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Cassius au Bellona Character Guide

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Cassius au Bellona pixel art

Character guide · first on-page appearance: Red Rising

Who is Cassius au Bellona?

Cassius au Bellona comes from one of the Society’s most powerful military families. Darrow meets him during the Institute tests and finds him friendly, confident and comfortable among the other candidates. Cassius enters House Mars with his brother Julian, expecting to make his family proud.

He becomes one of Darrow’s closest friends without knowing Darrow killed Julian in the Passage. His search for his brother’s killer eventually turns that friendship into a blood feud.

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Appearance and personality

Cassius has the charm and confidence of someone raised to become a Gold leader. He welcomes Darrow and calls out Antonia for being rude. He also takes his privileges for granted. His casual story about a HighRed servant shows Darrow how little he understands the lives of the people beneath him.

Cassius is proud of his family and his skill, and takes humiliation hard. At the Institute, he calls Darrow his brother while grieving Julian. He grows close to Quinn and tries to rescue her through a formal challenge. When he discovers that Darrow killed Julian and let him blame Titus, their friendship makes the deception even worse.[1]

At the gala, Cassius wears the sun emblem of the Morning Knight. Darrow cuts off his sword arm during their duel. It is later replaced, allowing him to fight again.[2]

Cassius later drops the Gold honorific au and asks Matteo to call him Cassius Bellona. He accepts appointment as the Republic’s Morning Knight, taking up the title he once held under Octavia in service of the government that replaced her.[3]

Attributes and abilities

Cassius is a trained swordsman before entering the Institute. He teaches Darrow straight-blade fighting and Kravat, using leverage to disable an opponent. He defeats both Titus and Darrow, showing how much Darrow still has to learn despite his carved body.

Cassius’s confidence in formal combat can work against him. His attempt to rescue Quinn through an honorable challenge ends in a beating. He has to accept Darrow’s use of deception and surprise.[4]

On Io, Cassius defeats a succession of Raa challengers while Dido keeps the feud going. Each duel leaves him more wounded and exhausted. Lysander reveals his identity to stop the killing before Cassius can be finished off.[5]

Daily training lets Cassius diagnose the habits that have weakened Darrow’s technique. He distinguishes the familiar Willow Way from what Darrow now needs against opponents who have studied it. His advice during the Fá fight addresses specific equipment and terrain: heavy armor, the overhead dome and the danger of entangling a razor whip in the warsaw.

Atlas cuts off Cassius’s right hand, but Cassius continues left-handed and wins the duel. He pins Atlas’s weapon and puts his razor around his neck. Lysander then shoots Atlas dead.[6]

History

Book 1

Red Rising

Cassius survives the Passage, then discovers that Julian has not returned. He demands that the survivors name their victims, while Darrow conceals his role. In House Mars, Cassius and Darrow gather supplies, fight together and develop a friendship that Cassius describes as brotherhood.

Titus’s rule makes Quinn a captive and drives the allies from the castle. Cassius’s failed challenge leads him to accept Darrow’s less conventional plan. After Titus is captured, Cassius kills him while wrongly believing he is avenging Julian, a belief Darrow has encouraged.

Lilath’s package eventually gives Cassius the truth through a recording of the Passage. He recognizes both the killing and the sustained deception, defeats Darrow in a private duel and leaves him wounded. Darrow survives and ultimately wins the Institute. Cassius yields Mars’s standard and Primus badge but declares a blood feud, carrying the personal betrayal into the families’ wider conflict.[7]

Book 2

Golden Son

Cassius becomes the Morning Knight and attends the gala with Mustang. He expects to retain technical superiority over Darrow, but the duel exposes Darrow’s hidden instruction under Lorn. Cassius loses his sword arm, and Mustang prevents Darrow from killing him.

After recovering, Cassius continues serving Octavia. He hears that members of his family have been killed during the fall of Mars. At the Triumph, he stands beside Aja and accuses Darrow of murdering the Bellonas, including children. He believes Darrow is responsible, though he has been deceived about who ordered the killings.[8]

Book 3

Morning Star

Cassius visits Darrow in captivity with Aja and Adrius. When the others deny Darrow a blanket, Cassius covers him with his cloak. He still serves Octavia and still expresses contempt for Reds.

The confrontation in the northern mountains leaves Cassius defeated and wounded by Mustang’s arrow. As a prisoner he supplies information about stolen nuclear weapons, attends Roque’s funeral and speaks privately with Darrow. Sevro’s public forgiveness and Darrow’s evidence that Octavia ordered the Bellona massacre open a route beyond the feud.

Cassius joins the secret plan to get inside Octavia’s bunker. His apparent killing of Sevro is staged using false ammunition and a drug-induced coma. Cutting off Darrow’s hand, as Adrius demands, is real. Once inside, he turns on the guards and helps fight Aja, choosing to help build the world Darrow and Mustang have offered.

Cassius declines a role in the Republic’s justice system and takes Lysander away to raise him. Before leaving, he returns Julian’s ring to Darrow.[9]

Book 4

Iron Gold

For ten years, Cassius lives aboard the Archimedes with Lysander and Pytha. He teaches the boy and tries to protect people without ruling them. Rescuing survivors brings them into contact with Seraphina and draws them into Rim politics despite his attempts to remain anonymous.

