History Main / RichKidTurnedSocialActivist

* In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity'', Callum Crayshaw is a guest on the "Pressing Issues" talk radio show. He is a stereotypical trust-fund liberal who genuinely wants to help the lower classes, but has no practical ideas on how to do so (his solution to gang battles and automatic weapons on the street is to let all the criminals out of jail), struggles with the concept of people who don't have access to a trust fund, and mostly ends up blathering about his vacations to third world countries.

* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', Ilmeni Dren is the daughter of Vedam Dren, the duke of Vvardenfel and head of the wealthy House Hlaalu. She lives in a simple apartment and is one of the most prominent opponents of slavery in Vvardenfel.

* "WesternAnimation/{{MonsterHigh}}": The G3 cartoon's version of Heath Burns is this, being the son of Hades who disagrees strongly with him over his business's pollution.

* Literature/ErastFandorin's girlfriend in ''Literature/TheStateCounsellor'', Esfir Litvinova, is the only child of one of Moscow's richest bankers -- as well as a radical left activist. While her father is extremely happy about her dating Fandorin (a respectable civil servant, as opposed to her usual preference for men from the lower classes), she dumps him by the end of the book -- but not before shifting his political views away from the strong conservative monarchism he has displayed throughout earlier books.

* Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}}. He started life as a wealthy prince, sheltered from the world until he one day got the opportunity to go on a carriage ride, where he saw many people suffering. This upset him, and he renounced his pampered royal life to become an ascetic. After many years as an ascetic, he found himself no closer to enlightenment than he had been as a prince. After much meditation, he came to the conclusion that most of the suffering he saw was due to people's greed and materialism, but that the utter rejection of material things was in its own way materialist. He therefore posited that the way to attain freedom from suffering was to free oneself from the ''attachment'' to the material--which included both the possession of material objects and the rejection of them. He gained quite a few followers, in his lifetime and beyond.

* In ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'', Star Butterfly, princess of Mewni's royal family and heir to the throne, becomes a proponent for [[ZombieAdvocate the rights of monsters]] by the second season after re-reading her Mewnipendence day book revealed how unfair the Mewman treatment of monsters really was.

This character is usually a young idealistic kid from a wealthy background who takes a hands-on approach to helping the poor and helpless. Their family is filthy rich, but this kid is very well aware of their privilege and they desperately want to balance social injustices. They try to use their money to help the poor, the homeless, the addicted, the ill, orphans and abandoned kids, and other people in need. They may be involved in various charity projects but most importantly, they'll be interacting with those in need personally. They'll organize charity drives, they'll buy them food and clothes and toys and medicine and distribute it all in person. With smiles and immense emotional support.

A Social Activist often advocates for systemic change, or at least acknowledges the unfairness of the system, even if that includes their own wealth. It's an eventual conclusion to draw from immersing themselves in the struggles of the lower class and helping personally. Some of them might have political aspirations and hope to bring about a new economic system that is more just and install an equal society. These kids are often true revolutionaries at heart, and they may become pure socialists or anarchists. Usually they're idealistic and they believe they work for the greater good, but they lack any real grasp of the politics or what revolutions really look like. Their trust funds will always be welcome to their fellow social activists.

Some of them might be SecretlySelfish types who do it for PR or who tell themselves that GoodFeelsGood, but they still invoke/exploit the notion of this trope. Still others may be doing it purely to annoy and defy their parents (and their class).

Not to be confused with SlummingIt, [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething noblesse oblige]], or [[WealthyPhilanthropist philanthropy]], though they can overlap. It can also overlap with NonIdleRich or HeroDoesPublicService. See also BoomerangBigot (if the character is OldMoney who [[EatTheRich hates Old Money]]), HopeBringer and WhiteMansBurden. See also PhotoOpWithTheDog if their charity work could be a publicity stunt, or mistaken for one. This character might become a BourgeoisBohemian when they grow up.

* Narsus in ''Literature/TheHeroicLegendOfArslan'' is a noble person and a genius strategist who is morally opposed to his country's tradition of keeping slaves, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance an attitude that makes him highly eccentric within the setting]]. He freed his family's own slaves as soon as he inherited his father's title, and is so outspoken about it that before the series he was declared no longer welcome at the king's court despite his strategems having saved the kingdom only a few years earlier.

* The title character in ''WesternAnimation/FritzTheCat'' thinks of himself like this, when in fact he's just making irrational, barely-informed judgements based on WhiteGuilt and whatever he picked up in an NYU class. His resulting call for revolution results in all of Harlem getting hammer bombed by law enforcement.

