Leon Belmont

Leon Belmont is the overarching protagonist of Konami's franchise, serving as the main protagonist of the 2003 action-adventure game .
He is the ancestor of the Belmont Clan bloodline and one of the primary creators of the legendary signature weapon of the Belmont Clan, the whiplash named the Vampire Killer. After abandoning his title as a knight, he goes on a rescue mission to save his lover Sara Trantoul from the vampire lord of the Forest of Eternal Night, Walter Bernhard, and who initiates the millennium long war between the Belmonts and his former friend Mathias Cronqvist, who became Dracula.
He was voiced by in the Japanese version, who also voiced Guts in Berserk, and by in the English version.
==Appearance==
Leon is a young 22 year old born in 11th century Europe as a knight and aristocrat. He has blond hair and blue eyes and wears very gothic clothing. During his time as a knight, he wore typical knight armor with symbols of the country he served and wields a sword in hand.
==Biography==
===Past===
Leon Belmont was born in 11th century Europe in the Middle Ages. He lost both of his parents to an unknown circumstance and was knighted at the age of 16. During his years as a knight, he became friends with Mathias Cronqvist, who also became his most loyal companion, and fell in love with Sara. Joining Leon's strong will, fearlessness and determination to serve justice and Mathias' tactician abilities and intelligence, both would face many difficulties together and trusted each other completely.
However, the relationship between the two was doomed to fall apart due to the death of Mathias' wife, Elisabetha. With the profound grief of Mathias, he was possibly planning his revenge ever since her death. A year later, strange apparitions of monsters began taking place in Leon's domain and he wished to fight them to protect people from potential danger, though the church didn't provide him the permission to fight monsters since it was more centered to fighting in crusades instead. Mathias, then, informed Leon of the abduction of his betrothed Sara by the monsters and that she had been taken to a forest engulfed by an eternal night of which the master was a powerful vampire lord named Walter Bernhard. Since the church wasn't willing to grant permission to its knights to fight monsters, Leon was obligated to renounce his title as part of the church just so he could go after Sara and save her.
===Castlevania: Lament of Innocence===
Upon Leon's arrival at the Eternal Night forest, he meets with Rinaldo Gandolfi as he gets stuck inside the forest, initially fearing the old man but later sympathizes with him. When inside Rinaldo's cottage, he learns a lot more about Mathias and his family, such as the book of secret arts his family possesses. Rinaldo grants Leon access to many gadgets and weapons, being his whip of alchemy the main weapon, and enchanted the gauntlet on his left arm so he could gather magical power from the enemies he would face inside the castle and allow his to use the magical relics he could find. Rinaldo also tells Leon about the way for Walter being guarded by four monsters which he had to defeat first before going after him.
Inside the castle, Leon faces many monsters and finds many relics he can use as weapons and as tools for accessing other rooms, also learning new moves to use with his whip as he proceeds to face new enemies. After first defeating the Undead Parasite and Golem, he begins discovering more stuff from his third boss fight, from Medusa Head to Succubus.
After fighting Medusa, he finds out about his whip's complete form since she had mentioned it before dying. He goes back to Rinaldo's cabin to have his questions answered, or at least some of them. He asks about the whip's complete form to Rinaldo and he answers telling him about how the whip had become stronger than before because of how much he had fought up to that moment, but refuses to tell him about how to complete the whip to its maximum strength since its process involved certain details from which Rinaldo seemed to want to spare Leaon.
After defeating Joachim, Leon discovers about the Crimson and Ebony Stones, futher widening his curiosity upon Joachim mentioning the Ebony Stone being made from alchemy, and goes straight back to Rinaldo's cabin. There, he sounds a little unpleasant about Rinaldo not telling him about the stones before and Rinaldo tells that it wouldn't have changed anything even if he had told him, but proceeds to tell him anyways. Rinaldo tells Leon the tale about the Philosopher's Stone, the creation of which was the ultimate goal of alchemy, and that the two other stones were accidentally created in some attempts to create it. He also mentions how much of a treasure it was like to a vampire due to how muc power it can provide them. With that, Leon relizes that Walter may have the Ebony Stone in his possession, which was also the core of the eternal darkness in the forest as well as the core for his huge power, then both came to realize that with the Ebony Stone's existence, the Crimson Stone may also have reemerged, much to their fear.
