Gabriel Belmont

Overview

Gabriel Belmont, the protagonist of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, was adopted by the Brotherhood of Light after he was orphaned as a child. He had great skill, and became an exceptional student. After he had grown, he took the name "Belmont", French for "Beautiful Mountains", as his surname due to his love of high places. During Lords of Shadow, he is searching the land for a way to resurrect his wife, Marie, who was murdered while Gabriel was away from home. In his struggles, he wields the Combat Cross, a powerful weapon nicknamed "Vampire Killer," and wears the Dark Gauntlet, allowing him to lift heavy weights.

Gabriel's adventures take place in a continuity separate from that of the "official" Castlevania timeline established by Koji Igarashi and as such is not related to the other Belmonts of the franchise. He is, however, the father of the Lords of Shadow universe's incarnation of Trevor Belmont, the grandfather of Simon Belmont, and an unspecified ancestor of Victor Belmont, a warrior for the Brotherhood of Light active in the year 2047.

He is voiced by Robert Carlyle.

Plot Details

As the story of Lords of Shadow unfolds, it is revealed that it was actually Gabriel himself who killed Marie, while being mind controlled by the influence of Zobek's Devil Mask. The events were set up by Zobek to manipulate Gabriel into collecting the pieces of the God Mask, so Zobek could attain total power over the Earth. However, it is then revealed that this plan was actually planted into Zobek's mind by Satan himself, so that Satan could casually kill Zobek and use the Mask to go to Heaven and challenge God.

After the battle with Satan, Gabriel encounters Marie one last time, who confirms the God Mask cannot actually bring back the dead. However, for saving the world, God has forgiven Gabriel of all his sins; he must wait out his natural lifespan and then die before being reunited with his love in Heaven. They share a kiss and Marie leaves for Heaven with the other previously trapped souls as Gabriel mourns her loss.

Soon after, he is contacted by Laura, the vampiric ward of Carmilla, the slain Dark Lord of the Vampires, and she tells him the defeat of the three Lords of Shadow threatens to unleash another threat, the Forgotten One, who was trapped in the netherworld and kept there by a seal empowered by the lives of the Lords of Shadow, who have all been defeated. Both make their way to the portal chamber, but at the last moment, Laura reveals that only dark beings are able to survive in the dimension where the Forgotten One is kept. Gabriel would die in moments, being human, and Laura could survive the environment, but poses absolutely no threat to the Forgotten One.

Laura asks Gabriel to drink her blood, which would make him into a vampire - and because her eternally childlike body is so small, he would need to drink so much of her blood that she wouldn't survive the process; this was her real motivation for summoning Gabriel, to end her centuries-long life by forcing him to kill her and damn himself in order to save the world. Gabriel accepts this with reluctance, drinking Laura's blood and killing her, but freeing her from her eternal torment in the process, while he himself begins to become a creature of the night.

As he tracks down the Forgotten One in the dimensional prison, Gabriel's personality is consumed by darkness. He becomes more violent and looses his humanity. After just barely managing to fight the Forgotten One to a stalemate - and that when the demon was explicitly at only a fraction of his usual power - he absorbs the Forgotten One's demonic power as it tries to return to his body, and destroys the beast once and for all. Just before leaving the Underworld, Gabriel destroys his Combat Cross in disgust, leaving the pieces lying broken and forgotten within the dark dimension.

In the epilogue of the main game's credits, shown before the DLC is played, it is revealed that over the past 1000 years, Gabriel has become a powerful vampire lord. In 2047, he is known as Dracul and meets Zobek once again. The former Lord of Death explains that Satan is gathering his forces again, and suggests they team up to prevent this and mentions it's the only way to free "Dracula" from his curse of immortality.

Trivia

• In the first Lords of Shadow, it is stated that the infant Gabriel was rumored to have been an abandoned bastard of the Cronqvist family. This is a reference to Mathias Cronqvist, Dracula's former human identity from the original Castlevania continuity. It is also subtle foreshadowing, as Gabriel himself eventually becomes Dracula.