History DarkAndTroubledPast / Literature

* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series, there are several:
** Bluestar's mother died when Bluestar was only an apprentice, and [[WellDoneSonGuy her father never really paid much attention to her and her sister]]. Her sister died as a young mother, and Bluestar felt guilty for her death because she'd convinced Snowfur to leave the camp for a little while. She had kits with a [=RiverClan=] cat (a forbidden relationship), but had to give them up in order to become deputy instead of Thistleclaw, and one died.

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** Cam [[spoiler:grew up in a gang, and his brother wanted him to become another gangster. Adding to that, he's biologically a woman, and everyone in the Nines think that he's just pretending to be a boy for laughs. He joined the Navy to escape the life of crime, but it caught up with him anyway.]]

* In ''Literature/TheSisterhoodOfTheTravelingPants'', Bridget's mom committed suicide when she was a child. Her father and struggle cope with this loss in unhealthy ways, and much of Bridget's flighty and impulsive nature comes from leftover trauma she has surrounding her mother.

* Camille from ''Literature/SharpObjects'' suffers from this. She grew up with a DisappearedDad, an [[ParentalNeglect abusive]] mother, and an IllGirl little sister who died when Camille was only thirteen. She also got gang-raped at thirteen by a group of football players. She's been a cutter since childhood, and shortly before the book starts the problem got so bad she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. While there, she witnessed her roommate, who she had grown close to, kill herself. In the present day Camille is still a cutter, and a BrokenBird and TheAlcoholic to boot from these experiences.

* Literally every character in ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'', but it's by design. The villain creates their reality for the express purpose of making them miserable.
* In Creator/AndreNorton's ''Literature/StormOverWarlock'', Shann Lantee was a StreetUrchin. The only affection he got during that time was from a pet bird, that died in pain. He was at least once tortured with an AgonyBeam by a bully. And he saw people under mind-control -- a fact which he blurts out to Thorvald; that deeply embarrasses him, because it underscores how unlike the standard Survey team member's life his has been.

* ''Literature/StarWarsLegends:''
** ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Xaverri's husband and children were killed by the Empire, inspiring her vendetta against them. She declines to go into details on what happened, saying recounting it might kill her. Han's past also counts-he was a street urchin recruited by a criminal into working on his behalf as a beggar, con artist and thief. Before that, though details aren't revealed, it's implied that his parents were murdered and he wound up on the streets with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his memories of them erased]] for an unknown reason.

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* Kieran Trevarde of ''Literature/TheGodEaters'' has a dead mother, some degree of rape and child prostitution, as well as drug addiction in his past, and a dead lover on top of all that at the outset of the novel.
* In ''Literature/HeartsBlood'', Anluan’s entire family history, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Nechtan, [[spoiler:who had an evil summoning spell go VERY wrong]].
** Caitrin’s isn’t exactly bright and cheery either. Her father’s dead, her sister married and left her, and a distant relative took over the house and allowed her son to beat Caitrin when he felt like it.
** The members of the host are all souls from Purgatory. Some of them seem to have particularly violent pasts.

humanity.

* In the ''Literature/NightfallSeries'', Prince Vladimir's entire human family was killed as a result of a rebellion gone wrong. However, he never uses it as an excuse for his evilness and is unapologetic about what he has done to
* Séraphine Francq (Fiancée du Vent): lost her mother at a young age, her father died from the experiment that gave her her powers, was gang-raped by schoolmates, and consequently beat them up so hard that one of them is stuck in a wheelchair for life, giving her remorse...

