Nico di Angelo

"Your death, would be great for me."

- Nico di Angelo

Nico di Angelo is a Greek demigod son of Hades and the mortal Maria di Angelo. He is also the younger brother of Bianca di Angelo and the half brother of Hazel Levesque. He is known in the Underworld as the "Ghost King" after taking the title from King Minos.

History
Nico di Angelo was born before World War ll leaving the oath that Hades swore along with his brothers unbroken. He had an older sister named Bianca and they both lived in Washington DC. Their mother died when Zeus struck the hotel they were staying in with lightning in order to kill the siblings, however they were protected by Hades. Apparently, Hades was not able to protect their mother in time. Both were brought to the Lotus Hotel by the Fury Alecto, who was disguised as a lawyer in order to protect them. Alecto was also instructed by Hades to bathe them in the River Lethe to wipe their memories. Because of his bitterness towards the Oracle due to the first Great Prophecy and its connection to the death of Maria di Angelo, Hades cursed the Oracle that it would never find another host until he and his children were accepted in Olympus. In a way, Nico and Bianca were also the cause of this.

After what the siblings thought as a month in the Lotus Hotel and Casino, (which was actually approximately 70 years) they were taken out by Alecto who was disguised as a different lawyer than the one who carried them in. Hades did this because he wanted one of them to be the child in the prophecy and not the "idiot" son of Poseidon, referring to Percy.

The Titan's Curse
Nico first appears with his sister, in a military school called Westover Hall, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Bianca and Nico were almost kidnapped by a manticore named Dr. Thorn. Thalia, Grover, Percy, and Annabeth attempt to save them, but it is the Hunters of Artemis who come to the rescue. The siblings were sought out by Grover Underwood, who believed them to be two very powerful unknown half-bloods. Nico is about ten and seems to be very interested in Mythomagic, a card game about Greek mythology. But when 12 year-old Bianca accepts Artemis' proposal to become a Hunter, Nico gets angry at her for abandoning him. Percy finds Nico eavesdropping on Bianca and Zoë, and Nico successfully convinces Percy to promise to keep his sister safe. He doesn't appear again until the end of the book, where Percy explains to him that Bianca died to save the others on the quest. He immediately turns on Percy, telling him he hates him, and reminding him of the promise he made to keep Bianca safe. Percy tries to comfort him, and Nico claims he can sense her soul being judged. When the last four Skeleton Warriors appear in the camp, Nico tells them to "Go away!" and they are swallowed by a fissure in the ground that Nico creates by accident. Nico is last seen running into the woods at night. Percy then realizes that Nico is a son of Hades after finding the god statue that Bianca told Percy to give Nico if she died. The statue represented Hades, Lord of the Dead.

The Battle of the Labyrinth
Nico is first seen through the Iris message that Bianca sent to Percy. He has honed his powers as the son of Hades with help from the ghost King Minos, who had been training him. He tried to summon Bianca's ghost many times, but failed. Frustrated, he seeks to make a deal with his father by trading "a soul for a soul." Percy thinks that Nico is after him, but Nico is after somebody else.

Nico decides to find the soul of someone who cheated death and trade it for Bianca's. Later, he meets Percy, Annabeth, Tyson, and Grover at the Triple G Ranch. He'd entered Triple G Ranch to discuss finding the soul he needed with Geryon. Angered, he threatens them, but is stopped by Geryon. He still blames Percy for Bianca's death, and tells him so. He is then tied up by Geryon to be sold to the Titan Army. When Percy offers a deal to Geryon to save him, Nico shouts that he does not want to be saved by Percy.

Percy still saves Nico, and convinces him to try and summon Bianca's spirit again. However, Bianca tells Nico not to be angry at Percy or hold grudges, because that is the fatal flaw of the children of Hades. She says to stop blaming Percy because it is really she that Nico is angry at for abandoning him. She also gives a warning about Kronos sensing Nico, and then she disappears.

He stays at the Triple G Ranch while the others leave. Nico is tricked by Minos into going back into the maze to save Percy, but is captured by two dracanae of Kronos'. In the battle at Daedalus' workshop, Nico opens a fissure in the ground, sending Minos back to the underworld. He tells Percy that only the dead accept him, and they only do so out of fear.

