The Red Rising family tree of the Golds and Darrow

Darrow is a Red, a Helldiver in the mines of Lykos on Mars. His father was hanged before the story begins, and Darrow lives under the eye of his uncle Narol.² His wife Eo sings a forbidden song, and Nero au Augustus, the ArchGovernor of Mars, has her hanged for it.²

Darrow is hanged too, but Narol has drugged him so that he survives the rope, and Narol delivers him to the Sons of Ares.² That act of an uncle is the hinge of the Red Rising family tree, because it turns a miner into the man who will join the family that killed his wife. Narol is captured, tortured and executed in Morning Star.⁴

House Andromedus is the one family on the Red Rising family tree with no members but Darrow. The Sons of Ares have a Violet Carver named Mickey carve his body into that of a Gold, train him and teach him Gold ways, and he enters the Institute as Darrow au Andromedus.²

The chart draws Andromedus as a ring without an outline around Darrow from the first position on. It is a name, not a line of descent, and none of the houses he meets knows that the boy of a minor Gold family is a Red. At the end of Red Rising Darrow joins House Augustus as Nero’s Lancer, the servant of the man who hanged Eo.²

Nero au Augustus has three children on the chart. Claudius was his favourite and is dead before the story. Virginia, called Mustang, leads House Minerva at the Institute, and Adrius, called the Jackal, leads House Pluto. In Red Rising Darrow learns that Mustang and the Jackal are twins.²

Golden Son opens the family up. Adrius admits that he paid Karnus au Bellona to kill Claudius, and when Nero disowns him, Adrius executes his own father.³ The red arrows from Adrius to Nero and from Karnus to Claudius show a son who has removed both his brother and his father.

In Morning Star Darrow tears out the Jackal’s tongue, Adrius is publicly executed, and Virginia becomes Sovereign. She then reveals that she secretly bore Darrow a son, Pax.⁴ He stands under the line that joins Darrow and Virginia on the Red Rising family tree.

Cassius au Bellona and his brother Julian enter the Institute with Darrow in House Mars. In the Passage, the trial that opens the Institute, Darrow kills Julian. Cassius becomes his friend, learns the truth, stabs him and leaves him for dead, then swears a blood feud.²

In Golden Son Darrow beats Cassius in a duel at the Summit, and Virginia stops him from killing Cassius.³ Darrow kills Karnus au Bellona when he storms the ship of the Sovereign alone, and Imperator Tiberius au Bellona, the head of the house, is among the many Bellonas who die at the end of the book.³ In Morning Star Darrow reveals that the Jackal, with the knowledge of the Sovereign, was behind that massacre.⁴

The feud ends in Morning Star. Cassius frees Darrow and Virginia, and after the war he adopts Lysander au Lune, the grandson and heir of the Sovereign Octavia au Lune, whom Darrow has stabbed.⁴ The blue ring of the Bellonas is therefore almost empty by the last position of the Red Rising family tree.

Fitchner au Barca is the Proctor of House Mars, and Sevro is his son, a small and savage member of the house who becomes Darrow’s closest friend.² In Golden Son Fitchner reveals that Sevro’s mother, Bryn, was a Red, killed for bearing a son who was half Gold. Fitchner is revealed as Ares, the leader of the rebels, and Darrow later sees his severed head.³

In Morning Star Sevro marries Victra au Julii, who had fought beside Darrow since Golden Son.⁴ Through Bryn, the Barca branch is the one place on the Red Rising family tree where a Red and a Gold are the parents of a child.

A square is a man, a circle is a woman and a cross marks a death. The joined lines over Virginia and Adrius mark them as twins. The novels name no mother for Nero’s children or for the Bellona brothers, so those lines run from the father alone, and Karnus stands in the Bellona ring without a line because this chart does not draw his parents.

Each house has a coloured ring, red for Lykos, gold for Augustus, blue for Bellona, green for Barca and grey for Lune. The dotted lines of kin join Narol to Darrow and Octavia to Lysander, where the novels name the kinship without the people between. The red arrows are killings, and the orange zigzag between Cassius and Darrow turns into friendship at Morning Star.

To build a Red Rising family tree of your own, or to add the books after Morning Star, open the chart in the editor from this page or start from the story charts.