History Main / DivineParentalIssues

* ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'': PlayedForLaughs with Zeus and his children, Storkules and Selene. While all are gods, Zeus is a blowhard and sore loser who is happy to enchant Storkules into destroying his best friend for a petty competition, even as Storkules begs him not to. He grounds both children in his temple to stop them from [[spoiler:assisting the mortals during Lunaris's invasion of Earth in "Moonvasion!" They eventually manage to escape and tie their father up in order to lend an assist at the last minute]].

* ''Pantheon High'':

* ''WesternAnimation/HazbinHotel'': Charlie Morningstar is the daughter of the ArchangelLucifer, who while not a god is one of the most explicitly powerful divine beings in the setting on par with the strongest of Angels, and definitely the strongest character in {{Hell}}. For millennia, Charlie's relationship with Lucifer has been strained due to Lucifer only really calling on her when he needs her to do something and the two otherwise not seeing a lot of each other, and it is only in "[[Recap/HazbinHotelS1E5DadBeatDad Dad Beat Dad]]" that they realize how much they actually have in common by being {{Wide Eyed Idealist}}s in a world of overwhelming cynicism.

* Literature/TheBible: Jesus, the Son of God, is willing to carry out the will of God the Father, but moments like Jesus calling out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" as he was on the cross might give this impression (in context, he was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, which, despite the opening line, ends on a triumphant note, as does Jesus' suffering with the resurrection).

* ''Theatre/TheLightningThief'' has the same as [[Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians the source material]] (see Literature), with an entire song dedicated to talking shit about their parents, quoted above. The complaints range from all of them being absent, to Aphrodite being embarrassing, to Demeter being an annoying GranolaGirl, to [[BreadEggsMilkSquick Kronos eating his children alive.]]

* ''Franchise/DragonAge'': PlayedWith regarding the relationship between [[spoiler:Morrigan and Flemeth[=/=]Mythal. On one hand, Morrigan had very good reasons to despise her mother, namely due to her being [[FamilialBodySnatching raised as a host for Flemeth to extend her lifespan]] as well as for having Morrigan [[StalkerWithATestTube be impregnated by a Grey Warden for her son to become a vessel for an archdemon's soul]]. On the other hand, not only would Morrigan not discover that Flemeth is the elven goddess Mythal until their confrontation in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', but the same game also reveals that the elven gods were actually [[GodGuise powerful mages who were deified by the elves whom they enslaved]] until they were banished to the Fade by Solas[=/=]Fen'Harel after they murdered Mythal out of jealousy.]]

* ''Videogame/GenshinImpact:'' The Raiden Shogun, the [[GodOfThunder Electro Archon]], once created a divine karakuri puppet as a test prototype, as part of her plan of making a new puppet body for herself, supposedly to reach her ideal of "eternity". Unexpectedly, said puppet -- which looks like a young boy -- developed a will and cried in his sleep. The Shogun thought this meant that he wouldn't be strong enough to bear the burden of divinity, so she decided to set him free so he could find his own way. Said puppet, however, thought of her as her mother and thus viewed her decision as ParentalAbandonment. Since then, he has always been resentful of her creator/mother; he then joined the organization "Fatui", called himself "Kunikuzushi" ("Country Destroyer"), and committed crimes with them, including trying to decimate the 5 blacksmith families in Inazuma as a form of revenge to her.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hades}}'': Zagreus is shown to have had a rocky relationship with his father Hades even ''before'' he learns that he's been lied to about his mother's identity and starts trying to break out of the underworld in order to meet her. This is partly due to Zagreus' own disdain for CelestialBureaucracy and partly due to Hades' sternness. Hades repeatedly and personally intervenes in Zagreus' escape attempts, up to and including [[spoiler:serving as the FinalBoss, though there's an element of ToughLove to it as Zagreus can't survive for long on the surface anyway]]. [[spoiler:As the game progresses, however, they slowly patch things up, and Hades officially sanctions Zagreus' escape attempts as a way of tightening the underworld's security so that no-one ''else'' can escape.]]
* ''VideoGame/SuicideSquadKillTheJusticeLeague'': Demigod, King Shark begins tearing up when Batman addresses Robin as "[[FamilyOfChoice son]]" in his pre-recorded message, admitting to the squad he has a complicated relationship with his own father. Unlocked ARGUS tapes go into detail, revealing that at a younger age Shark foolhardily went to the surface to prove himself, where he was captured and sent to Belle Reve penitentiary, and his father never once sent any rescue.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'': Played for laughs with Zeus and his children, Storkules and Selene. While all are gods, Zeus is a blowhard and sore loser who is happy to enchant Storkules into destroying his best friend for a petty competition, even as Storkules begs him not to. He grounds both children in his temple to stop them from [[spoiler:assisting the mortals during Lunaris's invasion of Earth in "Moonvasion!" They eventually manage to escape and tie their father up in order to lend an assist at the last minute.]]

