I Think That Jason Would’ve Joined The Titan Army If Given The Chance. I Mean There’s The Obvious

i think that jason would’ve joined the titan army if given the chance. i mean there’s the obvious parallels between him and luke: they’re both blonde men with facial scars, both of them had their mothers die as a result of their father’s neglect/abandonment, both of them were used as pawns for the gods with no reward, both of them harbored resentment towards the gods, and so on. 

plus jason’s siding with the gods in hoo despite his resentment towards them isn’t because he agrees with them ideologically: he says in boo that he only decides to honor the gods because of his family, which consists of both the roman and greek demigods. 

however, when he was younger i doubt that he had the same sense of family that he did in hoo. i mean both his parents abandoned him, he didn’t have thalia, and he was raised mostly by wolves before getting thrown into a brutal war camp which didn’t treat him like a person and treated him just as a son of jupiter. i mean when he reflects on his experiences at camp jupiter he explicitly says that he feels bitter. he describes how trapped he felt there, like it was impossible for him to “alter his destiny” even when he joined the worst cohort and tried to change camp traditions. he says, “as a son of Jupiter, his future had been assured” despite his best efforts to try and change it. and when you add in what hercules said in moa: It’s not easy being a son of Zeus. Too much pressure. Eventually, it can make a guy snap. this alongside the fact that when Jason reflects on this quote, he describes himself as “drawn as taut as a bowstring” you can see how close he comes to ‘snapping’ even in boo when he does have a sense of family. 

in pjo, the difference between percy and luke is their connection to the home and the hearth. although percy, like many other demigods, begins to harbor some resentment for the gods and understands luke’s ideology, he doesn’t follow luke’s path because he has a family in sally and annabeth. he has connections to the hearth. luke, on the other hand, fails to remember his connections to home and the hearth and instead prioritizes heroics and ideology over it which is what leads to his downfall. 

that’s why i think jason had so much potential to have joined the titan army: where luke fails to remember his connections to others and his family, jason really didn’t have a family in the first place. i mean we know that he was friends with reyna but he didn’t appear to have any close connections outside of that. maybe lupa, but she isn’t exactly great as a familial figure. i mean she considered eating him before she tested him, threatened to tear him to shreds if he showed weakness, and told him that he should die on the battlefield to have honor. so in a way jason was even more likely to turn to the Titan army than luke was because both his parents abandoned him and he had little connections with others outside of reyna and a wolf that molded him into a pawn of the gods.

in addition, luke’s rhetoric closely aligned with jason’s own beliefs: at camp jupiter, jason repeatedly tried to go against the old rules and traditions as a way to bring about positive change but was always shot down. he resents the way that the camp is seemingly stuck in the past, and luke speaks directly to that, oftentimes criticizing the way that the gods prevent change and are more fond of repeating their stories over and over. 

and jason says in boo that “his mother’s unkept promise was at the core of who he was. he’d built his whole life around the irritation of her words…People lie. Promises are broken.” jason then goes onto say that this is why he follows the rules and keeps his promises, because he “never wanted to abandon anyone the way he’d been abandoned and lied to.” the entire crux of why luke sides with kronos and wants to overthrow the gods is because all they do is abandon their children. both luke and jason watch as demigods get injured or killed for the gods without any pity or regard from their parents. the demigods (before the titan war at least) just get sent on pointless quests and are most of the time hurt as a result. since beryl’s unkept promise forms the core of who jason is, and since jason was exposed to the same cruelties and neglect that luke was (possibly even more awfulness than luke was because the roman ideology was significantly more. dog-eats-dog than the greeks), it would have been fairly easy for him to be swayed to the titan side. if jason vocalized his resentment instead of internalized it he would have sounded exactly like luke