He escapes with Percy, Annabeth, and Rachel, who have to go back into the Labyrinth to find Grover and Tyson. Along the way, they see Kronos (in the form of Luke Castellan), and Nico, in a desperate attempt to save everyone, shows his true powers, conjuring a wall of black stone making it known to Kronos that he is a son of Hades.

When they found Grover and Tyson, they also found the long-lost god Pan, and Nico notices that he is the only one that Pan doesn't talk to.

During a battle in the labyrinth, Nico summons undead warriors to fight. The effort nearly kills him, and he collapses on the ground at the end of the battle. Percy finds him and helps him by giving him nectar. He releases Daedalus' soul after that, who offers his soul for ransom, but Nico decides Bianca should stay where she is.

He feels out of place at Camp Half-Blood, and refuses to eat with the other demigods or join the singalong at the amphitheater. Nico summons Bianca's spirit one last time. He tells Percy that he will leave Camp Half-Blood because he feels that he doesn't belong there like his father doesn't belong on Olympus. Before he leaves, Percy gives him the small Hades statue that Bianca had given him before she died.

He appears again at the very end to Percy and offers a way to defeat Kronos, but is distracted by Percy's blue birthday cake (assuming he's probably never had a birthday party in his life), and Percy offers him some, and they both go inside to talk about Nico's secret plan to beat Kronos.

The Demigod Files
Nico is one of the three demigods (along with Thalia and Percy, or all the known Greek children of the Big Three) who are summoned by his step-mother Persephone to find the Sword of Hades. His knowledge of the Underworld and of its occupants within it, plus he was good with zombie crowds he helped them complete their quest. He remains in the underworld afterward to discuss the oncoming war with his father. Before his friends leave, he reminds Percy of his idea to defeat the Titans (bathing in the River Styx).

The Last Olympian
Nico's theory to gain an edge over the Titans is to make Percy invincible by having him bathe in the River Styx, similar to the myth of Achilles. It is shown that after Bianca died, Hades feels he has no competent child, repeatedly mentioning that Bianca could do a better job at fulfilling their father's demands.

Nico is first seen in one of Percy's dreams where he is eavesdropping on a group of Titans. It is later confirmed that this was true. Percy sees him again while walking Mrs. O'Leary. Nico is with Juniper and Leneus, discussing Grover's disappearance. Nico, Percy, and Mrs. O'Leary then meet Mrs. Castellan on a disturbing visit by shadow-travel. Soon after, the three enter the Underworld, where Percy is lied and tricked by Nico, trapped by Hades and rescued by Nico. Nico helps Percy bathe in the River Styx.

It is also revealed that the lawyer who removed the children from the Lotus Hotel and Casino was the Fury, Alecto, in disguise. Nico attempts to summon the ghost of his mother, but Bianca appears and tells him not to. He sees the scene of their mother's death in which Zeus blasted the building she, Hades, and the children were in to pieces. Hades, who realized what was happening too late, only managed to save the children Nico and Bianca. He then tells Alecto to wipe the memories of the children, including their mother's death.

By viewing this scene, Nico finds out who his mother is and is able to convince his father to help the campers in battle. He fights in the Battle of Manhattan with his father, the Lord of the Underworld. Together, they summon wave after wave of soldiers of the undead against Kronos' forces. Nico is last seen ordering undead workers to build the Hades cabin, made up of solid obsidian walls with a skull over the door. Torches blaze with burning green fire that will never extinguish.

Between the Series
As stated in The Son of Neptune, in the September following The Battle of Manhattan, Nico rescued the spirit of his half-sister Hazel Levesque from the Fields of Asphodel while looking for Bianca, who had decided to be reborn and thus couldn't be brought back to life. With Thanatos captured, the dead were returning to the world anyway, and Nico felt Hazel deserved another chance at being a hero (Gaea said that he had selfish reasons for doing this, but it is unknown if he had any or for what selfish reasons did he do it for). As stated by Dakota, Nico took Hazel directly to Camp Jupiter and asked Reyna to take her in.

