Eh, so he's descended from Zeus, big deal, so are lots of people.
Boy: Are the stories about you true? They say your mother is an immortal goddess. They say you can’t be killed.
Achilles: I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then, would I?
Achilles: I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then, would I?
— Troy
One or more of a character's parents is a god, an angel, or devil. Usually, if a character has Divine Parentage, then so will other characters in the setting.
Divine Parentage is important because the divinity is often hereditary, usually in an All Genes Are Codominant way. Thus, someone with Divine Parentage can do things people who are fully mortal cannot.
If the divine side is dominant or prominent, then you tend to get a demigod.
The trope is Older Than Dirt. Many of the examples are related to mythology, and myths have many examples. Some of the more modern examples are retellings of ancient myths.
Related to Half-Human Hybrid. After all, these characters are half-human, half-god - but since the gods are usually thought of as looking completely human, the "different species" issue doesn't tend to come up.
A step above a Heroic Lineage, which is perhaps somewhat ironic since 'hero' was originally the ancient Greek word for examples of this trope (and in Greek myth, due to how much the gods screw around, many heroic lineages can be traced to the gods, heck Zeus is Heracles' divine parent and great-great grandfather).
May be the end result of a Divine Date. A character discovering this parentage may experience a Really Royalty Reveal (with divinity instead of royalty). This is also naturally a source of Divine Parental Issues.
Compare Our Ancestors Are Superheroes and Semi-Divine, and contrast Deity of Human Origin. See also Nephilim, which are often portrayed as angel hybrids.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Blue Exorcist focuses on the twin sons of Satan; at the beginning of the series, one knows the truth but has no powers while the other is in the dark but has abilities that he doesn't know about.
- Duranki: Usum was created by gods, but if Usum counts as such confuses spirits.
Comic Books
- Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child: The titular character is the daughter of Vodou deity Kalfu.
- Fables: Bigby is the son of The North Wind. He has powers over the weather as well some measure of immortality.
- Hercules: Ares is an Anti-Hero with a beloved half-human son named Alexander, who is eventually upgraded to the (heroic) God of Fear.
- The Sandman (1989): The Endless are not mere gods, but Anthropomorphic Personifications of universal constants. They still procreate with lesser entities on occasion though.
- Orpheus, the hero from Greek Mythology, was the son of Dream and a nymph. Aside from being a supreme bard his head remained alive for millennia after he was torn to pieces.
- Desire raped and impregnated Unity, the woman who was originally destined to become the Dream Vortex but went into a coma when Dream was imprisoned, as part of a scheme to make Dream shed family blood when their granddaughter Rose became the Dream Vortex (who Dream has to kill to preserve the universe) instead.
- Spider-Man: Tess Black, who appeared briefly in The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) #503-504, is the daughter of the Norse god Loki and a human woman, something she is unaware of.
- Superboy (1994): King Shark claims to be a demigod that came to existence through magical means and is the Shark-God's son. His origin was disputed as being the result of mutation, until it was confirmed in Aquaman that he is indeed divine in nature.
- Teen Titans:
- Raven is the daughter of the demon Trigon and a human woman, something that causes her considerable angst.
- Lilith Clay was revealed to be the daughter of Thia, a Titan of Myth who plotted to overthrow the gods of Olympus. Following the first reboot of the DC universe, this origin was erased.
- Wonder Woman:
- In some continuities Hippolyta is eventually confirmed to retain her mythological parentage of Ares (Olympian) and Otrera (human) making Diana the granddaughter of Ares and great-granddaughter of Zeus.
- Wonder Woman (1942): According to Ares when he granted her powers, Helena Alexandros was a descendant on her mother Leda’s side from Helen of Sparta, daughter of Zeus and Leda, aka the same Helen of Troy from which she was named, giving her some degree of divine blood.
- In the Post-Crisis continuity, Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark is the daughter of Zeus and an archaeologist named Helena Sandsmark.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Two of Wonder Woman's biggest foes, Circe and Ares, had a daughter named Lyta together.
- Wonder Woman: Warbringer: The Warbringer bloodline are those who are descended from Helen of Troy, and inherited the curse of inciting war from her.
- In the New 52's Wonder Woman (2011), it's Wonder Woman who's Zeus' kidnote while Cassie's father is Lennox, a different child of Zeus.
Fan Works
- Alicorn: Rainbow Dash is the daughter of an unnamed earth pony father and Celestia, an alicorn Physical God of the sun. She's not particularily thrilled about who her mother is. It later turns out that Celestia and Luna are themselves a result of this, being born of an alicorn mother and a pegasus father.