* Kieran Trevarde of ''Literature/TheGodEaters'' has a dead mother, some degree of rape and child prostitution, as well as drug addiction in his past, and a dead lover on top of all that at the outset of the novel.
* ''Literature/JaneEyre'':
** Mr. Rochester was betrayed by his greedy father and brother to marry a woman they knew was insane just to get her money, and all the man ever wanted was to find someone to love.
** Jane had one, too. She was orphaned, put into an unloving and abusive home, and sent to an unsanitary boarding school that could barely feed its students. The first friend that she made there died shortly after she arrived, as did most of the other students in a typhoid epidemic.
* Another Charlotte Brontë example: Lucy Snowe in Literature/{{Villette}}.
* Everyone in ''Literature/ThePaleKing'', but Toni Ware especially. She spent her childhood [[spoiler: in perpetual poverty as she and her sometimes-crazy mother drifted around the country. She also saw her mother murdered right in front of her.]]
* The Literature/InDeath series:
** Eve was abandoned by her mother, raped by her father (who impregnated her mother with the sole intention of selling her to child molesters), killed him in self-defense, and then had to handle at least one abusive foster parent as she grew up in the system.
** Roarke was regularly beaten up by his father and non-biological mother, had to steal for his father, and even though Summerset took him in, they lost Marlena, Summerset's daughter, to a group of rapists.
** Dr. Mira watched her parents divorce, her mother remarry, and was sexually abused by her stepfather to the point of being DrivenToSuicide (fortunately, she survived). Boy, these three had it rough, didn't they?
* Kvothe from ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' had his entire troupe die, lived homeless for three years, got kicked out of the only place he felt he belonged after the death of his troupe...and that's just what we know so far.
* In ''Literature/HeartsBlood'', Anluan’s entire family history, all the way back to his great-grandfather, Nechtan, [[spoiler:who had an evil summoning spell go VERY wrong]].
** Caitrin’s isn’t exactly bright and cheery either. Her father’s dead, her sister married and left her, and a distant relative took over the house and allowed her son to beat Caitrin when he felt like it.
** The members of the host are all souls from Purgatory. Some of them seem to have particularly violent pasts.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'':
** Tobias. His natural father had to leave, and he was given a fake father, who then left himself. His mother was in an accident and didn't even remember him, besides being blind. He was bounced among aunts and uncles who didn't really care about him and became a bully magnet.
** Marco. The disappearance of his mother and the subsequent split of his family caused him to become more cynical and, in effect, more ruthless and pragmatic and less attached to romantic, idealistic principles. [[spoiler: To make matters worse, one of the {{Big Bad}}s has possessed his mother.]]
* Fisk from the ''Literature/KnightAndRogueSeries''. He took up crime to support help support his sisters after they lost both parents to disease. When his oldest sister marries someone who could take care of them, he decided Fisk alone couldn't stay, becuase he didn't want to be associated with a criminal. And that's ignoring everything involving Jack Bannister.
* In Creator/DevonMonk's ''Literature/DeadIron'', Cedar's brother Wil dragged him west after the loss of his wife and children. Then they went on the wrong land and were {{curse}}d into [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] form. Cedar came to find himself at the end of a bloody trail, and backtracked to find his brother's wolf corpse, its throat torn out by himself.
* In Creator/GeneStrattonPorter's ''Literature/{{Freckles}}'', Freckles does not remember his dark and troubled past, but knows it happened:
-->''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[DoorStopBaby leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home]], to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me.''* Both main characters of ''Literature/GivesLight''. Skylar had his mother murdered in front of him when he was five. Her murderer realized he was in the room and slashed his throat. Skylar didn't die, but now he's irreversibly mute. To top this all off, his one dream in life is to be a singer. And then you have Rafael, son of said serial killer. Everyone equates him with his father and he has no friends. Until he meets Skylar.
* Vulpie in ''Literature/AFoxTail'' has a particularly dark one, almost to the point of parody, beaten and shot by his birth father at 5, raped by a priest at 12, beaten by another foster parent for being gay... A psychologist strongly believes that it's his reason for hacking the known universe, but Polar helps him grow out of it.
* In Creator/SarahAHoyt's ''Literature/DarkshipThieves'', Kit's wife died, and it looks like he murdered her, and he refuses to clear his name [[spoiler:out of, it turns out, fear that other dark elements of his past will turn up]].
* ''Literature/LegacyOfTheDragokin'': All of Kthonian Knights have one; the three girls were kidnapped and raped by truly evil men and the guy had his hands cut off and left for dead for deserting the Leondian army. All of them function as a FreudianExcuse except for the last one. The only thing ''his'' past does is make him angst about how he can no longer truly embrace his precious little sister.