The Lost Hero
Nico is mentioned in The Lost Hero to be searching for Percy along with Tyson, Grover and the Hunters of Artemis, but otherwise doesn't appear. It's to be assumed that he doesn't stay at Camp Half-Blood much, as Annabeth said he "sometimes" shows up.

The Son of Neptune
Nico meets Percy at the Roman camp, where he is visiting his half-sister, Hazel Levesque. When they meet, Nico is shocked but easily regains control over it. He is posing as a son of Pluto and ambassador for Pluto. He later tells Hazel, after Percy leaves with Frank, that he knows Percy, but Percy must regain his memories by himself. It is not clear whether he gained this knowledge from his friends at Camp Half-Blood, who had long since figured out what had happened to Percy thanks to his opposite number, Jason Grace, or if Hades or another god told Nico directly.

Later, Nico di Angelo is shown to be observing the War Games using a pair of binoculars. When Mars appears, Mars glares at Nico. It is possible that he's the first demigod to bring back a dead person.

Nico is later shown in the meeting. He supports the group by telling them about what happens in the first giant war, and about the Underworld, and how to retake it. However, he doesn't say anything when Octavian protests and wins the argument.

Nico is shown in one of Hazel's blackouts. He finds Hazel in the Fields of Asphodel and brings Hazel back to life.

Later in the book, Nico sets off to see if he can locate the Doors of Death from inside the Underworld. It is later said by Gaea to Hazel, Frank, and Percy later on, that Nico has been captured by enemy forces and is somewhere in Rome. It is unknown if he's alive or not.

Personality
In The Titan's Curse, Nico is ten years old and enjoys playing with his Mythomagic Cards that none of the others truly seem to understand. He is totally clueless and very inquisitive: he begins annoying Percy with his ceaseless questions, especially when he asks questions about Annabeth, which eventually makes Percy consider "stuffing him in a meat flavored sack and throwing him to the wolves." He is excited about finding out that he is a Demigod (immediate response: "Cool!"), and compares monsters to Mythomagic creatures. He feels abandoned when his sister, Bianca - who practically acts as his parent - becomes a Hunter of Artemis. When she goes on a quest, Nico makes Percy promise to protect her. After her death, he develops a long-lasting grudge toward Percy for letting her die. Once he realizes that he is a son of Hades, he casts away his childhood interests and runs off on his own.

He becomes more a grim and solitary and defintely a more powerful character during The Battle of the Labyrinth, saying that "only the dead respect me... and only out of fear." His attitude change may have happened partially because of Bianca's death. He believes that he will never be accepted by the living, and does not belong at Camp Half-Blood in comparrison of his father feeling out of place at Olympus. However, Nico forgives Percy after Bianca's ghost tells him that it wasn't his fault that she died. He also accepts the small figurine of Hades that Bianca wanted him to have.

In the fifth book, The Last Olympian, he instructs Percy on how to bathe in the River Styx. He is quite sincere in wanting to help him with the prophecy and the war. However, Nico can be somewhat unreliable at times. This is shown when he tricked Percy into coming to the Underworld.

Nico is later proven wrong in the belief he will not be accepted by the living. After the war is over, all the campers of Camp Half-Blood welcome Nico cheerfully: as Percy puts it,"If you come into battle with a hundred undead soldiers to save the day, you're everyone's friend."

In The Son of Neptune, Nico is very caring to Hazel Levesque, his half sister, and tries to help her as much as he can. His helping her sort of parallels with how Percy helped him in several cases. This shows that he loves his family, even his half-siblings. Nico is helpful to others.

Fatal Flaw
Nico di Angelo's fatal flaw is holding grudges, as Bianca's ghost tells him - which, in his case, can lead to not wanting help or asking to be saved in deadly situations because he doesn't like someone. Examples are his not wanting to be helped by Percy, even when Geryon was going to sell him to the Titans and not wanting to go back in the Labyrinth with them. Bianca shares this with him, as she also had the same fatal flaw in life, although this didn't lead to her death. Bianca also says that holding grudges is the fatal flaw of Hades' demigod children. In the fifth book, Nico tells his father that he (Hades) is holding a grudge that could end up killing the Olympians and the campers.