- The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle: It's revealed that Blueblood is descended from children produced with Celestia's second husband. Not that it saves him when he's found guilty of engineering the assassination of Twilight Sparkle.
- Child of the Storm: The premise of the story is that James Potter was Thor having a first shot at this humility thing and therefore, Harry Potter is in fact Harry Thorson.
- Crossover Chaos: The entire Colmare family is descended from Xedra, the being that made the very first omniverse. Why is this important? Because it's been revealed that Herobrine, Kyle, Luke, Lindsay and Jamie are all related by blood to xem!
- Crucible (Mass Effect):
- There are four Turian clans of the North (one of which was the Vakarians) descended from the 4 sons of a turian named Makerm and Herz, a reincarnation of a star which basically made her a living goddess.
- In the present, the only person with a direct god-parent was Jane Shepard whose father was Sam Shepard/Lord Samikis, one of the many forms of the bare-faced turian who was viewed as some kind of a disaster god by the North. He was actually Death. Evidently, Shepard inherited not only her dad's physical traits but also some of his otherworldly powers too.
- The Heart Trilogy: Fankil, the main antagonist of the series, is the son of Morgoth himself, and his goal is to release the first Dark Lord from the void so that he can take over the world.
- Perfect Diamond World: Anna and Elsa (as well as Iris and her Anna) are demi-gods. Elsa's father and Iris' mother are gods cursed to live as mortals after falling in love despite being siblings. The siblings were forced into alternate universes but they had identical children, with the exception of Iris (birth name "Elsa" as well) having black hair instead of platinum blonde.
- Pony POV Series:
- Cupid was the demi-Alicorn son of the love goddess Venus and her mortal lover Mars. Unfortunately, he was eventually killed with the Concept Killing Spear and erased from existence by the Nameless Filly, who decided to vent her failed romantic relationships (some which were her own fault) on an innocent demigod.
- Lovestruck is Cupid's G3 incarnation's Reincarnation and as a result eventually merges with Cupid's Shadow of Existence and becomes a demi-goddess herself. She's technically only this trope by adoption, as Venus is only her adopted mother, not her biological one. Though it retroactively makes her daughter Heartthrob 1/4 god.
- Celestia's sister Galaxia had a mortal lover during her time on Equus, though their child is never focused on except as Blueblood's ancestor, making him an extremely diluted case of this trope.
- Fluttercruel is Discord's daughter and an accidental Child by Rape with Fluttershy (Mind Rape to be specific, as she has no physical body of her own and was born directly from Discord's brainwashing of Fluttershy). Even Discord has no idea how he did that. While at first her Draconequi aspects are minor, she eventually becomes a full Demi-Draconequus during Rumors.
- Queen of Shadows: The mother of the Shadowkhan, Kagehime, is said to have been the daughter of the goddess Izanami and the Lord of the Underworld. As such, Kagehime's direct descendants, the Queens of the Shadowkhan, are treated by the rest of the race as semi-divine.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act II: Kurumu's Disappeared Dad is revealed to be none other than the Lord of Hell himself.
- Seven Days Survivor: Discussed; one character points out that this is a very real possibility given the setting, and that several characters — including themselves — could be descended from these types of people. It causes the protagonist to have a minor Heroic BSoD.
- The Stronger Evil: It's established that the mother of the eight Demon Sorcerers is Tiamat, the goddess of oceans and chaos from Babylonian mythology. Their father was Typhon, a monster of divine origin from Greek mythology.
- The Wizard in the Shadows: Emrys and Eirian are the grandchildren of Merlin, who is the son of a mortal woman and a Maia, an Angel.
Films — Live-Action
- In the 1998 film adaptation of The Ring, it is all but outright said that Sadako is the product of an affair between her mother and a sea god, rather than Dr. Ikuma’s daughter—her mother loved the ocean and would spend long nights on the beach talking to the waves, and eventually someone in there talked back. This explains why she’s so much stronger than ordinary human psychics, and also why she didn’t drown to death in the well.
- Perhaps the most famous examples in cinema are found in Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker is half-divine, being the child of a human mother and the Force itself (which, yes, does make Anakin's a virgin birth). As a result, his children by Padmé Amidala, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, are one-quarter divine; and their children (Jacen, Jaina, Anakin Solo and Ben Skywalker in Star Wars Legends, Ben Solo in Disney's Sequel Trilogy) are one-eighth divine. This is the main reason for the family's uncanny affinity for the Force, particularly in Anakin and Luke's cases.
