This article contains lore based on real-life sources of the Greek mythology as introduced from the God of War Greek era.
| “ | Sired by Ouranos, he who gave life to the universe. | ” |
Ouranos or Uranus (Greek: Οὐρανός) is one of the most important and most powerful primordial Greek gods. He is the Primordial God of the Heavens.
Quick Answers
What is the role of Ouranos in Greek mythology?
Who are the descendants of Ouranos and Gaia in Greek mythology?
How does the Roman god Caelus relate to the Greek god Ouranos?
What is Ouranos the god of in Greek mythology?
Who is Gaia in relation to Ouranos in Greek mythology?
Greek Mythology
Uranus, also spelled Ouranos, is the Primordial god of the sky. Ouranos is the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. In Roman mythology, he is known as Caelus.
Ouranos and Gaia were ancestors of all of the Olympian gods, but no cult addressed directly to Ouranos survived into Classical times, and Ouranos does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky and Styx (sister of Nyx) might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic. In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in Theogony, Ouranos came every night to cover the Earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him.
Hesiod named their six sons and six daughters the Titans, their three sons the hundred-armed giants the Hecatonchires, and their sons the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes. Disgusted by their looks, he banished the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes into Tartarus, something Gaia would never forgive. She crafted a sickle made out of flint and asked the Titans to end their father's cruelty. While the younger five of the Titans refused, Cronos, the youngest and the strongest, took the sickle. He ambushed his father Ouranos and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea and from the sperm of the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The Furies also came into being from Uranus' castration, they were created from the blood of the genitals, which depict that love and anger come from Man.
During the last years of the Titanomachy, when the Titans gained the upper hand, the Sky Ouranos was one of the three primal forces that young Zeus sacrificed to, in order to win his favour, along with Helios, the Sun and Gaia, the Earth, who was the one who answered that the Kronides shall win the war in one year, if only they would free their long forgotten uncles, her sons from Tartarus and honour them.
God of War II
Ouranos is mentioned in the official documentary for this game, "From Myth to Legend" where it is stated by Cory Barlog that the myth of Cronos killing him also happened in God of War and that he overthrew his father.
God of War: Ascension
Ouranos (left/Ouranos with stars in the skin) fights with Thalassa.
Ouranos fought in the war of the Primordials, like all the other elder Greek deities.
Although the Furies were born from his blood in the original Mythology, they were born from the blood of the primordial Chaos in the mythos of God of War, although Athena did mention them being born from the blood of Ouranos in the God of War I Novelization, which may have been because Athena was not aware of what had truly happened in the Primordial War and going by the legends.
Ouranos makes an appearance in the initial introduction, where the stars are shown coming out of his body. It was later confirmed, by the official artbook with developer commentary, The Art of God of War: Ascension, that the star-filled primordial who appears in this introduction is indeed Ouranos, and that he is the personification of the heavens and created them, which is shown in the introduction.
Athena and Zeus, an eternity later would discuss among themselves the nature of the Blades of Chaos, linked to the primordial Realm of Chaos that they say was conquered and brought to Order by Ouranos himself. As Chaos faught in the war in a humanoid, albeit astronomical form akin to her younger Protegonoi children, it can be said that she was already conquered and diminished by Ouranos order by that point. It is possible that she oppossed Ouranos in that war and died.
Reign and Downfall
His faction in the Primordial War was the one which prevailed, making him the Ruler of the Universe and King of the Gods, eventually taking Gaia, the Earth Mother as his wife and queen.
As he prevailed in the war, he started his reign as the first true Ruler of all Creation, in a primordial cosmos that he shaped. His marriage with Gaia bore first three mighty and crafty Cyclopes, then another trio of dreadful and terrifying Hecatonchires. So revolted was the Skyfather at his hideous children, that he deemed them unfit to walk the Earth where he would see them and banished them into Tartarus, the primordial abyss.
His wife Gaia felt shocked and betrayed at such cruelty towards her children but was powerless to directly challenge her husband, the ruler of all.
Their next children, the twelve elder Titans, lived on the Island of Creation and were tolerated by their father and expanded the cosmos with new domains and concepts such as the Sun and Moon, divine Law and Order and finally Time itself, by their youngest child, the mighty Cronos, who hated his sire for how tyranical he was in his ways and how he treated his mother Gaia. Deep down, perhaps due to being the youngest his hate for his father came from an ambition to rule himself in his stead.
So, when Gaia beseeched her Titan children to stand by her side against the Tyrant, no one dared to volunteer but Cronos. He challenged his father for the supremacy over the universe and fought a terrible cosmic battle against Ouranos, the conquerer of Chaos itself. When it was over, the mighty Cronos stood triumphantly and castrated his father, a mockery of his many lustful advances on the Earth Mother. And so it was how the Golden Age of the Titans began.
Since his banishment of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires is what led Cronos to rebel against and overthrow his father, Ouranos can, and probably should, be considered the original, true instigator of the Cycle of Patricide, as well as arguably the real ultimate evil of the God of War series (at least up until the end of God of War III), if posthumously, due to the chain of horrific events that followed. It should be remembered that it was him, and not his son Cronos who was the first to raise his hand against his family, when he faught and conquered his creator and mother Chaos, aswell as later killed his fellow Protegonoi who oppossed him in the eternal war before the Beginning of Time.
God of War (Comics)
Though never making an appearance in the comic book itself; he is briefly mentioned by his son and one of the Hecatonchires, Gyges. The giant mentioned the aspect of how Ouranos was repulsed by their ugliness and banished Gyges and his brothers to Tartarus, and claimed that the universe is the birthright of those born to Ouranos. He also revealed that Ouranos was the father of the universe and the one who created it.
Powers & Abilities
- Immortality: As a Primordial, Ouranos is immortal, but only a fellow God or divine weapon can kill him.
- Caeluskinesis: Being the primordial god of the sky, this makes Ouranus capable of controlling the Heavens.
- Sky/Space-Embodiment: Within himself were atleast entire galaxies that Ceto punched out of him when she struck his head. Like his sister-wife Gaia, he embodied and represented his domain, which was himself. He himself has created and embodied the Heavens and all its infinite space far and wide into the stars.
- Superhuman Strength: Being the first Ruler of the Universe, and the most important Deity of the Greek Pantheon, that makes Ouranus a god with a great level of strength. Although it is not confirmed, possibly he was the one who defeated and killed Ceto, the Primordial Goddess of the Sea.
- Superhuman Durability: Ouranus survived the war of the Primordials, he fought against the most powerful Gods and creators of the Universe and received attacks from them.
Trivia
- In mythology, it was Chaos, not Ouranos, who gave life to the universe, although this could also mean that Chaos simply created the universe while Ouranos brought life to it.
- This theory turned out to be false, however, since it is shown that Ouranos created the universe in Ascension.
- One of the Primordials in the opening of God of War: Ascension as there is a god with what seems to be a night sky for skin, this is Ouranos as he represented the sky.
- It was later confirmed by the artbook that the sky primordial was indeed Ouranos.
- Interestingly, the Primordial whose blood falls into the ocean and thus creates the Furies is female. This is different to mythology as it was Ouranos' blood that made the Furies after he was castrated. It was later revealed by the artbook that this red Primordial is Chaos, who is the embodiment of Life, which explains why her blood created the Furies' life.
- Uranus is commonly mistaken to be pronounced Yur-ay-nus when it's actually pronounced Yur-rah-nus.
Gallery
References
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