* ''Film/{{Julia}}'': Julia comes from a wealthy family, but hates living with them due to her belief in social justice. Later, she drops out of university, forgoing a medical career, in order to join the anti-fascist movement.
* ''Film/KnivesOut'' adopts a more cynical version towards this trope. At first glance, Meg matches this trope to a tee -- young, contemptuous of her staid conservative relatives, gets on well with and defends "the help", is studying something vaguely understood by her relatives to be along Marxist / post-modernist / social justice lines, tends towards politically correct self-righteousness, likes weed, and so forth. However, when her share of the family inheritance ends up being threatened, she's quick to turn on her lower-class friends [[spoiler: by revealing that Marta's mother is in the country illegally]] and side with the relatives she supposedly disdains. While she does later demonstrate regret for this, it's ambiguous how sincere she is and the point is nevertheless made that in most cases of this trope, the "Rich Kid" part will usually win out over the "Social Activist" part when the crunch time comes.

* ''Literature/TheEssexSerpent'': George Spencer is a doctor and his family is described as 'embarrassingly rich'. He falls in love with Martha (from the working-class, but now a lady's companion) who however doesn't return his feelings. She doesn't tell him this right away and keeps him hooked because she plans to use him to help her solve the problem of London housing and deal with poverty in general. George improves conditions for lodgers in the buildings he buys and the rent is very low. He plans to work for the poor even after it becomes clear that Martha won't change her mind.

* ''Literature/Uprising2007'' has Jane, the wealthy daughter of a factory owner who learns of the Triangle Strike and joins the cause, mainly to help her newfound friends and partially to get back at society and her father. [[spoiler:In the end she ends up dying alongside many others in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire]].
* Deconstructed in ''Your Driver Is Waiting'': Damani’s girlfriend Jolene is a wealthy white woman who spends much of her time going to the city’s many protests and volunteer work. But despite her best intentions, it’s clear Jolene doesn’t fully understand how exploitative Damani’s job is or how the poor survive due to her privilege. She also clashes with Damani and her friends’s plans for direct action as opposed to her more performative efforts. [[spoiler: And she’s not without her biases. Damani learns that the hard way when she takes her friend Shreef’s jokes about bombing the rideshare headquarters as fact, resulting in her calling the police, getting the Doo-Woop shut down and several immigrants deported. She also dumps Damani and dates another working class woman of color, implying that she HasAType.]]

* ''Series/DowntonAbbey'': Lady Sybil Crawley is an earl's daughter. She's liberal and radical in her opinions. She's a socialist at heart and supports woman's suffrage. She cares on a personal level: she befriends housemaid Gwen Dawson who is determined not to follow the prescribed path for women of her social status and strives to make a better life for herself. Lady Sybil helps her to land a job as a secretary.

* ''Series/TheBarrier'': One of the recurring members of LaResistance is a government offical's adult daughter who wants to help those worse off than her.
* Zig-zagged in the ''Series/{{NUMB3RS}}'' episode "Tabu". An heiress joins up with an underground anti-capitalist organization, but Megan deduces that she's just using the group to lash out at her billionaire father and doesn't really care about the underlying cause; as she points out near the end of the episode, the girl had access to millions of dollars, but didn't give a cent of her own money to the cause she was supposedly so dedicated to.

* ''Theatre/LoveInHateNation'': Francis is a wealthy Ivy League student who takes up various civil rights causes, including dating Susannah, a black girl, during [[TheSixties a time]] when it's forbidden, but it's implied most of this is just to get clout with his progressive friends. It's worth noting that, for all his self-aggrandizing, he isn't willing to support LGBT rights and has [[StayInTheKitchen regressive views about women]], snapping at Susannah when he (correctly) suspects her to be a lesbian and guilt tripping her for not taking the opportunity to marry a rich man.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXVI'': Clive Rosfield, albeit in a RichesToRags manner. Initially the firstborn son of the Duke of Rosaria, he is sold into slavery due to him being a Bearer after his father is betrayed to the Sanbreque Empire and killed, and spends thirteen years as a soldier until being escaping and being saved by Cidolfus Telamon. From that point on, Clive eventually becomes an abolitionist working to free Valisthea's slaves [[spoiler:who eventually becomes the leader of the Hideaway after Cid dies]], though he initially is only seeking revenge for his younger brother's murder.