- Wonder Woman: Much like the New 52 comics, Diana is the daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta. Though, in this adaptation, her conception was on purpose — after Ares killed the rest of the Greek Pantheon, a dying Zeus severely injured him in retaliation. However, Zeus knew that Ares would one day return, and also knew that no one would be able to stop him. Only a god can kill another god, and Zeus was not long for this world — hence, Diana.
Literature
- In American Gods Mr. Wednesday tells Shadow that while it used to be common for gods to sire children on mortals, the lack of faith nowadays means that he and most of the others are shooting blanks. Though there are some exceptional circumstances where it's possible, foreshadowing that Shadow is Wednesday/Odin's son.
- In the first Artemis Fowl, the Classical love deity Eros is referenced as being Holly Short's great-grandfather, resulting in her "plump and cherubic" lips. What exactly this means, and whether this implies that deities exist within the Fowlverse, remains unclear.
- In the Book of Swords, Mark and Ariane are both children of the Emperor, who is really God.
- The Camp Half-Blood Series: The whole point of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and its first sequel series The Heroes of Olympus — the gods of Greco-Roman mythology have continued their dalliances with mortals into the modern day, and there's a whole summer camp's worth of "half-bloods" related to the various deities. Percy himself is the demigod son of Poseidon. Its second sequel series, The Trials of Apollo, instead focuses on Apollo earning his godhood back after being turned human following the events of the previous series.
- In Creatures of Light and Darkness, Set is both father and son to Thoth (and vice versa, of course), and Horus is the son of Osiris. The latter is a canon relationship in Egyptian Mythology.
- Discworld:
- Susan Sto Helit is Death's granddaughter. By adoption. She can still walk through walls. Don't ask.
- Susan briefly compares her situation with that of a classmate, whose great-grandfather was the god Blind Io, making her a hemi-semi-demigoddess. This doesn't seem to come with any powers, but apparently has enough prestige to get a good table at restaurants.
- Yet another: Lobsang Ludd (and his kind-of brother) is the son of Time.
- Dragaera has Easterners and Dragaerans, with both calling themselves "human". It's later revealed that both are descended, as such, from an original race of humans, and the differences are due to some experiments and modifications. Aliera e'Kieron happens to have a goddess as a mother, in this life (reincarnation exists, and she remembers at least some of her past lives).
- In the fourth book of The Immortals by Tamora Pierce, we learn that Daine's father is the God of the Hunt, and her mother was elevated to a goddess of childbirth after death. Both of them are relatively minor gods compared to the like of Mithros and the Great Mother, though.
- Inkmistress:
- Asra's father turns out to be a god who'd been the lover of her mortal mother. It's later revealed her mother was actually the god, and her father the mortal.
- Hal it turns out is the son of the wind god.
- In "Iron Shadows in the Moon" Olivia dreams of a godlike being arriving to where a partly human, partly godlike being was tortured to death, and turning the torturers to stone.
"The youth they tortured was like the tall man who came?" he asked at last.
"As like as son to father," she answered, and hesitantly: "If the mind could conceive of the offspring of a union of divinity with humanity, it would picture that youth. The gods of old times mated sometimes with mortal women, our legends tell us." - Downplayed in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?. In the fifth novel (animated as S1E13), Hermes mentions "Zeus' grandson" as he watches Bell defeat the Goliath, implying that Bell's grandfather was actually the most powerful deity in their world. In the light novels, however, it was noted that Zeus is only his adopted grandfather, and he is as much a human as everyone else. This explains why he was raised to be a Harem Seeker, since Zeus is infamous for sleeping with everybody.
- Legends of Ithyria: Mardyth turns out to be pregnant from Ulrike, the God of Evil she serves.
- Lords of Dragon Keep: Aaron and the other champions turn out to be distantly related to Perun during his various incursions to Earth. It turned out that Perun was a WW2 Polish pilot who slept with Aaron's great-grandmother after the Battle of Britain.
- The entire plot of the novel Oh My Gods! takes place on a Greek island at a private school for the descendants of gods, and almost every character is one.
- A Piece in the Game of Gods: As revealed in Part 37, Demi-god is a possible state for certain characters to be, and gives people divine power, possibly without technically needing to be related.
- The Scar Night series is awash with angels and gods descended from gods.