* Jace Wayland from ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'', saw his father, Michael Wayland, murdered in a pool of his own blood. [[spoiler:That was staged, of course. And Michael Wayland was never his father]].
* ''Literature/ThePowerOfFive'': Played straight with Matt, Pedro, Jamie, and Scott. Subverted with Scarlett, whose had the nicest life out of all five Gatekeepers.
* ''Literature/HostileTakeoverSwann'': Klaus and Jonah Dacham were raised by an abusive mother, who often threatened them with their [[ParentalAbandonment absent]] and nameless father. They joined the secret police to escape her, and were groomed to commit atrocies, peaking in Jonah's massacre of 35,000 rebels and innocent bystanders on Perdition.
* In Creator/WenSpencer's Literature/UkiahOregon series, Ukiah was abandoned in the woods to run with the wolves [[spoiler:before that, Magic Boy was brutally murdered, eventually creating Ukiah and Atticus]]. Atticus Steele was another foundling. The foster parents who would have adopted him died in a car wreck and he was passed from foster home to foster home throughout his childhood. Max Bennett's wife disappeared mysteriously while he was on a speaking tour, only to turn up at the bottom of a lake from a car wreck.* Samantha Cataranes from ''Literature/TheNexusSeries'' has a particularly unpleasant past. It is strongly implied during the first book that her experiences drove her to revile "Transhuman" technology and join the ERD as soon as she was old enough.
* There are eight main characters in ''Literature/OfFearAndFaith'' and each one has experienced either a crappy, abuse-filled childhood or a life-altering, emotionally scarring tragedy. To put it in perspective, the character who lost his father when his [[DoomedHometown hometown was destroyed]] probably has the least depressing backstory.
* A large part of ''Literature/DamnatioMemoriae'' is the reader waiting to find out what happened in Enim's past that had caused him to become so withdrawn and troubled. It's then revealed that [[spoiler: his mother jumped off a bridge, survived but is now in a vegetative state being kept alive by his uncle, and Enim could have stopped her. Oh, and she had schizophrenia and Enim most likely has it, too.]]
* ''Literature/TheInfernalDevices'':
** Will Herondale. Or at least, he alludes to one quite often.
** Jem Carstairs. [[spoiler:A demon who had a grudge against his mother tortured him in front of his parents, injecting him over and over with a drug that made him hallucinate vividly.]]
* The stepmother of the Snow White retelling ''Literature/SixGunSnowWhite'', Mrs. H, had quite the terrible childhood if the mirror is to be believed.
* In ''Literature/HeartOfSteel'', both Alistair and Julia have their own traumatic pasts, over which they ultimately bond:
** Alistair--back before he ''was'' Alistair--was in a car accident that left him badly mutilated and his girlfriend in a coma. Because he was a robotic genius even then, he rebuilt himself out of metal parts over the course of five years, only to discover when he went to visit his girlfriend that her parents had had to take her off life support the week before. Cue psychotic break.
** Julia was attacked at the hospital where she worked and nearly killed by a deranged junkie looking for drugs. The incident left her with PTSD, unable to go back to work due to panic attacks.
* In Jeramey Kraatz's ''Literature/TheCloakSociety'',
** Mallory. she has no memories of before she was six and came to Cloak, despite telepathy efforts to get past her trauma; she has been told that she killed her parents with her powers. [[spoiler:Actually, Cloak murdered them and erased her memories.]]
** Kirbie and Kyle are less troubled, because of the {{Parental Substitute}}s they had in the Rangers. Nevertheless, when Kirbie recounts how their parents had brought them to the city on a vacation, left them in a park on the pretense of getting ice cream, and never returned, it was still clearly painful for her.
* Most of the characters in the novels by Creator/MichaelSlade.
* Noir, from the web serial ''Literature/{{Barkwire}}'', a dog who "has buried more secrets than bones."
* Colin Whisterfield, in Creator/AlanGarner's novel ''Literature/{{Boneland}}''. It is progressively revealed throughout the book that before he was thirteen, he:
** was possibly abducted and sexually abused by a man and a woman;
** lost his parents to a plane crash;
** lost his twin sister in mysterious circumstances - she went horse-riding by night, and only the horse was found; it is assumed she was thrown in the waters of a lake and drowned;
** was struck by lightning while alone in the hills, suffering brain damage that went undetected until an MRI scan in later adulthood.
* In Robin Jarvis' ''Literature/DeptfordMice'' trilogy, Thomas Triton is haunted by feelings of guilt for being responsible for the death of his friend Woodget Pipple. In the prequel book ''Thomas'', which describes the incident in detail, it is revealed that [[spoiler:the villainous Ma Skillet put him into a trance, causing him to throw Woodget (who could not swim) into the ocean. When he awoke from the trance, he realised what he had done and was filled with remorse. However, unbeknownst to him, Woodget was rescued by a siren whose song gave him amnesia. He was brought to the City of Hara in India and became their new sadhu.]]
* In ''Literature/TheDinosaurLords'':
** As a child, Karyl saw his immediate family being eaten alive by a wild dinosaur. As if that wasn't traumatic enough, soon afterwards his aunt kicked him out of the country to take over his family lands, leaving hism with nothing but a pair of trousers and his pet allosaurus Shiraa. He managed to climb out of it, though - he spent years serving as a mercenary on Shiraa's back until he amassed an army of his own and took his country back.
** Falk's father is said to have been extremely abusive, to the point that Falk still has nightmares about him and has o tell himself that the man can't hurt him anymore. He ended up pushing his father off the stairs, killing him, on orders of his mother, who's equally abusive, although in a [[WellDoneSonGuy different way]].
* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'':
** Eric's initially low self-confidence and self-esteem is due to his past but it is mild compared to some of the people he meets.
** Kallen Selios is a survivor of the Siduban Chaos Explosion and her parents were not. She was adopted by her mom's business partner because her remaining blood family was afraid of her mutation. Since then she has faced discrimination for being a demon and a "labrat".
** Zettai's parents were abusive, and after they died, she was homeless and vagrant. She traveled constantly to evade Ceiha's secret police because she was a courier in the magical black market. Then they eventually caught her and bad things happened to her behind bars. When Nolien shines an Illumination Orb over her at night, her automatic response is to shout "I'm innocent! Please don't arrest me!"

