As sibling stories go, the di Angelo/Levesque saga is something of a challenge to tell. Think about it—it’s pretty much all di Angelo all the time for something like 80+ years before Hazel Levesque appears on the timeline. And of course we know why that happens. . . . But we’ll get to that soon enough.
The Early Days
Born in Italy between the World Wars, Bianca and Nico lived in a traditional household with their mother, Maria di Angelo. The god of the Underworld, Hades, was a distant husband and father, but by all accounts, the three di Angelos made a loving trio without him. We like to imagine idyllic strolls through Venice, rides on gondolas, the whole thing.
Hades might have been distant, but we wouldn’t exactly call him absentee. Which brings us to—
The Move to the States
Before long, Maria moved the kids to the U.S., which in theory was a safer spot than Italy at the start of World War II. Sadly, it wasn’t for this family, because Zeus was tracking their movements. Hades was doing the same, thankfully, and protected Bianca and Nico from Zeus’s lightning bolt. Not poor Maria, though. Hades had to send a fury to bring his traumatized children to the Underworld and wipe their memories in the River Lethe.
70+ Years?
That’s right, we’re fast-forwarding past their brief, decades-long respite at the Lotus Hotel and Casino to their relocation in Maine and Westover Hall. Here they meet up with Grover, and the rest is demigod history. Later, Nico’s crush on Percy overwhelms him with its fraught intensity, and Bianca becomes a Hunter of Artemis and dies trying to procure a Mythomagic figurine for Nico. (We know, we know… There’s more to it than that. We’re just trying to get to Hazel…)
Getting to Hazel
Hazel, child of Pluto (Hades in Roman form) and Marie Levesque, was born in New Orleans in the late 1920s. She took an eventful detour to Alaska after her mother, under the spell of Gaea, tried to find a quiet spot away from Pluto’s influence. Turns out Gaea was the worse of the two, and she talked Marie into offering herself as a human sacrifice. Hazel tried to intervene, but they both ended up dead as a result, which landed them in—
The Fields of Asphodel
Nico found Hazel in this Purgatory-esque part of the Underworld so many years later, on his search for Bianca. Although he was heartbroken to lose Bianca, he turned to his newly discovered half-sister, bringing Hazel back with him to the mortal world. Hazel was initially suspicious and insecure, but the two eventually found their footing. And in any case, whatever concerns she might’ve had about whether she could live up to Bianca’s ideal of sisterhood were just one part of all she had going on. With frequent blackouts and visions of her harrowing Underworld past, she had a lot to process.
Where children of the god of the Underworld are concerned, we suppose it’s unsurprising to find plenty of death, trauma, and emotional upheaval. But we’re moved by the depth of feelings, the sacrifices, and the connections between them. These are the kind of siblings we should all try to be, in spite of curses, monsters, or even differences of opinion.
Unless that difference of opinion is whether we should wear more black. Just trust Nico on that one. He’s right.