->''When your dad's a god, life can be rough. I met the guy once and once was enough!''
-->-- Luke Castellan, ''Theatre/TheLightningThief''

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

** ''Fanfic/HowILostMyMother'': Celestia heard a prophecy that her daughter would end up overthrowing Equestria, and dealt with this by throwing her out, taking away her alicorn magic, and erasing everyone's memory of her existing in the first place - including said daughter's. [[SelfFulfillingProphecy Guess what said daughter ended up doing once she remembered]].

[[folder:Religion]]

* ''Videogame/GenshinImpact:'' The Raiden Shogun, the [[GodOfThunder Electro Archon]], once created a divine karakuri puppet as a test prototype, as part of her plan of making a new puppet body for herself, supposedly to reach her ideal of "eternity". Unexpectedly, said puppet - which looks like a young boy - developed a will and cried in his sleep. The Shogun thought this meant that he wouldn't be strong enough to bear the burden of divinity, so she decided to set him free so he could find his own way. Said puppet, however, thought of her as her mother and thus viewed her decision as ParentalAbandonment. Since then, he has always been resentful of her creator/mother; he then joined the organization "Fatui", called himself "Kunikuzushi" ("Country Destroyer"), and committed crimes with them, including trying to decimate the 5 blacksmith families in Inazuma as a form of revenge to her.

* ''WebAnimation/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice'': The Emperor, having gotten the AdaptationalNiceGuy treatment, has a much better relationship with his sons, which gets even better thanks to his CharacterDevelopment. This does not mean they don't have a ''lot'' of issues with him though, and none of them - not even the fanatically loyal Custodes - will hesitate in calling out what a colossal {{Jerkass}} he is.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ducktales2017'': Played for laughs with Zeus and his children, Storkules and Selene. While all are gods, Zeus is a blowhard and sore loser who is happy to enchant Storkules into destroying his best friend for a petty competition, even as Storkules begs him not to. He grounds both children in his temple to stop them from [[spoiler: assisting the mortals during Lunaris's invasion of Earth in "Moonvasion!" They eventually manage to escape and tie their father up in order to lend an assist at the last minute.]]

* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. At the end of "I Won't Be Home for Christmas", the camera scrolls up to the sky, with God and his bratty son Jesus, celebrating Christmas- I mean Jesus's birthday. God gifts Jesus walkie-talkies, but Jesus complains how they're not "two presents".
-->'''Jesus''': God... I mean you.

In stories where one or more characters have DivineParentage, chances are that they're going to have a rather poor relationship with that parent. Whether the parent is abusive, absent, or just doesn't really get along with their kid, it's ''very'' rare for any children of the gods to grow up without some degree of mommy or daddy issues.

** Yukio Takahashi is a more downplayed example, but there are hints he is a bit anxious as to whether he's really earned any of his accomplishments or if he just got them through divine fortune on acconut of his mother being Benten, a goddess of luck.

* Princess Celestia may not have actual children in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', but that doesn't stop various fanfic writers from exploring her broken relationship with various characters written as her children. These fics frequently depict her as a [[ParentsAsPeople deeply flawed mother]] who has trouble relating to her children due to her status as TheAloner, her royalty, and her divinity. Other fics go the RonTheDeathEater route and makes her actively cruel and abusive.

