Thought on apollo and octavian's relationship, and how their bargain affects the plot in hoo🤔
Okay, this is a bit of a tricky topic to poke at for a few reasons but I do have some thoughts so I'll blab a bit about that.
Some things before we start: I am not an Octavian expert. I find his character interesting but I have not yet spent much time trying to take him apart and see how he ticks, so the conclusions drawn in this post will be based on what I know about Apollo, and some assumptions of Octavian based on the fact that I don't believe he's a malicious asshole.
On that note, if there's one thing that's similar between Apollo and Octavian in the books, it's how they're narrated - namely, we only see them through seriously unreliable narration. In Apollo's case, it's all his own doing, he wants us to hate him in TOA so he lies to us, the reader, and when he appears in the other books he's always acting so it's hard to pin him down (and I owe a lot of my analysis of Apollo to conversations with @fearlessinger and @flightfoot, who have spent far longer picking him apart than I). In Octavian's case, we are only ever shown him through the narration of people who, to varying degrees, all view him negatively, so it's important to remember our view of him is through the lens of several teenagers who, more or less, hate him. Just because their narration turns him into a two-dimensional villain doesn't mean he is one - and I will do my best to depict him as a more well-rounded character, but unlike Apollo I have not spent much time trying to pick him apart so my knowledge on his character is far more basic.
I'm also currently on holiday and don't have any rrverse books with me so this is more or less all me running from memory here, so the usual canon quotes will be entirely absent.
With those factors mentioned, on to the topic in question: Apollo&Octavian's relationship and what happened in HOO because of it.
I've tried to make sense of Apollo's reasoning for his interactions with Octavian before, because clearly he did interact - he tells us this himself in TOA - but the idea of Apollo approving of the camps clashing just isn't feasible with everything we know about Apollo's character.
In fact, there are a few options that aren't feasible when we take into consideration Apollo's personality and how he treats demigods, so I'll just run through those first:
- Encouraging Camp Jupiter to go to war against Camp Half-Blood. No only is Apollo the de facto patron of CHB so why would he want that anyway, he's also protector of the youth etc. and never puts demigods in harms' way in the series, so why do it here?
- Encouraging Camp Jupiter to go to war at all - again, Apollo is all about protecting demigods, this goes directly against that and makes no sense.
- Grooming or otherwise manipulating Octavian because he knew he was going to die. Again - why would Apollo do this? This doesn't fit in with his motives at all throughout the series, or his core personality. When prophecies say demigods are going to die, Apollo tries to find loopholes to protect them, he doesn't manipulate them until they're in the position to die. Apollo does not, and has never wanted, dead demigods.
- Genuinely wanting to dethrone Zeus. TOA's entire plotline is about Apollo learning to accept what he already knew re: Zeus' A+ Parenting and the bad treatment of demigods. It makes no sense if he's less poised to rebel at the end of TOA than at the start.
- Octavian manipulating Apollo in any capacity. Just. No. First of all, this suggests that Octavian is an irredeemable Bad Apple rather than a complex young man (if Luke can have his redemption at the end of TLO despite being older than Octavian, then don't tell me Octavian is set in his Evil, Evil Ways), and secondly - Apollo is smart. Apollo is incredibly smart, and Octavian is barely an adult. There is no way, no matter how sneaky Octavian might have the potential to be, that he could manipulate Apollo.
The only reasoning I've been able to reconcile with what we know of Apollo that would have him striking any sort of deal with Octavian that even remotely resembles what Octavian (and Apollo) claims in canon is that Apollo knows his power base is weakening, leaving him unable to protect those he loves (Artemis in TTC, the entire camp in BOTL and TLO), and Octavian saying he'll promote Apollo to even above Jupiter in the camp worship (when Apollo is currently very low overall, being too Greek to ever be fully Romanised), would give Apollo enough of a power boost that he might be able to finally protect his loved ones again.
