Ventus

### Dislikes

Being left out, friends in danger, Vanitas, conflict, war, harming others, being controlled by darkness

## Professional Status

### Powers and abilities

Wind Magic
Light Magic

## Relationships

### Parents

Cloud Strife (Father)
Aerith Gainsborough (Mother)

### Siblings

Sora (Brother)
Roxas (Twin Brother)

### Other relatives

Claudia Strife (Grandmother) †
Unnamed Grandfather †
Elmyra Gainsborough (Adoptive Grandmother)

### Other relationships

Master Eraqus (Surrogate father)
Vanitas (Created from the darkness in his heart)

## Voice Actors

### English

Jesse McCartney

**Ventus** (ヴェントゥス, *Ventusu*) was a Keyblade wielder before Sora ever became one, and was apprenticed to both Master Xehanort and Master Eraqus. He is the youngest of the trio formed by himself, Terra, and Aqua.

Although cheerful and bright, Ventus holds a mysterious past he seeks to recover on his quest to become a Keyblade Master. What he finds is his dark connection with Vanitas, and a more vital one he once made with Sora. Ventus' heart lied within Sora until it rejoined with his proper body once more.

## Description

### Appearance

Ventus bears an uncanny resemblance to Roxas, bearing identical facial features. Further highlighting this resemblance is Ventus's outfit, which is strikingly similar to Roxas's own Twilight Town clothes. He wears a jacket that resembles a fusion of Roxas's jacket (white on the right side) and Sora's jacket in *Kingdom Hearts II* (black on the left side), also reminiscent of the Yin and Yang symbol. The collar of the jacket is red and pleated, again, similar to the collar on Roxas's own jacket. Underneath this, he wears what appears to be a grey vest with a single button and several white, angular patterns on it. He wears a third layer under this, in the form of a plain, high-necked, black shirt. He also has a chunk of dull green and blue armor on his midsection that appears to be under his vest, and another piece of armor on his left shoulder.

Eraqus wears a similar piece of armor, though more blue-green, and more obvious. Ventus's pants are also similar to the pants Roxas wore, though Ven's balloon outward slightly before closing up about halfway down his legs, similar to caprice pants. These pants are colored in shades of grey, black, and white. He also wears an ornate, dull green and blue piece of armor on his upper-left arm, along with a black and white checkered wristband that is, once again, strikingly similar to Roxas's, but with white edges as opposed to Roxas's black-edged wristband. Like Aqua, he wears two criss-crossing straps on his chest, on which he wears a silver Keyblade Master emblem. His boots are rather odd when compared to Aqua's and Terra's, as they resemble an armored version of normal street shoes in shades of dull green and blue.

Ventus's mannerisms are also echoed by Sora and Roxas; in particular, when standing around he often places his hands behind his head, in the same stance that Sora uses. Throughout both the canonical story and the extra-canonical videos of *Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep*, Ventus echoes Sora and Roxas in various ways. For example, in the opening video, Ventus is shown falling through a Station of the Dive to the Heart due to the Kingdom Key and Soul Eater shattering the pillar, in a similar way to how Sora and Roxas fall from shattered Stations at the beginning of their games. At the beginning of his episode at the Land of Departure, Ventus falls asleep outside after watching a shooting star, and a little while later, he yawns, and then is startled to find Aqua standing over him, who giggles upon his reaction and teases him affectionately, mirroring how Kairi startled Sora awake in the original *Kingdom Hearts*.

When touching the piece of armor on his shoulder, Ventus becomes fully clad in Keyblade Armor. In *Birth by Sleep Birth*, Ventus's suit of armor shares the coloration of the pieces he normally wears, predominantly sporting shades of green and gold. In this suit, Ventus adds a yellow cape to his outfit that is discolored, almost appearing rusted. The armor on his knee is gold and bears a sharp, upward-pointing hook on the outer side of each one. Ventus's helmet has a notably different design from Aqua and Terra's, appearing more squashed and flat at the top. His helmet also has two prongs on either side of his head which point backwards and angle diagonally upward.