- In Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson, Makeda and her twin sister Abby are both children of a god by a mortal woman, but Makeda, unlike her sister, didn't end up with any divine powers at all.
- In The Sun Sword, the god-born — people with one mortal, one divine parent — are semi-common. They have Supernatural Gold Eyes, general superhuman physical and mental abilities, and usually some magic related to their divine parent's portfolio. Most importantly, the Two Kings of the Essilyan Empire are god-born (one is the son of the god of wisdom, the other the son of the god of justice), and more ominously, Kiriel, one of the main protagonists, is the daughter of Big Bad and God of Evil Allasakar, with her heritage being a focal point of the Myth Arc.
- Tolkien's Legendarium: In The Silmarillion, Lúthien is the daughter of the Elven-king Thingol and Melian the Maia (a class of divine being roughly equivalent to a demigod or an angel). Lúthien often displays flashes of remarkable power as a sign of her heritage.
- In The Vampire Diaries, Elena Gilbert is half angel or Guardian from her mother's side, who was also a Guardian.
- The main plot of Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure involves Apollo somehow resurrecting Zeus via one of Zeus' mortal children. The problem lies in finding out just who it is.
Live-Action TV
- Ling'er and her mother Qing from Chinese Paladin are descendants of the goddess Nuwa, as is their ancestress, Zixuan from the prequel series.
- Cady from Reaper might be the devil's daughter. And Sam might be the devil's son. Though, even if the man who raised him turns out to be his real father, this trope might still apply...
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996): This isn't true for Sabrina's parents, but her cousin Pele is the Hawaiian Goddess of Fire.
- Adria in Stargate SG-1 is the daughter of Vala Mal Doran and the Ori.
Music
- The lead character of !HERO: The Rock Opera. Given that it's the story of Jesus with a Setting Update, and that Michael Tait is playing the lead character, he is also given a Divine Race Lift.
Myths & Religion
- The Bible: Jesus is the son of God and a human named Mary, conceived via divine intervention. However, Christianity holds that he is not half-god and half-human, but fully divine and human simultaneously. Yes, it's weird and everyone knows it; the seeming contradiction is why certain early church heresies that said that Jesus was either not fully God (Arianism, which said he was a lesser divinity to the Father) or not really human (Docetism, where his mortal form was an illusion). TV Tropes, not being composed of religious scholars or theologians, will not be elaborating further.
- Classical Mythology: It would be easier to list the mortal heroes for whom this doesn't apply.
- Herakles, Perseus, Helen of Troy and many other classical figures were children of Zeus. Sometimes, in fact, Zeus would seduce a woman who was already a distant descendant of his through a previous affair. He sure got around. (the page image is from Disney's Hercules which twists the trope a bit: in the myth, Herc's mother is a mortal, Alcmene; in the movie, he's the son of Zeus' wife Hera, but becomes a demigod after being Brought Down to Normal)
- Zeus had more than anybody else, but there were other gods and goddesses who got in on the mortal action. Virtually every Greek hero is this trope in some way.
- Countless heroes of The Trojan War, according to the stories.
- A number of Roman gentes (clans) claimed a divine ancestor. The one with the most prestigious ancestors were the gens Julia (Julius Caesar's one) and the gentes Romilia and Remmia: both claimed descendance from Venus through Trojan War hero and Rome's forefather Aeneas, the Julii through his elder son Ascanius (something Caesar wouldn't stop bragging about. The family name derives from Ascanius' other name, Julus) and the Romilii and Remmii through his younger son Silvius, with the Romilii and Remmii claiming another divine ancestor in Mars through Romulus and Remus.
- Gilgamesh was 2/3 god, since the Babylonians believed that if two men had sex with a woman and she got pregnant, both were the father. Gilgamesh was the product of such a threesome.
- In some versions of the story, Merlin's father was an incubus or even the Devil himself, trying to conceive the Antichrist. He wound up an Anti-Anti-Christ since his pious mother had him baptized right after birth.
- And in some versions of Irish Mythology, Cu Chulainn was the son of The Ace god Lugh.
- According to Japanese Mythology, the Japanese imperial line was founded by Emperor Jimmu, who was the great-great-grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu. As a result, Japanese emperors are traditionally held to be descendants of the goddess.note
- It was common for nobles in parts of Europe to claim Odin as their ancestor long after the Christian era. The attitude of The Government usually seems to have been, "If you keep peace on your estate and show up for battle when the king needs you, your ancestor can be whomever you want him to be."
- Mara (basically the Buddhist devil) the King of Demons is the son of a human woman raped by a Deva.