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* Winifred "Freddie" Quinn of ''Webcomic/BreakingCatNews'' was the heiress to a vast fortune and used her wealth to [[KindheartedCatLover open a cat shelter in memory of her beloved childhood cat Tillie]]. She didn't just fund the shelter, though; she also spent plenty of time there doing things like bottle-feeding orphaned kittens. She's died and come back as a ghost by now, but she's still [[https://www.gocomics.com/breaking-cat-news/2018/11/03 watching over the cats who live in her former home]].

* Tabby of ''WebVideo/ContraPoints'' is a representation of the stereotypical left-wing activist UsefulNotes/{{furry|fandom}} UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} woman ([[StealthPun her nickname even comes the Sabo-Tabby]]), and implicitly has (or prior to transitioning had) the same upper-middle-class background as most of Natalie Wynn's characters. Deconstructed in that she has difficulty explaining anything without obtuse academic jargon, and gets criticised for starting violence that she might not be as likely to suffer the consequences of (since despite being trans and dressing as a CatGirl, she's still upper class, white, and passes well).

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ninjago}}'': Harumi is the adopted daughter of the emperor and empress. Since she started her life as a commoner, she knows how tough it is for average citizens, so she frequently takes her family's leftover food to distribute it to hungry people. [[spoiler:At least part of this is an act in order to gain Lloyd's trust, but her distain for the royal family and their wastefulness is real, and she's shown to empathize with a child she relates to, so there may be a nugget of truth to it.]]

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee Clement Attlee]], He was born into an upper middle class British Family. But while volunteering in the slums of London's east end, he was exposed to poverty and became a socialist. He would go on to be Britain's first deputy prime minister in the wartime coalition, Become the first labour prime minister to win a complete majority in 1945 after the war ended, and go down in history as one of the greatest British Prime Ministers and left wingers in history.
* Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}}. He started life as a wealthy prince, sheltered from the world until he one day got the opportunity to go on a carriage ride, where he saw many people suffering. This upset him, and he renounced his pampered royal life to become an ascetic. After many years as an ascetic, he found himself no closer to enlightenment than he had been as a prince. After much meditation, he came to the conclusion that most of the suffering he saw was due to people's greed and materialism, but that the utter rejection of material things was in its own way materialist. He therefore posited that and that the way to attain freedom from suffering was to free oneself from the ''attachment'' to the material--which included both the possession of material objects and the rejection of them. He gained quite a few followers, in his lifetime and beyond.

* Rinoa Heartilly in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' turns out to come from a privileged upbringing in Galbadia, one of the most powerful nations of the game's world; her late mother was a famous singer and her father is a prominent Galbadian general. Rinoa is introduced as a member of the resistance movement against her own country's military occupation of Timber, hiring the [[PrivateMilitaryContractors main party]] to help her group in their efforts to liberate Timber from Galbadian control. Her idealism and her lack of practical experience or training contrast sharply with the rest of the main cast, especially [[ConsummateProfessional Squall]].

* ''ComicBook/GreenArrow'': Green Arrow started off as, at best, a "limousine liberal" until writer Dennis O'Neil introduced a storyline in which Oliver Queen lost his fortune. A few nights on the street dealing with the social services net from the bottom radically altered Green Arrow's politics, leading to him becoming an outspoken champion of the poor and oppressed, as a cross between Robin Hood and Abbie Hoffman.

* ''ComicBook/YoungAvengers'': [[Characters/HawkeyeKateBishop Kate Bishop]] is the youngest daughter of a Manhattan publishing magnate and grew up wealthy, attending posh boarding schools and developing world-class archery skills and the like. However, ''Young Avengers Special'' explains that unlike her sister Susan, she was [[RichBoredom never comfortable with her family's wealth]] and was distant from her father, so she set about emulating her mother by volunteering at soup kitchens and women's shelters. After she was assaulted by a homeless man, she turned to martial arts and later superheroing; her considerable wealth [[TheTeamBenefactor funded the team's early efforts]].

* ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'': One sketch has WesternAnimation/RichieRich fall on hard times (his father refused to buy him a rocket-powered skateboard), so he bonds with a homeless man and begins working to fix the inherently flawed capitalist system that left the man jobless. When he learns that the special interest money that led to the man's employer being shut down came from his own father, Richie decides to take direct action by ''murdering'' him. [[spoiler:His father bribes him with the rocket-powered skateboard, and Richie is immediately back to his original, uncaring personality.]]

