ODIN

Before Odin ever sat the throne of Asgard, his elder brother did. Cul Borson, firstborn son of Bor, claimed the All-Father's seat on their father's death and ruled the ancient world of Aesheim as the Serpent, a god who fed on mortal fear and grew stronger the more of it he harvested. The reign of terror only ended when Odin rose against him, as retold across Fear Itself Vol. 1 #1–7 (2011).

Ancient law forbade Odin from killing his own brother, so he did something arguably worse. He sealed Cul deep beneath the ocean, then set about deleting him: Odin slaughtered the mortals of Aesheim who remembered the Serpent's rule, razed their world, and renamed the emptied realm Midgard, so that no living memory remained to feed the prisoner with fear. Cul passed out of history so completely that even Thor grew up never hearing his uncle's name.

The erasure held for millennia, until Sin, daughter of the Red Skull, raised Cul's sunken prison in Fear Itself: Book of the Skull (2011) and freed him. Odin's first response to his brother's return was to prepare to burn modern Earth and its population the same way — starving the Serpent of fear by removing the frightened. Thor refused the order, and the family secret Odin had buried under a world walked back into the open.