Appearance
He is said to have dark brown-black hair that always looks like he just got out of bed (messy and shaggy), olive skin that has paled over the course of The Battle of the Labyrinth, brown eyes, and wears mostly black.

By the end of The Battle of the Labyrinth, he has a silver skull ring which is said to belong to his father, stated by Hazel, and he has a Stygian Iron sword always by his side. When he shakes hands with Percy at the end of the Battle of Labyrinth, Percy says that Nico's hand is "cold as ice." He is also mentioned on several occasions wearing an aviator's jacket, most likely because he had distant relatives in WWII. Hazel also points out how his fingers are ghostly white, like their father. At Camp Jupiter, Nico is seen wearing a black toga when Percy goes to talk to the senators (the reason being that togas are only worn on special occasions, like meetings). Nico also always wears his Stygian Iron sword on his side in his chain belt.

Abilities
ADHD: Like all demigods, Nico possesses inborn supernatural battle reflexes and senses that he uses to analyze the fighting style of his opponent.

Dyslexia: Nico's brain is "hard-wired" for divine Ancient Greek instead of mortal languages.

Fighting skills: Nico is shown to rely more on his powers more than his own fighting skills and isn't that good in close combat.

Demigod Powers
As a son of Hades, Nico himself is an underworld deity. He is considerably more trained in using his powers than most children of the Big Three, such as Thalia, Percy and Jason. Powers of his that have been shown are Necromancy, Umbrakinesis, and Geokinesis. Some include:

Geokinesis: He can control the earth - levitating rocks and making them deadly, black, and extremely sharp. Nico can open fissures in the earth that can swallow up creatures and trap them in the Underworld. He can cause earth tremors so powerful, they can shatter the pillars of a mountain fortress. He can also control the black walls of the Underworld. He has the greatest geokinetic ability of any demigod.

Necromancy: Nico can summon the dead, put the dead to sleep, and communicate with the dead. He also has divine authority and control over the Furies and the dead. He can banish the dead and release people who should have died (i.e. Daedalus). Some of his abilities in this domain includes the power to destroy Skeleton Warriors and physically manipulating ghosts, such as taking hold of them by hand or forcing them to be silent with a gesture. In The Last Olympian, he was able to summon a fairly large army of unbdead soldiers by himself. It is unknown how much he has increased in power since then.

Sensitivity to Death: He can sense death as it happens or when it is coming; when a person close to him dies, it comes as a ringing in the ears. He can also sense when an immortal is fading, as on the case of Pan. He can sense someone's life aura (he sensed it when Rachel Elizabeth Dare's life aura flickered, and he told her, "I could see you dying.") In addition to that, he has a deep knowledge of the Underworld and knows when a person's life is being judged in the Underworld.

Umbrakinesis: He has control over darkness and shadow for various uses such as solidifying it for attacks and to hide in it.

Shadow travel: He can use shadows as a means of transportation, however, great distances tend to wear him out. The first time he shadow travelled, he passed out for a week. He has said that while learning to use it, he ran into walls and made accidental trips to China.

Induced Fear: He radiates fear and death like his father, Hades, but to a much lesser degree.

Percy Jackson
Nico had the ability to annoy Percy Jackson quite easily. He does this in The Titan's Curse by asking Percy several questions, but grew out of this habit after the death of his sister, which he blamed on Percy. He forgave Percy after Bianca appeared before the two, but Nico still held some anger as she appeared only when Percy arrived. In The Last Olympian, by almost leading Percy to his demise, Percy became angry with Nico, but forgives him soon after when he saves him. This pattern is repeated in The Son of Neptune when Nico didn't tell Percy about his past which angered Percy once again, but wasn't in as bad a mood because of Hazel. They have a brother-like relationship, and Percy feels responsible for him. They also seem very close, closer than most demigods are to each other.

Frank Zhang
There is not much about their relationships. While Nico is kind of mysterious and makes everybody else nervous, Frank doesn't feel the same way and may trust him because of Hazel.