* K.J Parker's ''Literature/TheScavengerTrilogy''. The story revolves around Poldarn's unknown past and worse pasts are few.
* ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' has this with Count Olaf, and the entire series could be said to be the dark and troubled past of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny.

* In the ''Literature/NightfallSeries'', Prince Vladimir's entire human family was killed as a result of a rebellion gone wrong. However, he never uses it as an excuse for his evilness and is unapologetic about what he has done to humanity.

* Most of the main characters in T.S.Hana's ''Dawn of Craven: The Alchemist'' fall under this trope.
** Except Joshil.
** The Witch Megiram's servant, Ororo, is implied to have a troubled past, as she lives with the evil woman "by choice". [[spoiler: She chose to live with Megiram as a servant for life over staying with the possibly rich Axel who loved her quite a bit (to the point where he still blushes at seeing her). There had to have been something up.]]
* Wang Sau-leyan in ''Literature/ChungKuo''. He was ugly, fat, clumsy, and treated as a poor sequel to his brothers while he grew up. This is not presented as an excuse for his behavior, but it helps explain it.
* Sajag from ''Literature/DragonQueen'' killed a guy and then had to go into exile away from his family.
* ''Franchise/HarryPotter'':
** Harry had both parents murdered before his eyes at age one, nine years living with abusive guardians, being bullied at school by his cousin and his cousin's friends, a dead godfather, a dead mentor, the most evil person in his world has a connection to him, a life and death battle every year, and sometimes his friends turn their backs on him.
** Dumbledore, who went through the following events in his lifetime: 1) his sister was rendered [[PowerIncontinence magically unstable]] due to being attacked by [[BullyingADragon three]] {{Muggles}}, 2) [[ParentalAbandonment his father was sent to prison for attacking said Muggles,]] 3) his mother was accidentally killed by his unstable sister, 4) he then neglected said sister and spent all his time planning a takeover of the Muggle world [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans ‘for the greater good’]] with his crush Gellert Grindelwald, and 5) he might have accidentally killed his sister in a three-way duel with his brother and Gellert Grindelwald. ([[WordOfGod Rowling says]] [[TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest that what he did while infatuated with Grindelwald turned him asexual]]).
** Severus Snape: the neglected and emotionally abused child who fell to TheDarkSide at school and [[TheAtoner then devoted]] [[LoveRedeems the rest of his life]] to [[EccentricMentor Dumbledore's]] cause.
** Neville Longbottom also deserves a mention. Lives with his grandma because his parents were tortured into insanity by Death Eaters and feels that he can never live up to them and has no self confidence at all. He also thought for a long time that he was a squib and only discovered his magical ability by being dropped out of a window.
** Sirius Black, who had (let's count!): 1) a dead best friend, 2) a dead brother, 3) abandoned (disowned) by parents, 4) spent 12 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit (for bonus points, this jail employs [[EmotionEater Dem]][[HopeCrusher entors]] as wardens) , 5) been betrayed by former [[TrueCompanions True Companion]].
* ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' has this with Count Olaf, and the entire series could be said to be the dark and troubled past of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny.
* A lot of characters from Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire because Westeros truly is a CrapsackWorld.
** Sandor Clegane killed an innocent peasant boy and laughed about it, however the fandom forgave him as soon as he confided that his older brother Gregor had burnt his face as a child.
* Most of the vampires from ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' seem have dark and troubled last minutes of their '''''human''''' lives; the terrific pain of the transformative venom doesn't help matters.
* Vin from ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}.'' Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get-go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister [[spoiler: and performing Hemalurgy to transfer some of her soul to Vin]], before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive {{Jerkass}} who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her, [[spoiler: though it turns out that he was actually captured and executed]], leaving Vin without a protector in a den of scum. Of course, from there, she gets recruited by LaResistance, finds out that she's an ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl, and [[TookALevelInBadass takes a level in badass]], but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?