At Io, the disguised Cassius refuses to surrender evidence that could provoke another war. Once exposed, he faces successive members of the Raa family in duels that Dido refuses to end. Lysander reveals his own identity to stop the immediate killing, undermining Cassius’s decision to withhold the evidence.

Lysander is later told Cassius died of blood loss and that his body was taken to be desecrated. He is not allowed to see it. His death remains unconfirmed at the end of Iron Gold.[10]

Book 5

Dark Age

Lysander continues to believe Cassius is dead while entering the Society’s war. The final Mercury chapters overturn that belief: Cassius arrives alive aboard the upgraded Archimedes and rescues Darrow’s remaining command. Kavax sent him to attempt the extraction.

Virginia learns that one of Romulus’s sons hid Cassius in the Rim. Dark Age does not reveal the full story of his escape or where he takes Darrow after Mercury.[11]

Book 6

Light Bringer

Cassius explains that Diomedes hid him after the duels and Aurae helped him escape. He commits to rescuing Sevro, acknowledging that his years away also allowed him to avoid guilt over Fitchner. After the dockyard mission, he trains Darrow and gradually finds a place among people who had once treated him chiefly as an enemy.

He befriends Lyria and refuses to abandon captive children in the Rim, even when rescue endangers the mission. His bond with Darrow becomes explicitly brotherly, while his hope that Lysander can still choose well remains vulnerable.

After hearing the shrine negotiations, Cassius reaches Lysander aboard Lightbringer with Pytha’s help. He apologizes for treating the boy as a replacement for Julian and then withdrawing in guilt. Together they prepare to remove Atlas and Rhone. Cassius defeats Atlas despite losing his right hand; Lysander kills the defeated man before he can disclose more about Eidmi, the Color-targeting biological weapon.

Lysander then admits that he wants the weapon for his own sovereignty. Cassius refuses to leave it with him and advances through his gunfire. He dies within reach of the young man he raised. Lysander displays the mutilated body and falsely calls him an assassin. Pytha later brings his remains to his friends, and Sevro places Fitchner’s recovered helmet in his coffin.[12]

Relationships

Darrow

Cassius loves Darrow as a friend while Darrow hides the truth about Julian. The Passage recording reveals both the killing and how long Darrow allowed him to blame someone else.[13]

They begin speaking again while Cassius is a prisoner. Mourning Roque together and learning that Octavia ordered the Bellona massacre help him reconsider his allegiance. He agrees to work with Darrow despite their history.[14]

Training together gives them time to recover their friendship. Darrow calls Cassius his brother, and Cassius tells him how much it means to feel that he belongs.[15]

Lysander au Lune

Cassius takes Lysander away after Octavia’s death, hoping to raise him free of her plans for him.[16]

Cassius loves Lysander, but they disagree about the Society and who deserves protection. He wants to rescue lowColors and prevent another war. Lysander repeatedly makes choices that work against those aims.[17]

Cassius admits that he treated Lysander as a replacement for Julian and sometimes withdrew from him in shame. He hopes the apology will help them reconnect. When Lysander chooses to keep Eidmi, Cassius refuses to leave the weapon with him, even at the cost of his own life.[18]

Sevro

Sevro hates Cassius for his part in Fitchner’s death. He nevertheless stops the revenge killings in the hangar and publicly forgives him.[19]

They continue clashing aboard the Archimedes, but begin to care for each other through shared rescues and small acts of kindness. Sevro places Fitchner’s helmet in Cassius’s coffin after his death.[20]

Lyria

Cassius welcomes Lyria aboard the Archimedes. As a Gamma, she knows what it means to be judged for the group she belongs to. She judges him by what he does now. He becomes protective of her while respecting her wish to help.[21]

Aurae

Aurae helps Cassius escape the Rim. He falls in love with her, though she does not return his feelings. Discovering that she is also carrying out Athena’s mission hurts him. After his death, she tells Darrow how much being accepted as his brother meant to Cassius.[22]

References

  1. Red Rising, chapters 15, 18–26, 29–33. ↩
  2. Golden Son, chapters 11–15, 32. ↩
  3. Light Bringer, chapters 4, 35, 37. ↩
  4. Red Rising, chapters 21–22, 25–26, 29–33. ↩
  5. Iron Gold, chapters 40–41. ↩
  6. Light Bringer, chapters 11, 37, 72, 84. ↩
  7. Red Rising, chapters 15–33, 43–44. ↩
  8. Golden Son, chapters 11–15, 24, 32, 37–43, 51. ↩
  9. Morning Star, chapters 2, 6, 29–31, 37, 50, 54, 57–65. ↩
  10. Iron Gold, chapters 8–9, 15, 22–26, 32, 37–41, 48. ↩
  11. Dark Age, chapters 2–8, 86–89, 91. ↩
  12. Light Bringer, chapters 2–11, 35–42, 48–62, 72–89. ↩
  13. Red Rising, chapters 20–33. ↩
  14. Morning Star, chapters 37, 50, 57–65. ↩
  15. Light Bringer, chapters 37–42, 77–78, 89. ↩
  16. Morning Star, chapters 65. ↩
  17. Iron Gold, chapters 8–15, 37–41, 48. ↩
  18. Light Bringer, chapters 83–84. ↩
  19. Morning Star, chapters 9, 54. ↩
  20. Light Bringer, chapters 48, 52, 56, 62, 89. ↩
  21. Light Bringer, chapters 42, 48, 58, 65–66. ↩
  22. Light Bringer, chapters 2–4, 11, 89. ↩