth talking about. You can know who's related to whom and still miss most of what is going on between them. And in this universe, when that family falls apart, a lot of people outside it end up paying for it.