* Barbie, from Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/UnderTheDome'', has a [[MyGreatestFailure greatest failure]] in the time he [[spoiler: allowed his military unit in Iraq to torture and kill a prisoner for no reason]]. He regrets this for the rest of his life, and his remorse thinking back on it is bad enough [[spoiler: to get an EnergyBeing who sees him as an ant to show pity on him]].
* K.J Parker's ''Literature/TheScavengerTrilogy''. The story revolves around Poldarn's unknown past and worse pasts are few.
* Niall from ''Literature/WickedLovely'': 1. ColdBloodedTorture, 2. RapeAsBackstory, 3. both were orchestrated by the one he loved above all others, 4. inadvertently responsible for the deaths of several mortals. That's not even counting what happens to him ''during'' the series. He is TheWoobie, indeed.
* Harry in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. [[DeathByChildbirth Never knew his mother]], his dad died when he was a kid, bullied at an orphanage, adopted by an abusive EvilMentor who tried to turn him to TheDarkSide, had to kill him in self-defense, arrested by the White Council, barely escaped the death penalty for violating the Laws of Magic, and is still under the Doom of Damocles and being stalked by an InspectorJavert at the beginning of the series. None of this is what makes him a {{woobie}}; he is one because, taking into account the things that happen to him during the actual ''series'', his backstory isn't depressing so much as it's "a ''very small'' taste of what's to come.''
* Jez from the ''Literature/{{Spaceforce}}'' series, a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent space vampire]] whose entire race was almost totally wiped out in a genocidal uprising by their own 'bloodservants' when she was a teenager. The remnants were exiled from their homeworld, and now face fear-based prejudice in a supposedly liberal galactic Union.
* Burke from Creator/AndrewVachss' books. Born to a mother (strongly implied to be a teen prostitute) who promptly abandoned him, brought up through a variety of foster and juvenile homes, and experiencing the worst that humanity has to offer is a very succinct description of his past.

* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series, there are several:
** Bluestar's mother died when Bluestar was only an apprentice, and [[WellDoneSonGuy her father never really paid much attention to her and her sister]]. Her sister died as a young mother, and Bluestar felt guilty for her death because she'd convinced Snowfur to leave the camp for a little while. She had kits with a [=RiverClan=] cat (a forbidden relationship), but had to give them up in order to become deputy instead of Thistleclaw, and one died.
** Crookedstar sustained a disfiguring injury as a kit. Because his shallow mother couldn't stand having such an ugly kit, she [[TheUnfavorite neglected him, favored his brother]], and renamed him Crookedkit for his injury. After he rejected his EvilMentor, she cursed him so that he would outlive everyone he ever loved, completely helpless to stop it.
** Yellowfang, a medicine cat, had kits with the Clan leader (another forbidden relationship). Two of them died, and the one that lived became cruel and bloodthirsty, killing his own father and taking leadership, breaking the warrior code by [[InvasionOfTheBabySnatchers stealing kits from other Clans]], and even murdering kits from his own Clan and framing Yellowfang.