Hazel Levesque
In The Son of Neptune, Nico is very caring to Hazel Levesque, his half sister, and tries to help her as much as he can. His helping her sort of parallels with how Percy helped him in several cases. This shows that he loves his family, even his half-siblings. Hazel also says that Nico was the most powerful demigod until she met Percy.

Camp Jupiter
To everyone, people think that Nico is just a traveling oddball. However, Reyna grows suspicious when Nico knows about Alcyoneus in the meeting. Camp Jupiter proclaims him as the Ambassador from Pluto.

Items

 * A Stygian iron sword. It is three feet long, and in The Last Olympian is described as being "black as a nightmare." It helps Nico to channel his power to control and summon the dead, and it can also drain souls to give the sword more power. Only Hades and his children can use Stygian Iron for their weapons.
 * He is seen wearing black armor in The Last Olympian with a skull shaped visor.
 * A skull ring shown in the last two books and in Son of Neptune.
 * Mythomagic figurines and cards. He throws them in a fire in anger in The Battle of the Labyrinth.
 * In The Battle of the Labyrinth he had a pair of Daedalus' wings, but after he used them, he threw it away in a trash can.
 * A red travel rose, given to him by Persephone, that he didn't use in The Sword of Hades.
 * A Hades Mythomagic figurine, given to him by Percy, from Bianca.

Etymology

 * The name Nico is the diminutive form of Nicolò or Nicola, the Italian form of the Greek Nikolaos (Nicholas), meaning "victory of the people." It is most likely intended to evoke the prefix necro-, meaning dead. His surname is Italian for "of the angel," alluding to his role as the Lord of the Dead's son.
 * Nico is also a form of Nike, goddess of victory.

Trivia

 * Bianca di Angelo, Thalia Grace, and himself are the only Greek Half-Bloods of the Big Three who's aging has been tampered by their godly parent.
 * The line "With great power. . .comes great need to take a nap." is a near obvious reference to one of Spider-Man's most famous line: "With great power, comes great responsibility", albeit a bit altered for comedic effect and to indicate that Nico's powers tire him greatly, prompting him to take naps every now and again to regain his strength, as he did at that moment in The Last Olympian.
 * Nico's physical description (pale skin, dark hair, brown eyes, black clothes, and an aura of death) also fits Rick Riordan's description of Anubis, the Egyptian god of funerals, in the Kane Chronicles series.
 * The first time he met Mr D ., he called him "The wine dude", which irritated the god, but he forgot about it soon after.
 * Nico was turned into a dandelion for a short period of time by Persephone during a "family spat." This was never seen directly in the books, but is talked about by Nico and Persephone in The Demigod Files.
 * Nico has been to a New Orleans graveyard, though it is unknown why he went. Interestingly, this is one of the favorite hangouts of another death god (a.k.a. Anubis, the Egyptian god of funerals). It was also the place that his half-sister Hazel Levesque lived just before her death.
 * Nico blushes when a female touches him. Either when they do it show affection or appreciation (Shown when Juniper, Grover's girlfriend, touches his arm in The Last Olympian).
 * Even though Nico and Jason Grace have never met before (in the books at least), they do share some similarities:
 * They are children of the Big Three.
 * They both have older sisters.
 * Their elder sisters have been/are Hunters of Artemis.
 * They have both been to Camp Half blood and Camp Jupiter.
 * They have godly stepmothers (Persephone, Juno).
 * Both have lost their memory. Nico's because of being dipped in the River Lethe and Jason's was removed by Hera/Juno (Though, Jason's is temporary).
 * Hazel Levesque and Nico's mothers have very similar first names: Marie Levesque and Maria di Angelo.
 * Nico's birthday is undecided. Rick Riordan has stated on two different occasions his birth-date: January 28th, 1924 and May 16th, 1924. The years seemed to be off, seeing that Nico would have been 19 when his mother died, when he was only two-four years old. It is known that he is older than Hazel.
 * In the series, he is described as having long, shaggy black hair, and in his portrait he has short brown hair. Also, he seems to have green eyes instead of brown, and not as pale of skin.
 * He is the only child of the Big Three not to be known for his fighting skills and to never have gone on a quest.
 * Nico is the only child of Hades that is welcomed as a hero.