In order to get the events of HOO, the only thing I can see happening is a misunderstanding between the two of them, which in turn is orchestrated by our good old nemesis, Gaia. (Now, the Triumvirate are also a possibility, and may be involved on a more physical scale as they both provided a lot of resources for Octavian, and also we know they're gunning for Apollo in particular, but I think Gaia has to have been involved as well for this to have happened the way it did).
An important thing to note is that Apollo does blame Octavian to at least some extent regarding what went down, and considering this is the same guy who spends almost all of TOA taking every single blame that's possible to assign onto his own shoulders whether it's deserved or not, that's interesting. It means that Apollo does feel betrayed by Octavian's actions, which I can see for reasons I'll come into later, but that still doesn't negate the possibility of other interference. In fact, I think it makes it more likely.
Whatever the deal was between Apollo and Octavian - whatever Octavian actually wanted in return for boosting Apollo's standing amongst the Romans and therefore giving him this much-needed power boost (which Apollo eventually gets though TOA anyway) - it went wrong. Octavian's anti-Greek prejudice (which is, again, interesting, considering his favourite god is clearly Apollo, the most Greek of the Roman pantheon) collided with something, the Eidolons made everything worse, and then we had a war that Gaia wanted and Apollo did not.
It's in Gaia's favour to incite the two camps into war, and Octavian is the most powerful senator, barring Reyna who isn't the orator he is, so using him as the instrument makes sense - and it's convenient, really, that he's already in contact with Apollo so there's a ready-made scapegoat that even Octavian himself will fall for.
Did Gaia cause misunderstandings in Octavian's perception of what Apollo wanted? Possibly, but that would have been quite difficult to pull off without Apollo twigging what was really going on, so I'm a little doubtful that she would have done it much.
What makes me think someone did interfere (and Gaia makes the most sense here), is Octavian losing his powers. Those prophetic powers of his (regardless how powerful they actually are and I have doubts about that but that's not relevant here) is his communication channel with Apollo. Having those suddenly cut off is bad. I don't recall if we're told when he loses them, but it's definitely by BOO and likely a lot earlier, otherwise I'm sure Apollo would have been far more pro-Greek at him and tried to do something about the prejudice or at least had some success in stopping the clash (worst case scenario, Octavian may have gone ahead but he would have known he didn’t have Apollo’s blessing and may have lost all faith in Apollo entirely). He may have lost them by the time SON rolls around but is just going through the motions to keep the legion's faith in him - off the top of my head, I can't think of any canon that disproves that, mostly because we rarely see him using his powers and quite frankly, cutting open a stuffed toy and then saying stuff is very easy to fake.
So. Octavian loses his powers, he's provoked certainly by the start of MOA into believing that the Greeks need to be defeated (and only much, much later acknowledges the true threat that is Gaia), and he's hearing nothing from Apollo.
In the meantime, we have Apollo trapped on Delos, certainly trying to get Octavian to stop this nonsense, and being ignored (he dodges the demigods' questions over whether or not he's tried to stop Octavian, which in Apollo-speak is as good as "yes but it's not working"). In the end, Apollo comes to the harsh conclusion that the only way to stop Octavian is to kill him, which is not something he would have reached lightly. At this point - and even up until the end of TOA itself - I don't think Apollo realises there's other interference. He's had enough worries on his plate that he doesn't really have the time to sit down and think it through either during or after the fact, and that's time he won't have until post-TOA, which would be why Octavian's rare mentions in TOA are still tinged with betrayal.
Whether Octavian continues to launch his attack on CHB because he's taking nothing from Apollo as "no news is good news" and therefore explicit approval, or whether he's doing it because he's desperate about Apollo's silence and is acting out as best he can think of to try and get his attention, I don't know. Both have interesting connotations, but regardless, they end the same way - Octavian is claiming that he has Apollo's blessing to do this, effectively taking Apollo's name in vain, and that, Apollo must have seen as a betrayal of his trust.