** ''Fanfic/{{Alicorn}}'': Celestia couldn't handle the idea of opening herself up to loving someone after 1000 years, leading her to give up her daughter at birth. 17 years later, Rainbow Dash is furious to learn who her mother is, both because her newfound royalty ruins her life, and because learning that not even her mother wanted her makes her InferioritySuperiorityComplex so much worse. Celestia does love her daughter and wants to reconnect, but at this point their relationship seems beyond repair.

* The gods in ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' are generally not actively abusive (with a few exceptions like Ares), but that's because being abusive would require ''being present''. Almost all half-bloods never meet their godly parent in their entire life, and a good amount of them grow up without even knowing ''who'' their godly parent is because they couldn't be bothered to claim them. The Hermes cabin, which hosts half-bloods without a known parent, is filled to the brim. The neglect causes so much resentment that a lot of half-bloods joined [[AbusivePrecursors Kronos]] just for the chance at making the Olympians suffer. [[spoiler:One of the boons Percy asks of the Olympians at the end of the series is that all half-bloods have to be claimed once they know about their heritage]].

* The Emperor from ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' is a raging narcissist, authoritarian tyrant, and ControlFreak to the extreme. Shockingly, this has gained him little love from any of his Primarch children, to the point that half of them ran off and joined Chaos, while the remaining half are either dead or don't like him all that much. When Roboute Guilliman, one of his children who most believes in his cause, came back, he had a talk with his father in which he more or less told him to piss off and that the only reason he's still supporting him is because he believes in the Imperium, and not because he's his father.

* ''Videogame/GenshinImpact:'' The Raiden Shogun, the [[GodOfThunder Electro Archon]], once created a divine karakuri puppet as a test prototype, as part of her plan of making a new puppet body for herself, supposedly to reach her ideal of "eternity". Unexpectedly, said puppet - which looks like a young boy - developed a will and cried in his sleep. The Shogun thought this meant that he won't be strong enough to bear the burden of divinity, so she decided to set him free so he can find his own way. Said puppet, however, thought of her as her mother, and thus viewed her decision as ParentalAbandonment. Since then, he has always been resentful of her creator/mother; he then joined the organization "Fatui", called himself "Kunikuzushi" ("Country Destroyer") and committed crimes with them, including trying to decimate the 5 blacksmith families in Inazuma as a form of revenge to her.

* ''VideoGame/{{Hades}}'': Zagreus is shown to have had a rocky relationship with his father Hades even ''before'' he learns that he's been lied to about his mother's identity and starts trying to break out of the underworld in order to meet her. This is partly due to Zagreus' own disdain for CelestialBureaucracy, and partly due to Hades' sternness. Hades repeatedly and personally intervenes in Zagreus' escape attempts, up to and including [[spoiler:serving as the FinalBoss, though there's an element of ToughLove to it as Zagreus can't survive for long on the surface anyway]]. [[spoiler:As the game progresses, however, they slowly patch things up, and Hades officially sanctions Zagreus' escape attempts as a way of tightening the underworld's security so that no-one ''else'' can escape.]]

* ''WebAnimation/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice'': The Emperor, having gotten the AdaptationalNiceGuy treatment, has a lot better relationship with his sons, which gets even better thanks to his CharacterDevelopment. This does not mean they don't have a ''lot'' of issues with him though, and none of them - not even the fanatically loyal Custodes - will hesitate in calling out what a colossal {{Jerkass}} he is.

