Dario (Steel Ball Run)

"Hah! Now I got rid of both of them... Good riddance!"

- Dario (Steel Ball Run)

Dario (ダリオ) is a tertiary character featured in the seventh part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Steel Ball Run.

The father of Diego Brando. An abusive alcoholic without regard for anyone but himself. The abandonment of his wife and son left them social outcasts in abject poverty. This set in motion a chain of events that became the impetus driving Diego's primary ambition.

Appearance
Dario is a man of average height and build. His light-colored hair is shaved on the sides with a tuft in the front, and kept long in the back. In contrast to his fair hair, he sports a dark goatee and sideburns. His eyebrows are also dark and have the same prominent arch as his son's. Typical for a rural peasant, his attire consists of a simple cloak, tunic, and pants. He is also shown wearing cloth bracers on his wrists.

Personality
Dario is cruel and callous, showing no remorse for infanticide and leaving his family for dead. Although both parents had apparently made the decision together to bury their newborn baby, it can be assumed that it was mainly at Dario's insistence, based on his cruel personality and the fact that he took the most active role in the burial. Prone to flying into a rage, his abusive nature is apparent when he beats his wife for suggesting that his alcoholism is contributing to their poverty. A man void of any sense of responsibility, he sees his wife and child as nothing more than a burden, overjoyed at the prospect of getting rid of them both.

Steel Ball Run
In 1870, Dario was living in an impoverished village in rural England. He was already displeased with the miserable conditions of their lives when his wife, then about 16 or 17 years old, gave birth to a baby boy. Believing themselves too poor to be able to care for the child, they carried the newborn into the mountains to bury him. Dario was shown to have dug the grave, placed the baby inside, and filled the hole with dirt himself while his wife stood by.

As they were leaving, a heavy rain flooded the area and carried the baby Diego down the river. Upon seeing him drowning, Diego's mother immediately regretted her decision, calling out his name. Dario was appalled to hear that she had given a name to the child, and insisted she forget about him, promising that they could have more children once they had a stable life. When she suggested that their financial situation could improve if he stopped drinking, Dario became enraged and beat her to the ground. This did not crush her spirits, however, and she bravely swam into the river to save her son.

From a safe distance, Dario watched the two as they were swept away by the current, laughing at their misfortune before leaving. To him, it seemed apparent that the mother and child would surely drown in the flood, and he was pleased with himself for "getting rid" of both of them.

Although Dario is never seen again, his abandonment played a considerable role in shaping Diego Brando's hatred for the world. At the farm, Diego and his mother were looked down upon with scorn because the absence of a husband effectively rendered Diego a bastard in their eyes, which was highly stigmatized in Victorian England. Diego directly blamed the farm workers' apathy towards his mother's suffering on that social stigma, and vowed to get revenge on all of them for letting her die, as well as his father for abandoning them in the first place.

In 1890, twenty years after Dario's abscondence, Hot Pants reported that he was still alive and that she could help Diego find him. As an adult, Diego's vicious contempt had not dulled at all; the mere mention of his father caused him to scream in her face in a raw display of rage and pain. It is unclear whether Hot Pants was telling the truth about Dario's status, but the promise of being able to track down his father was ultimately what convinced Diego to partner with her.

Trivia

 * Unlike his counterpart in Phantom Blood, this Dario is not a Brando; that surname was adopted by his former wife after Dario vanished from her life. His own surname remains unknown.