Apollo Archetype #1: The Golden Son
This guy is a little bit of a big deal.
This is the second post in my Apollo series.
The first one is here, and gives you a basic overview of what the Apollo character archetype is all about.
This post is a dive into the Golden Son version of the archetype. Mayhaps it will help you create nuanced characters who are good at (almost) everything.
Spoilers ahead for Suits and The Wolf of Wall Street.
This character is good at just about everything he does.
Like, seriously. How can he be so good-looking, so smart, so popular, and so winning?
How is he so perfect?
It’s because Apollo is highly skilled. He’s naturally talented, but also disciplined enough to practice and hone his skills to perfection (or, as we shall see, almost perfection). Plus, he stays in his lane, so he can put his gifts to their best use. If he’s the football quarterback, he doesn’t suddenly join the basketball team—even if the team captain insults his mother.
He’s good and he knows it. His confidence is reassuring and grounding—even if it does sometimes border on arrogance.
It makes you want to trust him.
And on top of all of this, he’s not shallow. You’d think the guy would be smug. Sometimes he is. But if we get to spend any real time with this version of Apollo, we usually see that there's more to him.
It’s really hard not to like this Apollo character.
He’s got a lot of pressure on him. He works his ass off. His dad is Zeus, after all, and all eyes in the kingdom are watching Apollo, expecting him to take the throne someday. He strives for perfection, and in many people’s eyes, he achieves it.
But not in his father’s.
And not in his own.
Perfection is impossible. That’s part of this character’s tragedy. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much skill he develops and how many awards he racks up, it never seems to be enough.
In some cases, this character doesn’t live up to his potential. He doesn’t ascend to Zeus’s throne. He’s better as a right-hand man. If he’s self-aware, he knows this and he stays in his lane.
He might come from a difficult childhood. Maybe his family was rich as hell, but he was sent to a traumatizing boarding school. Or his father was so strict that he never had an hour of free time to himself.
As is common for Apollo, the Golden Son isn’t typically violent. He doesn’t really like conflict and doesn’t get into physical fights.
But he DOES like competition. Apollo loves to win.
He doesn’t even like being challenged.
In myth, the musician Marsyas challenged Apollo to a musical competition.
Apollo, already annoyed, looked down his nose at the presumptuous little punk and was like, “Are you sure about this? If you lose, I’m going to punish you.”
Marsyas had been playing the harp for a while. He was pretty confident. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“Let’s go, Sun Spot.”
They proceeded to have an epic musical battle. Apollo won, of course. What happened next was what the devil might have done down in Georgia if Johnny had lost that fiddle contest.
Apollo flayed Marsyas alive.
On a superficial level, that’s a terrifying over-reaction.
On a mythic, spiritual level, Marsyas had it coming. You don’t approach a god with arrogance in your heart, trying to take his altar for your own.
Apollo isn’t always so merciless, but he does have his moods. And it’s safe to say that he can be competitive. Don’t challenge him.
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When it comes to love, this Apollo doesn’t have trouble getting attention from the ladies. He’s a great catch! His trouble comes up when he tries to actually maintain a relationship.
He’s kind of shit at that.
He’s a workaholic, or too selfish and arrogant, or he straight up doesn’t respect her. She’s usually the one to leave.
If he goes dark, he becomes a workaholic and an alcoholic (high-functioning, of course). He might engage in a little domestic abuse, but he’s not usually interested enough in his spouse to regularly abuse her.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of this version of Apollo… starting with the chiseled god in the stock image below.
The Golden Son: Harvey Specter
Harvey Specter (from Suits) is a good-looking, rich Harvard graduate.
He’s the best corporate lawyer in New York and has never lost a case.
He’s not exactly emotionless, but he is sometimes willing to win cases for shady corporate clients. (In one episode, he helps a big medical organization win a lawsuit against a nurses’ union. It’s not pretty, but “that’s the job.”)
However, even in those cases, Harvey follows his personal code of being an upstanding man. That’s part of how he deals with the whole “shady clients” thing. (The other part is alcoholism. Dear lord, the amount of drinking in this show…)
Despite all his success, Harvey Specter is also a bit of a mess.
He’s a workaholic, and struggles to maintain relationships. Or even admit that he cares about people. This character’s main arc is about softening himself to make space for his own emotions, and for the people in his life.
Here he is in a mock trial at his firm, being examined by his boss—who considers him her right-hand man. (Everybody in this show is stupidly good looking oh my god.)
Other examples of the Golden Son are Captain America, Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter, and Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games.
So what happens if the Golden Son goes dark?
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The Brass Ass: Jordan Belfort
Jordan Belfort (from The Wolf of Wall Street) is a son of a bitch.
Being successful matters to him more than anything in life. And unlike Harvey Specter, Jordan is willing to do just about anything to achieve that. That’s why he runs a shady stock brokerage where he defrauds over 1,500 people by selling them worthless stocks for high prices.
He’s really good at stock fraud. The best.
He’s charismatic, good-looking, persuasive, successful, and he makes working a complicated, unpredictable system look easy. He’s disgustingly arrogant, but nobody cares because he’s rich and they all want to bask in his glory. He’s the guy everyone either wants to be, or be with.
Jordan looks down on them for this.
He’s not exactly emotionless, but his emotions mostly consist of avarice, lust, digust, pride, and other unsavory states the Bible tried so hard to warn us against. Any time he’s celebrating or he starts to feel a negative emotion (like boredom or anxiety), he engages in his second favorite pastime (his first being stock fraud): taking obscene amounts of drugs. (Dear lord, the amount of drug use in this movie…)
He marries a hot trophy wife, and that goes well for about six minutes.
Because Jordan is a total douche-canoe who can only think of himself, he sucks at relationships.
Here he is teaching his minions how to be evil and defrauding his first client. Warning for foul language (but if you’re reading this newsletter, you don’t care about that). So I guess warning for Jordan Belfort.
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There you have it, intrepid reader—the Golden Son Apollo archetype.
Next up, we’ll talk about the Emotionally Stunted Genius, and his evil twin: the Emotionally Stunted Evil Genius.