-->''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[DoorStopBaby leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home]], to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me.''
* While the ''Literature/AuntDimity'' series is generally upbeat, many characters have had brushes with insanity, tragic accidents, serious diseases, major injuries, even war and murder. In some cases, coping with the fallout occurs over an extended period (often carrying over from one book to the next). The fates of other, more minor characters are addressed in the epilogue that closes each novel; they typically go about rebuilding their lives, and are usually better off after all is revealed.
* Both main characters of ''Literature/GivesLight''. Skylar had his mother murdered in front of him when he was five. Her murderer realized he was in the room and slashed his throat. Skylar didn't die, but now he's irreversibly mute. To top this all off, his one dream in life is to be a singer. And then you have Rafael, son of said serial killer. Everyone equates him with his father and he has no friends. Until he meets Skylar.

* In Creator/WenSpencer's Literature/UkiahOregon series, Ukiah was abandoned in the woods to run with the wolves [[spoiler:before that, Magic Boy was brutally murdered, eventually creating Ukiah and Atticus]]. Atticus Steele was another foundling. The foster parents who would have adopted him died in a car wreck and he was passed from foster home to foster home throughout his childhood. Max Bennett's wife disappeared mysteriously while he was on a speaking tour, only to turn up at the bottom of a lake from a car wreck.
* Both Greg and Emma from the novel ''Literature/FortHope'' have troubled pasts. They come to find out their dark and troubled pasts are linked. Of course, in that book, almost {{everyone is related}} somehow.
* Samantha Cataranes from ''Literature/TheNexusSeries'' has a particularly unpleasant past. It is strongly implied during the first book that her experiences drove her to revile "Transhuman" technology and join the ERD as soon as she was old enough.

* In ''Literature/AllForTheGame'', the Foxes tend to have these. The team is set up as something of a halfway house to give promising athletes second chances.
* ''Literature/JamesBond'': 007's parents were killed during a climbing accident in the French Alps when he was eleven.
* Nikita from ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'' has spent her entire life running with her mother away from her insane father, all while dear old mom had her assist with assassinations and training her to be a killer - on pain of not getting any food if she failed a task. And when Nikita's father got to her, he kidnapped her, tortured and cut off two of her fingers, just because.
* ''Lierature/TheWitchlands'':
** Iseult has ran away from home shortly after Corlant started taking unhealthy interest in her mother, and nearly died when she was discovered by a Carawen monk. She had to leave the monastery as well, and then almost died again before Safi saved her and they became Threadsisters. All the time, she had to manage the copious amounts of FantasticRacism that all Nomatsi face - in the Dalmotti Empire, they're considered animals.
** Aeduen apparently used to live in a Nomatsi settlement before something happened that made him terrified of fire, killed his mother and caused him to flee. He was found by a Carawen monk and joined the monastery, but was ostracized there for being a Bloodwitch. At some point later, his father roped him into his schemes and convinced him that Aeduan should accept being a demon other people see him as.
** Cam [[spoiler:grew up in a gang, and his brother wanted him to become another gangster. Adding to that, he's biologically a woman, and everyone in the Nines think that he's just pretending to be a boy for laughs. He joined the Navy to escape the life of crime, but it caught up with him anyway.]]
* ''Literature/TheSpiritThief'': While all three main characters have some degree of this going on, Nico takes the cake. As a young child, she was kidnapped by slavers and sold to the Dead Mountain cult, where she grew to be Master's worshipper by the way of Stockholm Syndrome. She was eventually implanted with a demonseed and sent out to murder everything - until the League of Storms beat her within an inch of her life and the Master abandoned her, took his powers away and told her she's a failure and should die. If it wasn't for Josef appearing at a fortunate moment, she absolutely would have.
* ''Literature/TheMachineriesOfEmpire'': Jedao has some messed-up events in his past, such as [[spoiler:his superior raping him, him and his fellow agents being bombed by their own allies (with the other agent dying)]] and the Hellspin Massacre, when he had a psychotic break and ended up killing one million people on both sides of the conflict.

* Gillian Flynn's ''Literature/DarkPlaces'' has Libby Day, who saw her mom and two sisters murdered when she was seven years old. She then testified against her older brother, Ben, who got life in prison. Then she grew up being bounced around distant relatives and foster homes, eventually alienated her aunt Diane (the only close family she had left), never got a job or got over the murders, and "grew into a deeply unloveable adult."
--> "Draw a picture of my soul and it would be a scribble with fangs."