Social Activist often advocates for systemic change, or at least acknowledges the unfairness of the system, even if that includes their own wealth. It's an eventual conclusion to draw from immersing themselves in the struggles of the lower class and helping personally. Some of them might have political aspirations and hope to bring about a new economic system that is more just and install an equal society. These kids are often true revolutionaries at heart, and they may become pure socialists or anarchists. Usually they're idealistic and they believe they work for the greater good, but they lack any real grasp of the politics or what revolutions really look like. Their trust funds will always be welcome to their fellow social activists.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' features a few wealthy [[BlueBlood purebloods]] who ended up in the Order of the Phoenix, dedicated to resisting the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Death Eaters]]' agenda of [[FantasticRacism enforcing purebloods' elite position]] in the FantasticCasteSystem. Sirius Black is an extreme example: not only did he join the Order, he'd been pointedly rebelling against his parents' blood purism since adolescence.

* While many of the Bolshevik leaders of the Russian Revolution had at the very least middle-class origins (which makes sense, considering that Russian society of the time made it very hard to get any sort of meaningful education without a certain amount of wealth and privilege), Leon Trotsky probably matches this trope the most, as he came from a family of wealthy landowners. This was something that was often used against him during his power struggle with Joseph Stalin (who, for what it's worth, actually ''was'' from poverty) following the death of Lenin.

Compare/contrast with CrimefightingWithCash and MisfitLabRat. Contrast RevolutionariesWhoDontDoAnything -- those who say that they're an "agent of change" and yet do nothing meaningful, while here, the rich kid actually does something to improve the society, hands-on.

Some of them might be SecretlySelfish types who do it for PR or who tell themselves that GoodFeelsGood, but they still invoke/exploit the notion of this trope. Still others may be doing it purely to annoy and defy their parents.

Compare/contrast with CrimefightingWithCash. Contrast RevolutionariesWhoDontDoAnything -- those who say that they're an "agent of change" and yet do nothing meaningful, while here, the rich kid actually does something to improve the society, hands-on.

* The Pied Piper, a former ComicBook/TheFlash villain. Born Hartley Rathaway to parents from old money, the Piper used to donate his stolen loot to the poor and continued to personally help the homeless after he reformed.
* ComicBook/GreenArrow started off as, at best, a "limousine liberal" until writer Dennis O'Neil introduced a storyline in which Oliver Queen lost his fortune. A few nights on the street dealing with the social services net from the bottom radically altered Green Arrow's politics, leading to him becoming an outspoken champion of the poor and oppressed, as a cross between Robin Hood and Abbie Hoffman.
* The original Doctor of ComicBook/TheAuthority was a software billionaire. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he gave away his fortune and tried to waste his life in a flophouse. Jenny Sparks convinced him to join her socio-anarchist collective.
* ComicBook/KateBishop of the ComicBook/YoungAvengers is the youngest daughter of a Manhattan publishing magnate and grew up wealthy, attending posh boarding schools and developing world-class archery skills and the like. However, ''Young Avengers Special'' explains that unlike her sister Susan, she was [[RichBoredom never comfortable with her family's wealth]] and was distant from her father, so she set about emulating her mother by volunteering at soup kitchens and women's shelters. After she was assaulted by a homeless man, she turned to martial arts and later superheroing; her considerable wealth [[TheTeamBenefactor funded the team's early efforts]].

* In ''ComicBook/TruthRedWhiteAndBlack'', Maurice Canfield is the son of a wealthy black family who spends his days hanging out with socialists, much to his parents' horror.

* ''Literature/{{Uprising}}'' has Jane, the wealthy daughter of a factory owner who learns of the Triangle Strike and joins the cause, mainly to help her newfound friends and partially to get back at society and her father. [[spoiler:In the end she ends up dying alongside many others in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire]].

* The scary-looking punk girl in [[https://notalwaysright.com/judge-a-sandwich-on-its-filling/76326/ this]] story from ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'' turns out to be a kindhearted spirit from a wealthy family, who buys sandwiches and coffee for homeless locals from a neighborhood coffee shop and stuffs hundreds in the tip jar to help out the baristas who are working to pay for college. When asked, she explains that she just finds face-to-face interaction more fulfilling than signing checks to charities.

* The scary-looking punk girl in [[https://notalwaysright.com/judge-a-sandwich-on-its-filling/76326/ this]] story from ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'' turns out to be a kindhearted spirit from a wealthy family, who buys sandwiches and coffee for homeless locals from a neighborhood coffee shop and stuffs hundreds in the tip jar so the baristas can go to college. When asked, she explains that she just finds face-to-face interaction more fulfilling than signing checks to charities.