After defeating Succubus, she mentions to Leon about how she used Rinaldo's daughter against him, implying she may have been successful in defeating him once before. Leon gets back to Rinaldo's cottage again to hear the story better, initially displeasing the latter upon his daughter's mentioning. But decides to tell him after Leon insisted it would be for the best if he told him his story. Rinaldo tells that afterhe came back home one day, he was greeted by a horrible scene of a steaming river of blood along with his daughter maniacally laughing while the blood of his dead son and wife dripped from her mouth, confirming Leon's suspicion that she had been turned into a vampire by Walter himself. After his daughter ran amok away from him, he decided to build the whip of alchemy to chase down and kill her himself, much to Leon's horror. After that, he tells he had challenged Walter but was unsuccessful, and thence installed his base right by the entrance of the castle so he could helpthe ones who also desired to defeat him. Rinaldo explicitly told Leon to forget about his story for he thought it would distract Leon from his objective of facing Walter, but Leon made sure that it was the exact opposite of what he thought, affirming that his grief only made him stronger and more gave him one more reason to defeat Walter, being grateful for it.
With all the five monsters defeated, Leon could access the beginning of path which leads to Walter's domain. There, he meets Walter himself, who constantly taunted the Leon over Sara, whom he made suddeenly appear behind him, but unconscious. Leon attempts to strike him, but Walter deflects it with ease, leaving Leon surprised. Without further unnecessary speech, Walter hands Sara back to Leon, unbeknownst tohim of what he had already done to her. He brings her a little back to her senses before bringing her along to Rinaldo's cottage. Unfortunately, the protective barrier around Rinaldo's house responded to Sara upon her contact with it, making her faint in place. Leon, in extreme worry, tries to help her, but Rinaldo arrives and tells him to go inside his house and wait.
After some time, Rinaldo comes from the back of his house telling Leon she was asleep. Leon questioned about what happened before and Rinaldo is frank with him saying that Sara had been bitten by Walter and was gradually transforming into a vampire, the reason why the barrier had responded to her. Leon, in disbelief, insisted that it wasn't true and begging Rinaldo to tell him he was lying. He asks him if there was a way to save her, but the only way was to immediately defeat Walter, but he remembers about the moment he had attempted to strike Walter but didn't manage to hurt him, which confirmed Rinaldo's suspicions that even he wouldn't be able to actually fight against Walter and told him that the only way was to complete the whip, but Leon, initially willing to do anything to complete it, upon hearing that he needed to kill Sara to complete the weapon, was again reluctant to accept it and didn't want in anyway kill his betrothed. Eventually Sara happened to overhear them and was about to kill herself. Leon wantedto find another way to actually be able to defeat Walter without having to kill her, but both her and Rinaldo pointed out the fact that there was no time to find out and that they had to be fast if Leon truly desired to defeat him. Leon relizes that he had no other choice but cooperate and accepts his only choice, with Rinaldo conjuring and enchantment which allowed Leon to get the power to complete the whip after killing Sara, and thus he uses the whip against her, killing her and immediately giving the whip its true power, turning it into the famous Vampire Killer, and parting to complete his goal of fighting Walter, but not before grieving profusely having just lost his beloved.
Eventually, Leon gets though the way leading to the throne room, in the middle of which Leon also faces another of his doppelgangers. Almost at the top, the player can access a room which gives Leon the Unlock Jewel, which can be used to unlock the door leading to the optional three-phased boss, the Forgotten One, back in the basement of the castle. Apart from that, Leon manages to get to the throne room, where he meets with Walter and comes back at his provokings about Sara saying that his "present" had provided him the power needed to defeat him. Leon breaks the Ebony Stone Walter was wearing, stripping him from his source of utter power and invincibility and being able to defeat Walter. Weakened, Walter tries to talk back to Leon, but Death appears and absorbs his soul, killing Walter and providing more power to Mathias, who also appeared suddenly to Leon's surprise. Leon notices Mathias' possession of the Crimson Stone and, sensing a rage from the Vampire Killer towards Mathias,he concludes that he had abandoned humanity. Mathias explains that he had used him, Walter, Sara and Rinaldo to accomplish his goal of finally becoming a vampire and obtaining eternal life as his revenge against God due to the death of his wife. Mathias offers Leon eternity as well, but calls out Mathias on it, telling that the Mathias he knew would never have wanted that, Mathias also asks Leon if he hadn't defeated Walter with hatred in his heart which Leon confirms, but unlike what Mathias thought, Leon says that his actual goal was to prevent other from going through the same fate as Sara, and that he didn't wish for eternity because he thought life would be nothing but emptiness without her. Mathias sees Leon wasn't like him and flies away leaving Death in charge of defeating him.