* In Morgan Ray Hess's ''Literature/{{Rainbow}}'', both of the main leads had ''[[UpToEleven very]]'' tragic and traumatic childhoods.
* ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Xaverri's husband and children were killed by the Empire, inspiring her vendetta against them. She declines to go into details on what happened, saying recounting it might kill her. Han's past also counts-he was a street urchin recruited by a criminal into working on his behalf as a beggar, con artist and thief. Before that, though details aren't revealed, it's implied that his parents were murdered and he wound up on the streets with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his memories of them erased]] for an unknown reason.
* In ''Literature/RamaII'', Nicole failed to win a beauty pageant because of racism. After she won an Olympic medal in sprinting, she hooked up with the prince of France, who abandoned her when she became pregnant with her daughter. She had to move in with her father, who allowed her to raise Genevieve with him. Genevieve's parentage still haunts her public life, such as her questioning by Sabatini. Francesca was sexually adventurous as a youth, and some past experience has left her callous, to the extent that she uses everyone. Richard had a father who abused him and his mother, leading him to feel very isolated (and eventually near suicide); this was spurred by his father being unable to cope after he lost his job as an engineer, suffering a case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. Adultery from his girlfriend when in college pushed him over the edge, such that he hurt, and then also nearly killed himself. Other characters are not generally shown to have explicitly traumatic pasts, but Brown was the cause of one for his wife and former [=PhD=] student, Elaine (whose scientific results he stole), and cosmonaut Janos is implied to have had to suppress homosexuality and political involvement, form his youth, in order to join the astronaut academy.

* ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'':
** Dash Rendar's family, it turns out, were once wealthy Corellian merchants, and he was in the Imperial Academy. Then his brother accidentally crashed into the Imperial Museum on Coruscant flying a ship, dying in the process (it had been sabotaged by Xizor, because they wouldn't sell their company to him). [[EvilIsPetty In revenge]], the Emperor had Dash expelled and exiled his entire family from the Core while seizing all their property, ruining them. Since then he's been a smuggler. It's brought up by a Rebel to appeal for his help as he has good reason to despise the Empire, but Dash still doesn't join them full on.
** Xizor, although the villain, also has one. After a deadly virus escaped from a lab in a city on his planet, the Empire destroyed everything within a hundred mile radius to contain it. This resulted in the deaths of his parents, siblings and two uncles, along with over a hundred thousand other people. It's implied [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes he really did love them]], and wants revenge against Vader (who ordered the virus project) due to this.

* The Literature/InDeath series: Eve was abandoned by her mother, raped by her father (who impregnated her mother with the sole intention of selling her to child molesters), killed him in self-defense, and then had to handle at least one abusive foster parent as she grew up in the system. Roarke was regularly beaten up by his father and non-biological mother, had to steal for his father, and even though Summerset took him in, they lost Marlena, Summerset's daughter, to a group of rapists. Dr. Mira watched her parents divorce, her mother remarry, and was sexually abused by her stepfather to the point of being DrivenToSuicide (fortunately, she survived). Boy, these three had it rough, didn't they?

* ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Xaverri's husband and children were killed by the Empire, inspiring her vendetta against them. She declines to go into details on what happened, saying recounting it might kill her. Han's past also counts-he was a street urchin recruited by a criminal into working on his behalf as a beggar, con artist and thief.

* ''Literature/{{Tasakeru}}'''s primary characters, the Outcasts, are shining examples of this trope, it's pretty much a prerequisite for being one. [[spoiler: One is a runaway {{Samurai}} suffering from SurvivorGuilt, one was disowned by her family for [[MagicIsEvil being a mage]], one grew up in poverty and had to steal to survive...]]

* In ''Literature/RamaII'', Nicole failed to win a beauty pageant because of racism. After she won an Olympic medal in sprinting, she hooked up with the prince of France, who abandoned her when she became pregnant with her daughter. She had to move in with her father, who allowed her to raise Genevieve with him. Genevieve's parentage still haunts her public life, such as her questioning by Sabatini. Francesca was sexually adventurous as a youth, and some past experience has left her callous, to the extent that she uses everyone. Richard had a father who abused him and his mother, leading him to feel very isolated (and eventually near suicide); this was spurred by his father being unable to cope after he lost his job as an engineer, suffering a case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. Adultery from his girlfriend when in college pushed him over the edge, such that he hurt, and then also nearly killed himself. Other characters are not generally shown to have explicitly traumatic pasts, but Brown was the cause of one for his wife and former [=PhD=] student, Elaine (whose scientific results he stole), and cosmonaut Janos is implied to have had to suppress homosexuality and political involvement, form his youth, in order to join the astronaut academy.