** Finally, we have Erichthonius, the [[SnakePeople half-snake]] son of Athena [[DivineIncest and her brother Hephaestus]], who has a [[VillainHasAPoint more valid reason]] to hate his divine parents than the above examples, because ''he'' was [[ParentalAbandonment left behind in Athens]] by his parents. Why? Because Athena felt ashamed with herself for having given birth to him, both because A) it meant she could no longer count herself among the three [[VirginPower virgin goddesses]], and B) she felt guilty for having encouraged Hephaestus to cheat on his wife Aphrodite with her (even though Aphrodite herself, being a LoveGoddess, was hardly the most faithful wife, and actually ''wanted'' Hephaestus to find love with someone else so he wouldn't have to suffer from her infidelity anymore). In order to hide their "shameful" relationship, Athena and Hephaestus spread the false tale that [[FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo Erichthonius was Hephaestus' son with his great-grandmother Gaia instead]], and sent him to live on earth in Athens, hoping that the fact that the city's [[OurFounder founder]] King Cecrops was a half-snake himself would mean the Athenians would look kindly on the child. Sadly, the two gods underestimated the power of [[FantasticRacism human prejudice]], and Erichthonius grew up under much ridicule and discrimination, until his bitterness finally made him decide to turn against the gods, just so he could punish his parents for getting rid of him just to defend their reputations.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "Clash of Triton", the mighty King Neptune confesses that he has a troubled relationship with his son, Triton. Triton has started taking an interest in mortal games and curing diseases, which Neptune considers strange and doesn't really understand. Neptune eventually decides to deal with this by exiling Triton to the "Island in the Sky," never to be seen again, causing Triton to grow bitter and resentful. Once he's unleashed thanks to Patrick and Spongebob, he goes on a violent rampage, which Neptune considers proper godly behavior and makes him proud, leading to the two reconciling.

The reason for this common dynamic is quite simple: People very rarely like authority figures, and a divine parent manages to cram two of the greatest authority figures in an average person's life into one. The fact that a divine being is also largely to entirely removed from the mortal life their child presumably leads also means that them getting along poorly with them is all but a given.

* In ''Opera/TheMagicFlute'', Pamina is the daughter of the divine Queen of the Night. She loves her mother very much, and at the beginning, having been kidnapped for her own good by the high priest Sarastro, she wants only to reunite with her, despite Sarastro's insistence that the Queen would destroy her happiness. But then the Queen appears to Pamina and orders her to murder Sarastro, threatening to [[IHaveNoSon disown her]] if she refuses. This makes Pamina sadly realize her mother's cruelty, and from then on she embraces her new life in Sarastro's realm.

!Examples

In stories where one or more characters have DivineParentage, chances are that they're going to have a rather poor relationship to that parent. Whether the parent is abusive, absent, or just don't really get along with their kid, it's ''very'' rare for any children of the gods to grow up without some degree of mommy or daddy issues.

The reason for this common dynamic is quite simple; People very rarely like authority figures, and a divine parent manage to cram two of the greatest authority figures in an average person's life into one. The fact that a divine being is also largely to entirely removed from the mortal life their child presumably leads also means that them getting along poorly with them is all but a given.

In most cases, the god will be absent for the simple reasoning that this is the relationship most people have with a god, but in other cases the relationship might be more abusive, often by way of the god being manipulative or controlling. These two types of relationships happen to reflect the way western audiences are likely to view a god; Not present in every day life, but also someone who's rules they are expected to follow. For this reason, it's more common for the child to be the sympathetic party, since audiences can relate more to their side of things than they can to an immortal divine being.

* Literature/TheBible: The Father is presented in a wholly positive light, and Jesus is mostly cool with the whole die for humanity's sins thing, but there are instances where he doubts his father. Most famously when Jesus was suffering on the cross and called out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

* The Emperor from ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' is a raging narcisist, authoritarian tyrant, and ControlFreak to the extreme. Shockingly, this has gained him little love from any of his Primarch children, to the point that half of them ran off and joined Chaos, while the remaining half are either dead or don't like him all that much. When Roboute Guilliman, one of his children who most believes in his cause, came back, he had a talk with his father in which he more or less told him to piss off and that the only reason he's still supporting him is because he believes in the Imperium, and not because he's his father.

-->Jesus: God... I mean you.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{SpongebobSquarepants}}'': In "Clash of Triton", the mighty King Neptune confesses that he has a troubled relationship with his son, Triton. Triton has started taking an interest in mortal games and curing diseases, which Neptune considers strange and doesn't really understand. Neptune eventually decides to deal with this by exiling Triton to the "Island in the Sky," never to be seen again, causing Triton to grow bitter and resentful. Once he's unleashed thanks to Patrick and Spongebob, he goes on a violent rampage, which Neptune considers proper godly behavior and makes him proud, leading to the two reconciling.
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