Roleplay
- In The Gamer's Alliance, the Andain have a human and a god as parents. The most famous Andain have been Kagetsu I, Leon, Pooka and Taliesin.
Tabletop Games
- Plentiful in Dungeons & Dragons. Not only do deities sometimes dally with mortals to produce demigods, other creatures from beyond the Material Plane can produce half-celestial or half-fiendish offspring, the descendants of which will exhibit signs of their supernatural heritage. These "planetouched" are viable player races, and each has their own traits and abilities based on their ancestry. Or you could abuse D&D's template system and create a character that has celestial, fiendish, and dragon blood in their veins.
- Aasimar have an ancestor from the Upper Planes, and thus tend to be considered beautiful by mortal standards, and are typically passionate about opposing evil. This makes the rare "fallen aasimar" all the more dangerous.
- The immediate spawn of a fiend and mortal is a monstrous cambion, while their descendants are known as tieflings, who have one or more fiendish traits like glowing eyes, horns, tails, cloven hooves for feet, etc., which only makes life more difficult for non-evil tieflings. There are also specific fiendblooded variants for non-human races: fey'ri (elves), maeluths (dwarves), tanarukks (orcs), and wisplings (halflings).
- Axani and zenythri have a touch of pure Law in their blood, which manifests in perfect (perhaps too perfect) features with a metallic, purple or bluish tint to their skin. Mechanatrices are specifically descended from the clockwork beings of Mechanus, and thus have one or more inorganic features like a mechanical limb or metal hair.
- Chaonds are the descendants of someone who survived a slaad's reproduction attempt, but had their bloodline tainted with raw Chaos in the process. They have a crude, blocky, disheveled appearance, and a skin or eye color that shifts at random.
- Genasi are descended from either an elemental or genie from one of the Inner Planes, and thus have a strong connection to one of the classical elements (or multiple elements, in the case of "paraelemental" genasi). They commonly bear mutations based on their elemental ancestor: hair that constantly shifts in a light breeze, clammy flesh, gemstone eyes, a clnging smell of smoke, and so forth. Mephlings are similar, just Small-sized.
- Shyfts are humanoids descended from a creature from the Ethereal Plane, and tend to look supernaturally unremarkable. Shadowswyfts meanwhile have an ancestor from the Plane of Shadow, and thus have dark skin and utterly black eyes, as well as a sensitivity to sunlight.
- Exalted: Gods, Spirits, Demons, Fae, Ghosts and the Celestial Exalted (about anyone with essence 4 or more) can bear or sire children, who inherit some of that power. One of the canonical examples includes a woman being impregnated by an earth spirit through an earthquake. The God/Ghost/Demon/Fae-blooded people are a few large steps above mortals, but they still don't have a chance against Exalted. Their parents have considerable difficulty with the Exalted as well...
- RuneQuest: Real or claimed descent from deities is common. Several notable heroes claim such — the legendary Arkat, for instance, is said to have been a son of Humakt, the god of war and death. On a broader scale, some societies claim distant and diluted ancestry from gods. The Orlanthi, for instance, claim to be literally descended from their storm god through his various demigod children; the clans of the Vingkotlings of the greater Dragon Pass area, for instance, each trace their descent to Orlanth's demigod son Vingkot and the two land goddesses he took to wife. Other tribes trace descent to another of Orlanth's sons, the farmer god Barntar, and his wife the hearth goddess. Minotaurs likewise claim descent from the demigod children of Storm Bull, the bull or bull-headed god of fury and war, and Eiritha, the mother of all hooved and horned stock.
- Scion: The game's premise is that your character just got a visit from their divine parent telling them it's time to get active.
- Warhammer:
- Dreadfleet: It's rumoured by her peers that Aranessa Saltspite, the Captain of the Swordfysh, is the daughter of the sea god Manann. While there is no concrete proof, the mermaid-like mutations that she was born with and her being raised by sea-nymphs does lend credence to these rumours. In-game, this parentage is represented by the Blessed by Manann special rule that grants Aranessa multiple re-rolls during a game.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The superhuman Primarchs from were created by the Emperor of Mankindnote using his own DNA, but weren't conceived in the normal way. How they were created is question with no clear answer, though.
