Triumvirate Holdings
So, I’ve read The Trials of Apollo, and the big bads of the series are the three scariest Roman emperors. So far, we’ve learned that Nero and Commodus are members of the Triumvirate behind Triumvirate Holdings...
As a Hetalia fan, I couldn’t help but imagine their chibi versions running around... Himaruya makes Nero so cute in his comic strips, which I was always so mixed about since I’m more familiar with the historical Nero that’s more similar to the one in Riordan’s books.
Then there’s Commodus...his dynamic with Apollo is so intriguing in the second book (the bathtub murder scene is so heartbreaking....) According to the Hetalia comics, Commodus was actually sickly as a youth and then did extensive strength training to build up his body and fight as a gladiator. Just that in Hetalia, he’s portrayed more as a cute emperor than an all-out megalomaniac.
There’s now the mysterious third emperor....one Hetalia fan calls the Emperors Caligula, Nero, Heliogabalus (actually spelled Elagabalus) & Commodus “the bad guy squad”... so, that leaves either Caligula or Elagabalus as the third emperor.
There are several clues as to who the third emperor is: 1) Nero calls him his “kinsman” - which could mean an actual relative (so Caligula? or another Julio-Claudian emperor?); and 2) the dark prophecy calls him ’“the master of the swift white horse” (is it bad that I thought of the white horseman in Revelations?) -> this could be a reference to Incitatus, Caligula’s white stallion that the emperor supposedly planned to make his consul.
My verdict: The third emperor is Caligula! Seeing that he thought of himself as Jupiter, and often impersonated Hercules, Mercury, Venus and Apollo, this is going to be an interesting ride.