#iulus

Venus and Ascanius (Iulus)

Quick comic concept, because if you can't tell, Diomedes has a very specific type

Bonus:

Aeneas - fallow deer

Diomedes - lion

Ascanius - fallow deer/red deer mix

Furry Iliad Masterpost

His fate is mostly to be Aeneas' temporary son, in all honesty. You can see this in the conversation between Jupiter and Venus in Book 1, where Jupiter promises Venus that Ascanius will rule in Alba Longa after Aeneas' death for thirty years, and then just very conveniently forgets to mention that the "kings of Hector's race" will not be Creusa's line but Lavinia's. Sure, Ascanius' line is said to descend into the Julia gens, but he was still secondary to his half-brother Silvius.

Adding into this, you have the Apollo-Ascanius interaction in Book 9. Ascanius, who wishes to prove himself in battle, prays to Jupiter for his arrow to make its mark (an action i would consider religiously pious). He wishes to rouse his troops and rebut words against the Trojan people. And in response, Apollo appeared to Ascanius as his fucking childhood babysitter (something that goes to show the sheer disrespect that the gods have for Ascanius as an independent actor) and told the troops that Ascanius was leading to drag their commander away from the battlefield. Just earlier in Book 9, we saw Ascanius as eager and excited to grant Nisus and Euryalus a mission, a decision that I see as a combination of his youth and inexperience and his desire to prove himself by having successful command orders under his belt.

(This is tangential but I have a document that goes over every time the name "Ascanius" and "Iulus" are mentioned, and I just found a section (Book XI: within lines 1-99) where Aeneas calls Pallas a protector of both Ausonia (Italy) and Ascanius. This intrigues me because Pallas (Itallian) is more important to the Aeneid narrative than Ascanius (Trojan), and can be a kind of symbolism for the way Aeneas puts his fatherhood in Italy in place of Troy.)