Will deliberately calls this out as nonsense when Octavian tries it in his earshot, and that's something I'll talk about, too, because that, to me, seems to be the turning point in Octavian.
Will is a son of Apollo, the son of the god Octavian exalts so highly, rather than a mere legacy like Octavian himself. When he tells Octavian, to his face, "this is not what Apollo would want", he is full of (correct!) conviction, and this seems to be the final straw for Octavian.
I don't think Octavian is stupid. I'm here talking about how he's been manipulated by Gaia into starting a war thinking he's got Apollo's approval, I know, but that doesn't mean I don't think Octavian had doubts - the fact that he admitted to anyone that his powers are gone meant that he felt like something was wrong. He builds himself up and up and up which makes it feel more and more hollow underneath, as though there were doubts but he felt like he was too committed to change anything (and he was, he had Gaia's forces as part of his own, he had villains back in the legion, he had marched them all across the country to CHB - Octavian could not have backed down without depriving CJ of their last major point of leadership, with no praetors around).
He also doesn’t change his tune immediately, which makes sense - he couldn’t suddenly bow to what a Greek was saying after everything else - but I think it shook his confidence. “You lie,” he says, curling his lip in what I have always taken to be some sort of defensive snarl. He doesn’t want what Will’s saying to be true, that he’s been going so steadfastly against what Apollo wants, but he knows, then, that Will isn’t lying. All those niggling feelings suddenly make sense and he hates it, he doesn’t want to believe it, but it’s true, and Octavian realises that.
Then Gaia rises, and the pieces fall into place. Who, exactly, gained from Octavian’s behaviour, who he was really working for without knowing it. Octavian gets desperate - his actions have lost all rationality by the time he’s at the catapult; he’s not listening to reason (or doesn’t care, but I don’t think if he was in his right mind he would kill himself, not when the legion would be left without a leader at all - bear in mind that Reyna should, by rights, have been exiled for her actions so her return does not automatically put her back in charge). He’s frantic, he, too, just like Apollo, is betrayed, and he lashes out at the betrayer - Gaia.
It’s a tragic ending, really. He dies alone and hated, manipulated by the real enemy and deceived into betraying the god he worshipped, his own ancestor. (And quite frankly, if Luke can get into Elysium for stabbing Kronos after being the major player in helping him rise, then Octavian can get into Elysium for helping blow up Gaia after being manipulated to work in her favour, just saying.)
I know there’s probably several holes in this - like I said, I haven’t looked too closely into Octavian yet (the scene I am most familiar with is the one with Will, purely because I keep doing Will research and analyses), and I’m not currently somewhere where I can check the books to see what might be running counter to my theory here - but with the facts I do remember, it’s the only theory I can put together that makes sense without turning one or both of them into an irredeemable villain - of which Apollo canonically is not, and I find it very difficult to accept that Octavian is, either.
Teen fantasy (especially adventure-based). I might be an adult but you'll still find me gravitating towards the Teen section in the library and hunting down anything that has fantasy or magic-based stuff (but preferably without the romance - there's only so many YA vampire romances I can stomach and I reached that limit when Stephanie Meyer's Twilight was shoved down my throat about fifteen years ago) before I look anywhere else!
10) Do you have a guilty fav?
Hmm... I'm sure there's one somewhere but nothing's really springing to mind right now. Does Cassandra Claire's The Mortal Instruments count as a "guilty" fave, because that's a series I definitely enjoy (although the movie and TV show both disappointed me) but I'm aware of its fanfiction origins! (Still need to finish reading her other series, whoops... I have an entire bookshelf that's purely Cassandra Claire at this point and half of them I've not got around to opening yet...)
Okay, so I don't have all my wips open because I think my laptop might die if I do, so I've picked eight of the bigger ones across various fandoms to use for this. Maximum of one word's example per fic.
Calendar
No matches
Interesting choice! It is a word that crops up occasionally when I write, usually when I'm writing Apollo pov, but apparently it's not in any of these ones.
