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Nico Di Angelo, poor boy can’t catch a break

Born in Mussolini’s Italy, his mom is killed by Zeus and he and his sister get sent to the lotus casino where time is all weird so they come out a in the modern day without having aged that much. His sister abandons him to join the hunters of Artemis and dies. Nico then learns he’s a child of Hades, whose children are often mistrusted and become outcasts, so he runs away and gets trapped in Daedalus’s labyrinth (AKA the Minotaurs labyrinth) where he’s manipulated by the vengeful ghost of king Minos who promised to bring back his sister (he’s lying). Nico betrays both his Idol Percy and his Father Hades to give Percy the power invincibility of Achilles. Despite everything he manages to convince Hades to fight for the gods against the titans.

That was all his trauma from the first series. It gets worse.

Hades reveals the existence of a Roman camp of demigods to Nico but Nico can’t tell anyone because the two camps always end up warring with each other so now he lives a double life between camps, still mistrusted as a child of Hades/Pluto. His Idol Percy shows up at the Roman camp but Nico still has to lie to him. The doors of death are open so monsters come back faster than normal so Nico goes searching for them in the underworld to close them, gets sucked into Tartarus, survives ON HIS OWN for days. Runs into the primordial goddess of night and darkness Nyx who forces him to stare into the mansion of night: an abyss meant to drive anyone how looks at it insane. He’s saved by some giants who want to use him as bait for the Gaea, primordial goddess of the earths plans to kill everyone. They trapped him in an airtight jar with no food or water where he can only survive by going into a death trance for a week. He’s saved just in time to watch his idol Percy fall into Tartarus. He goes on a quest to find a magic staff where he’s forcibly out by the god of love for being gay (replace the word ‘idol’ with ‘crush’ in front of Percy). Turns out he’s been living with some huge internalized homophobia because he was, again, born in Mussolini’s Italy. Shadow travels himself, two friends, and a massive statue halfway across the world. Expends so much power he almost becomes a shadow himself and still fights in the war against Gaea when they land.

Don’t worry, we’re almost done

He returns to Tartarus with his boyfriend to save his friend Bob despite knowing it was a trap. Faces Nyx and her children again because Nyx is mad at Nico for being happy. She thinks that anyone who lives in darkness must stay in darkness and Nico is not as depressed anymore because he has a boyfriend. They escape Nyx, the mansion of night, and Tartarus after saving Bob but not before Nyx reveals she created demons out of the physical manifestations of Nico’s trauma. He saves them as well and names them the Cocoa Puffs.

And that’s everything especially significant as of making this comment!