Strangely, Ventus's boots are colored completely gold in this outfit, as opposed to the multi-colored ones he normally wears. In *Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep*, Ventus's armor is altered. He loses his cape, his boots change to more closely resemble those in his unarmored state, and the coloration changes much more than Terra or Aqua's. Ventus's armor loses the greens entirely, now sporting steel blue, gold, and black armor, with several red lines decorating it.

### Personality

Ventus is the youngest of the three Keyblade warriors. Personality-wise, he has many similarities with Sora; he is sweet-tempered, cheery, inquisitive, and gets excited at anything new or interesting, but he feels very disappointed whenever Aqua and Terra decline to permit him to join them on their own missions because they don’t want to put him in "harm's way." When he gives them their passes to Disney Town, he grudgingly mentions that Scrooge McDuck told him to "take two grown-ups," but he does not seem to dislike his status as the youngest of the three.

He also makes new friends easily in different worlds and really cares about his best friends Terra and Aqua, viewing Terra as an older brother. Ventus is very much unable to cope with Terra turning and subsiding to the darkness in his heart. Some of his traits and personality might have passed on to Sora when his heart joined him. Along with his kind-hearted personality, he also shows a lot of pluck, especially evident when he battles Vanitas for the last time, where he promises to fight for his companions no matter what, knowing the fact that he would lose his heart as a result.

## Etymology

* Ventus' name means "wind" in Latin, similar to how Sora's name is Japanese for "sky". However, his name is pronounced "VEN-tus," which despite being rooted in Latin, in which "V" is pronounced as "W".

## Trivia

* *Dream Drop Distance'*s ending reveals that Ven has been sleeping in Castle Oblivion for over a decade, but he seems to not have aged. This could possibly be due to its magic. However, considering that *Union χ* reveals that he has been around ever since the Keyblade War, it may also be because he actually ages slower than the others given his magic training.
	+ Another possibility could be due to Ventus' comatose state and the loss of his heart, as he has not been able to "grow a heart" over the years without one.
	+ Due to *Kingdom Hearts Union χ*, dating back 100 years ago and Ventus being asleep for the last 10 years, physically and/or technically he should be over 120 years old making him age wise the oldest character in the series.
* The official Japanese website refers to Ventus as the "Swift Wind Returning to Bonds" (絆巡る疾風, *Kizuna Meguru Shippū*).
* Ven is the only one of the *Birth by Sleep* protagonists to never gain an upgrade of his default Keyblade. Terra's Keyblade goes from the "Earthshaker" to the "Ends of the Earth", while Aqua's goes from "Rainfell" to "Stormfall". Interestingly, Ven's Keyblade Glider seems to be an evolved version of the "Wayward Wind".
* Ven and other five members of the Organization XIII (Xigbar, Luxord, Demyx, Marluxia and Larxene) were from the age of fairy tales, during the period of the Keyblade War.
	+ As of the previous update, it's revealed that Ventus, along with the human counterparts of Marluxia and Larxene (Lauriam and Elrena) and Brain used the lifeboat pods to return to the real world like Maleficient, but it's still unknown how Luxord and Demyx made it to the future.
	+ Ven's amnesia is understandable, based upon what Luxu said about the lifeboat being unfinished and for someone to use it successfully a person would need to have a person at their destination who has memories of them as well as a medium but since, Brain nor the others didn't know about that at the time the pods were used it's likely due to them not having the right requirements is what caused them to forget the past.
* In *Kingdom Hearts*, when Sora stabbed himself with Riku's Keyblade in order to free Kairi's heart, Ven's heart stayed with him. This is most likely due to Ventus' heart being asleep as a result of the damage it took ten years ago, and to wake up a sleeping heart a keyblade wielder would need the power of awakening which Sora didn't know about at the time, as he would only learn it later in *Dream Drop Distance* and *Kingdom Hearts III*.
* According to the Darkness entity, Ventus had a hidden desire for power which led to Strelitzia's demise and him taking her place as union leader but it's currently unknown why he wanted his comrade's position.
* Ventus actually became a being of pure light twice when the Darkness entity separated itself from him and again when Xehanort extracted the darkness out of his heart making him the first male to become one.