- In some older versions of the background material, the setting's version of The Illuminati claim that the God-Emperor had actual biological children, called Sensei, and that they are equivalent to the shards of the C'tan Star-gods or the Avatars of the Aeldari god Khaine and will eventually merge with the Emperor once he reincarnates as a Star Child. The Inquisition, meanwhile, believe that they're heretical revolutionaries who need to be destroyed.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: According to some myths, the Menogoths, one of the Empire's founding tribes, descended from the children of the mother goddess Rhya and a mortal man.
Theater
- In The Ring of the Nibelung, Siegmund and Sieglinde's father, whom they know as Wälse, is actually the god Wotan, though they never realize it.
Video Games
- The player character from the Baldur's Gate series is revealed to be the offspring of Bhaal, the god of murder. Big Bad Sarevok from part 1, the PC's childhood friend Imoen, the five main antagonists of Throne of Bhaal, Orin and The Dark Urge are as well.
- In Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, it's said that the Shining Lady, leader of the "crusade" now seeming to threaten Baldur's Gate, is the child of a god. At first, that's implied to mean she's a Bhaalspawn, like the player character. However, she is actually an aasimar, a distant descendant of good celestial beings. The Big Bad needs divine blood to open a portal from Hell, and the fact that hers isn't strong enough is a plot point.
- Black & White 2: In one Sidequest, a man claims that his daughter was impregnated by the town's Patron God. This is news to you, the god in question. You can either expose the real (human) father or let the lie stand and have the supposed demigod raised as a heroic warrior.
- In Dark Souls, the Primordial Serpent Kaathe claims that the Chosen Undead is a descendant of the Furtive Pygmy and the inheritor of the Dark Soul, the fourth Lord Soul, and the one destined to end the Age of Fire and usher in the Age of Dark as the Dark Lord.
- Devil May Cry: Dante and his brother Vergil are both the sons of a human woman and a devil named Sparda, who rebelled against his own kind and sealed them away. In the reboot, they are instead the sons of a devil and an angel.
- Diablo:
- The Nephalem were the ancestors of the humans of Sanctuary, born from the union of renegade angels and demons, but who were weakened into their current human state by the Worldstone when Inarius got frightened by how powerful the Nephalem were. With the Worldstone destroyed, humanity is beginning to get its former power back, and the Player Character of Diablo III is among the first of the new Nephalem.
- Leah is the daughter of the witch Adria and the Dark Wanderer, a.k.a. Aidan from Diablo (1997), who became possessed by Diablo after sticking his soulstone into his own head. The magical power she wields comes direct from the Big D himself, and she is eventually used by Adria with the Black Soulstone to bring about Diablo's rebirth as the Prime Evil, the sum total of all seven Great Evils in one being.
- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has the Demigod as one of its many races. They have poor aptitudes (how much exp it takes to level skills) all across the board, gain experience slower and can't worship any gods, making them a challenge race despite their great stats.
- The Elder Scrolls
- All of the recognized Cyrodiilic Emperors of Tamriel (the Alessian, Reman, and Septim dynasties) claim this from Akatosh, the draconic God of Time and chief deity of the Eight (later Nine) Divines pantheon, in the metaphysical sense (imbued with "Dragon Blood"), dating back to Akatosh's covenant with St. Alessia, founder of the First Empire. In addition to the patronage of the Divines for the Empire, these Emperors serve as Barrier Maidens, sealing and protecting Mundus (the mortal plane) from Oblivion.
- The series' dragons are the "children" of Akatosh and/or, according to some theories, fragments of his very being. This would also include those who are Dragonborn, mortals gifted by Akatosh with the immortal soul of a dragon, who are to serve as natural predators to dragons. Like the dragons, the Dragonborn possess instinctive knowledge of the draconic Language of Magic and can use the Thu'um. The "Last Dragonborn" is one such example.
- The Nords still refer to themselves as the sons and daughters of Kyne (the old Nordic aspect of Kynareth, the Divine Goddess of the Air and Heavens), who in their old religious tradition "breathed" them into life by exhaling on the Throat of the World.
- In the Yokudan/Redguard religious tradition, Zeht (their aspect of Zenithar, the Aedric Divine God of Work and Commerce) was the God of Agriculture and the son of Ruptga, the "Tall Papa" and their Top God. Following the creation of the world, Zeht renounced Ruptga, which is why Ruptga makes it "so hard to grow food".
- Demiprinces are a form of lesser Daedra born from the union of a Daedra and a mortal. Their dual nature gives them an odd perception of the world and time itself.
- Umaril the Unfeathered, the Ayleid sorcerer-king who ruled the Ayleid Empire during the Alessian Revolt, claimed that his father was the "God of the World-River" from the previous kalpa, or cycle of time. (Umaril would return and serve as the Big Bad of Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion.)