Death attempts to kill Leon by the orders of Mathias, but is instead defeated by the latter. With Death telling him Mathias is now his master and that he will never die, Leon tells him to give Mathias a message that he would never forgive him for the evil creature he had willingly become and that the Belmont Clan would from that day hunt him down and destroy him along with the night someday, and Death dissolves into nothingness. The castle begins to collide and Leon flees from there as fast as he could, with the night fading away as well.
===Legacy===
From that day, Leon's descendants would be the next ones to hunt down Mathias, who was now Dracula, and the creatures of the night multiple times during the millennium, with many Belmonts living throughout the years being famous for hunting monsters and saving the world and humanity from Dracula until his final demise in the Demon Castle War in 1999, led by the last known descendant of the clan, Julius Belmont, who killed Dracula and sealed his castle in an eclipse, thus preventing Draula to be resurrected ever again. With Dracula's ultimate death, his soul eventually reincarnated as Soma Cruz, who, albeit being a different person, can still be corrupted by Dracula's powers and former personality into becoming the next dark lord. Had this happened, like when shown when Soma loses the battle against Dracula's progenitor Chaos, Julius would be forced to fight Soma, thus starting again the infinite battle of humanity against Dracula.
===Netflix Adaptation===
Leon is the posthumous overarching protagonist of the Netflix animated series. Leon is mentioned by his descendant, Trevor, who says that Leon is his family's ancestor and tend to move his work place to place. A portrait of him as a knight is seen when Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard enter the Belmont hold. As seen from the Belmont Library, he started the tradition on hunting vampires and other supernatural creatures. He seems to be the first user of the Morningstar whip and had it kept away along with his longsword in the Belmont hold. In season 2, Trevor finds the Morningstar whip and equips it in most of his battles he also equips Leons sword but abandons it in later seasons.
==Personality==
Despite having an aristocratic upbringing and becoming a famed knight, Leon is very noble and compassionate. He was willing to give up his noble title just to find Sara and sympathize with Gandolfi's tragedy of losing his daughter. When he mets Gandolfi for the first time Leon's tells him to not call him Lord but just call him Leon and say that they are equals, which shows his respect for someone that is not like him. It can be speculated that his compassionate and humble personality comes from the fact that he is orphan at such young age. Leon is very brave and shows courage in his actions to the point that Gandolfi comments on this saying it's honest to a fault. He is strongly devoted to his beloved and was willing to kill many enemies to save her. He was saddened by her death but promised her that no one would suffer the same fate as her. 
It is unknown what's his relationship with Mathias is like but they seem to be good friends during their times in knighthood but Leon felt extremely betrayed that Mathias abandon his humanity for immortality and that he won't forgive. He swore an oath that he will find Mathias and hunt the eternal night. This oath would later start the tradition of Belmonts fighting the supernatural and Dracula himself.
==Gallery==
LeonDarkness.webp
LeonFlames.webp
Leon Belmont portrait close up.jpg|Close-up to Leon's face in the portrait.
Leons sword in the anime.webp|Leon's sword in the animated series.
LoI-offart11.webp|Leon's face concept sketches.
LoI-offart12.webp|Leon concept art.
Leon as a Knight.webp|Leon as a knight before the events of the series.
Cloi-leon-belmont3.webp
Cloi-leon-belmont6.webp
Lament of Innocence Leon Belmont wallpaper .webp
Leon Belmont render 1.webp
Leon Belmont render 2.webp
Leon Belmont costume in Sword of Etheria .webp|Leon Belmont costume unlockable in Sword of Etheria game.
Leon Belmont - Bail or Jail - 01.webp|Leon Belmont in the Bail or Jail game.
Greatest Five Belmont .webp|Leon reference in the "Greatest Five Dual Crush" attack in Castlevania Portrait of Ruin.
==Trivia==
 
*Leon is an unlockable costume in the Sword of Etheria game for the main character name Leon. When selected it's called Belmondo outfit.
*The portrait of Leon from the animated adaptation resembles Louis XIV portrait. It's possible that the portrait is used as a reference in order to create Leon's portrait.
*Leon's knight garb in the painting hugely resembles his game counterpart version but the only difference is that the portrait has the Belmont crest on the armor.
*Leon Belmont is a playable guest character in the game Jail or Bail next to Alucard, another Castlevania character.
*In an earlier script of the canceled Castlevania film, there was scene that featured Trevor Belmont and his brother, Cristofor finding Leon's grave that shows a story of Leon's struggle against Mathias Cronqvist.
==External links==
*Leon Belmont on the Castlevania Wiki.
*Leon Belmont on the Pure Good Wiki.
==Navigation==
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