** YMMV, but Mr. Rochester was betrayed by his greedy father and brother to marry a woman they knew was insane just to get her money, and all the man ever wanted was to find someone to love.

* Harry Potter from the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' franchise: both parents murdered before his eyes at age one, nine years living with abusive guardians, being bullied at school by his cousin and his cousin's friends, a dead godfather, a dead mentor, the most evil person in his world has a connection to him, a life and death battle every year, and sometimes his friends turn their backs on him.
** [[spoiler: Dumbledore, who went through the following events in his lifetime: 1) his sister was rendered [[PowerIncontinence magically unstable]] due to being attacked by [[BullyingADragon three]] {{Muggles}}, 2) [[ParentalAbandonment his father was sent to prison for attacking said Muggles,]] 3) his mother was accidentally killed by his unstable sister, 4) he then neglected said sister and spent all his time planning a takeover of the Muggle world [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans ‘for the greater good’]] with his crush Gellert Grindelwald, and 5) he might have accidentally killed his sister in a three-way duel with his brother and Gellert Grindelwald. ([[WordOfGod Rowling says]] [[TheFirstCutIsTheDeepest that what he did while infatuated with Grindelwald turned him asexual]]).]]

** Crookedstar sustained a disfiguring injury as a kit. Because his shallow mother couldn't stand having such an ugly kit, she [[TheUnfavorite neglected him, favored his brother]], and renamed him Crookedkit for his injury. As he grew up, many of the cats he was close to died.

* In ''Literature/RamaII'', Nicole failed to win a beauty pageant because of racism. After she won an Olympic medal in sprinting, she hooked up with the prince of France, who abandoned her when she became pregnant with her daughter. She had to move in with her father, who allowed her to raise Genevieve with him. Genevieve's parentage still haunts her public life, such as her questioning by Sabatini. Francesca was sexually adventurous as a youth, and some past experience has left her callous, to the extent that she uses everyone. Richard had a father who abused him and his mother, leading him to feel very isolated (and eventually near suicide); this was spurred by his father being unable to cope after he lost his job as an engineer, suffering a case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. Adultery from his girlfriend when in college pushed him over the edge, such that he hurt, and then also nearly killed himself. Other characters are not generally shown to have explicitly traumatic pasts, but Brown was the cause of one for his wife and former PhD student, Elaine (whose scientific results he stole), and cosmonaut Janos is implied to have had to suppress homosexuality and political involvement, form his youth, in order to join the astronaut academy.

* In ''Literaure/RamaII'', Nicole failed to win a beauty pageant because of racism. After she won an Olympic medal in sprinting, she hooked up with the prince of France, who abandoned her when she became pregnant with her daughter. She had to move in with her father, who allowed her to raise Genevieve with him. Genevieve's parentage still haunts her public life, such as her questioning by Sabatini. Francesca was sexually adventurous as a youth, and some past experience has left her callous, to the extent that she uses everyone. Richard had a father who abused him and his mother, leading him to feel very isolated (and eventually near suicide); this was spurred by his father being unable to cope after he lost his job as an engineer, suffering a case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. Adultery from his girlfriend when in college pushed him over the edge, such that he hurt, and then also nearly killed himself. Other characters are not generally shown to have explicitly traumatic pasts, but Brown was the cause of one for his wife and former PhD student, Elaine (whose scientific results he stole), and cosmonaut Janos is implied to have had to suppress homosexuality and political involvement, form his youth, in order to join the astronaut academy.

* ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'': Xaverri's husband and children were killed by the Empire, inspiring her vendetta against them. She declines to go into details on what happened, saying recounting it might kill her. Han's past also counts-he was a street urchin recruited by a criminal into working on his behalf as a beggar, con artist and thief.

* In Morgan Ray Hess's ''Literature/{{Rainbow}}'', both of the main leads had ''[[UpToEleven very]]'' tragic and traumatic childhoods.