- Eternal Daughter's title protagonist.
- EXTRAPOWER: The truth of Zophy's heritage, alluded to in EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce and later expanded on in EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist. Zophy's distant ancestor is a phoenix, one of the majin who watch the Earth, and possibly the ancient Latour hero Romes. But phoenix ancestry is confirmed when Magma-O informs him of the ancient blood locked away inside him. As a twist, Zophy's divine ancestor is so far back in the past that Zophy is effectively a completely normal human. All of his power and strength comes from a life of disciplined training. But if he agrees to unlock his ancestral blood, he becomes a Flame Warrior, a majin in his own right. That choice is up to the player.
- Fire Emblem usually averts this trope due to being a weird halfway between political High Fantasy and supernatural Low Fantasy, but Corrin and Kana from Fire Emblem Fates in particular are the children and grandchildren respectively of Anankos, the Silent Dragon and a Physical God in his own right. Part of the reason why they can transform into a dragon despite the First Dragons having left this world is because of their direct ancestry from one of the only remaining First Dragons left in the world Fates is set in.
- Kratos, from God of War, is a son of Zeus, as many mythological heroes were in those days. This becomes funny when you meet and slaughter Hercules.
- Story of Seasons occasionally has divine marriage candidates, but their children don't inherit any of their godliness. For example, the Harvest King from Harvest Moon: Animal Parade can fix magical trees, but his kids can't.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Zelda is stated to be the Reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, making her a God in Human Form. This would explain why the ladies of Hyrule's royal family in the rest of the franchise tend to have some sort of Royalty Super Power, and possibly their habit of collecting Magic Music and instruments.
- Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: Taven and Daegon are the sons of the Edenian protector god Argus and the Edenian sorceress, Delia. Rain is their half-brother via Argus and another woman.
- Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: According to Razoff's character bio, he's descended from the goddess Artemis and the biblical figure Nimrod. Doubles as Genius Bonus as both Artemis and Nimrod are associated with hunting, and Razoff himself is a hunter.
- RuneScape:
- Seren, Zaros, and the Mahjarrat consider themselves to be the children of Mah, their creator and one of the Elder Gods. This direct creation made them more powerful than mortals, who were created indirectly by the other Elder Gods, though Seren and Zaros are more powerful still due to having been created before Mah's Mad God nature progressed too far.
- Icthlarin and Amascut are a closer example: despite referring to them as "father" and "mother", they're not the biological children of Tumeken and Elidinis, instead being UpliftedAnimals. However, later lore reveals that the uplift was performed by granting each of them a portion of both of their "parents'" divine power, making them their children in a slightly-more-than-metaphorical sense.
- Lloyd is the son of Kratos in Tales of Symphonia, though possesses nothing that sets him apart from other humans though he does sprout energy wings during the ending for some reason.
- Sanae Kochiya from Touhou Project is the distant descendent of a Shinto goddess, and thus has the power to "create miracles" (which comes less from her ancestry and more from being recognized as a living goddess by the people of Gensokyo). This twist is that Suwako Moriya, Sanae's great-to-the-nth grandmother, is still around, one of the deities Sanae serves as a Miko, lives with Sanae, and is currently taking the form of a little girl with a cute googly-eyed hat. It's thus not uncommon for fan works to depict Sanae as a motherly figure to her own ancestor-deity, though in canon it's suggested that Suwako isn't as childish as she can act.
Visual Novels
- Appears in Fate/stay night as a character's "divinity" rank. Seems to be pointless, until Gilgamesh unveils Enkidu, which is a Variable-Length Chain that grows stronger based on the divinity rank of the person it captures. He uses this to kill a number of should-have-been-challenging-opponents. Characters with Divine Parentage include (in order of original divinty rank): Gilgamesh, a 2/3 deity; Hercules, Cú Chulainn, Caster Medea and Alexander the Great from Fate/Zero (Alexander had historically claimed to be a descendant of Zeus) are all demigods; and lastly Rider Medusa. All but Medusa and Medea are trapped by Enkidu just before dying in at least one route.
- The titular character from Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is descended from celestials on his mother's side and inherited the Eye of Horus from her. He also temporarily grows wings when awakening to his power in the Court of Azathoth.
Webcomics
- The title characters from Bob and George, explaining how they have their powers.
- The Evil from Sluggy Freelance: the off-spring of Satan and a house cat.
- In El Goonish Shive, elves are the offspring of Immortals and humans.
- Some enterprising worshipers in this
(NSFW) Oglaf page try to invoke this:
"When the gods impregnate mortals, we get heroes and messiahs! So we designed these hot prayer positions to tempt the gods down." - The Geisterdamen of Girl Genius believe Agatha is the holy child, daughter of the divine Lucrezia. Whether or not Lucrezia or the Other is actually divine is in question however and most do not consider her/them to be. Of course, they also download Lucrezia's mind into her brain, as she commanded before her disappearance.
- The title character of Nix of Nothing has two mothers. One of them is the local goddess of death. The other is an ordinary wraith.
- In Nixvir, all snowmen consider Lord Nix their father-figure. This is subverted in that they are not actually related to him at all, since they are not biologically reproduced but built, but do not worship their makers. However, there is the fact that Lord Nix gave them life in the first place, so it still counts.
- Slightly Damned: The Twelve Guardians disguise themselves as one of five mortal races to go unnoticed and will sometimes have children with them (usually these descendents share physical characteristics the guardian's mortal form had). It's confirmed that Moonshade and protagonist Rhea Snaketail (who is actually Moonshade's daughter) are both descended from Moku the snake guardian and that should a guardian somehow die one of their bloodline will inherit their power.
- Lan of Public Humiliation is Hades' grandson, which makes him a very powerful necromancer capable of starting a zombie apocalypse on his own, or bringing the dead back as free-willed undead with their original souls and everything, depending on his motivation. In the end of the main comic, Lan ends up succeeding his grandfather as god of the dead.
Web Original
- Gaia Online's deicide storyline indicates that the Gambino family has divine ancestry, and so is under attack by the same forces out to murder the rest of Gaia's sprawling pantheon. This news came a little late for Johnny.
- Insanity Circus:
- Carmilla of the Whateley Universe is the daughter of the demon Gothmog and a woman who it turns out wasn't fully human to start with (she's got some Eldritch Abomination in her family tree, and she is one of those Waites.
Western Animation
- At least three Avatars in Avatar: The Last Airbender are confirmed to have had children and it is likely that many more did as well. Given how the Avatar Cycle has been going on for just shy of 10,000 years by the time of the first episode and that there is no limit as to who they reincarnate as beyond following the elemental order of the cycle, it is likely that just about everybody on the planet can trace their ancestry back to at least one of them. The only time that this actually became relevant to the plot is when Ursa was forced into an Arranged Marriage with Ozai due to being Avatar Roku's granddaughter.
- Hazbin Hotel: Charlie Morningstar is the daughter of none other than Lucifer himself, who downright refers to himself as "nearly a god". Given how he's a Fallen Angel and the king of Hell itself, that's probably not too far off from the truth.
- Justice League greatly implies that Hades is Wonder Woman's father. When she points out that her origin story doesn't allow her to have a father, he resorts to a technicality. Whether or not it's true has been left ambiguous, and when Shayera suggests using the Lasso of Truth find out if he's lying, Wonder Woman rebuffs her, stating that she knows who raised her and what she was raised to do (more or less saying that it doesn't matter in the end).
- Lucy from Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil is, well, the devil's daughter.
- Steven Universe: Steven Quartz Universe is the son of Greg Universe, a human, and Rose Quartz, a Crystal Gem who sacrificed her form so he could exist and allegedly shattered Pink Diamond, one of the four Diamonds in the Great Diamond Authority. In the Season 5 episode "A Single Pale Rose", however, it's revealed that Rose Quartz was none other than Pink Diamond herself, making him a Diamond.
- Raven from Teen Titans (2003) is the daughter of a demon and a human woman.
- Transformers:
- Beast Wars: The depraved and traitorous Predacon scientist Tarantulas may or may not be (it varies by continuity) a creation of Unicron, a giant planet-eating Eldritch Abomination who's the setting's God of Evil/chaos.
- The original Primes, who number 13 or less depending on continuity and may or may not include Optimus Prime and Alpha Trion, are the first creations of Unicron's opponent Primus and are either gods or demigods and possessed incredible abilities and weapons. While all transformers are Primus' creations, the original Primes are emphasized as being somehow different.
- Wakfu
- Sadlygrove's master Goultard is the son of the god Iop, who is also Sadlygrove. He's basically an expy of Hercules.
- By this same token, Flopin and Elely qualify since Sadlygrove is their dad. Elely even starts manifesting some of Iop's power.
