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Disowned Parent

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I'm stoked that I didn't know you
But, sucks you ain't give a fuck and consider a sperm donor now.
Tyler, the Creator, "Answer"

The inverse of I Have No Son! A person (who may be a child or an adult) disowns at least one of their parents.

The reasons for doing this can significantly vary. Their parent may be evil or abusive, or have abandoned them at a previous point. More sympathetic portrayals will usually portray it as a step in Delayed Family Acceptance or, in rare cases, the action of a Bratty Teenage Daughter.

This also may often happen because the character in question Hates Their Parent, but it doesn't need to. Also, plenty of hated parents are still in their child's life, whereas they are not in this trope. It's also a common outcome of a severely Broken Pedestal. Contrast You're Not My Father, which might be used regardless of whether the authority figure is an actual parent or not. Also contrast I Am Not My Father and Kids Punishing Parents, which might be one reason why a character might cut their parent out, but is not the only one.

It may lead to the character in question being a Self-Made Orphan. Also, it's totally possible for the character to only cut one parent out of their life — so they are not necessarily without family. Most commonly a very extreme version of Calling the Old Man Out. They will usually try to replace them (successfully or otherwise) with a Family of Choice.

Emancipated Child is often a subtrope and one way in which this can occur. However, that trope refers to the legal process by which a child becomes separated from their parents. As such, it refers only to minors and does not necessarily reflect how the offspring feels about their parents. This trope refers to the emotional and personal decision to disown one's parents, which frequently doesn't involve emancipation and occurs only informally. See also Disowned Sibling, when someone cuts ties with their sibling.

Choosing to go no-contact with parents is a very common and controversial thing in real life, so no real-life examples, please!


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Black Clover, Vanessa Enoteca flat-out tells her abusive mother, the Witch Queen, she isn't her family before "the red thread of fate" manifests itself. She specifically says that to her, the Black Bulls are her family.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • After Lucy comes home and learns the full extent of her father Jude's involvement in the guild war between Phantom Lord and Fairy Tail as well the selfish reasons he was willing to go through to bring her back for an Arranged Marriage, Lucy promptly disowns him as her father with her acknowledging Fairy Tail as being far more deserving of being called her family than him. The two of them do eventually reconcile shortly after Jude loses his fortune.
    • Erza is repulsed that her biological mother, Irene Belserion, gave birth to her just so she could take over her body, abandoned her in a random village when she failed, and is actively trying to kill her out of spite. Because of this, despite knowing the circumstances that drove Irene to such lows, Erza understandably has no problems telling Irene that Fairy Tail is her real family. However, at the end of their fight, Erza changes her tune when Irene commits suicide to protect her from herself during a Moment of Lucidity.
    • During his fight against Raven Tail in the Grand Magic Games Laxus makes it explicitly clear that he no longer views Ivan as his father with Laxus disowning him and telling Ivan that he sees the rest of the Fairy Tail guild as his only family now.
  • One Piece:
  • Rooster Fighter: Keiji refuses to help his half-brother Keisuke to rescue their father because he has abandoned his mother dying and is implied to have left for demon-hunting.
  • The Seven Deadly Sins: In the Cursed By Light movie, Elizabeth confronts the Supreme Deity and calls her out on what a horrible person she is to the point where Elizabeth disowns her and refuses to view the Supreme Deity as her mother with Elizabeth viewing Baltra, Margaret, and Veronica as her true family.

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City has a downplayed example with Jessie Taggart. She's deeply disappointed to learn that her father is the criminal Quarrel, where she holds a grudge against him for nearly 40 years and ignores his attempts at reconciliation. On the other hand, she expresses this most of the time by tersely ignoring him, and when he gets older she secretly supports the assisted living facility where he resides.
  • Mister Miracle (2017): It's implied that the protagonist resented his biological father for giving him away to Darkseid as part of a peace treaty. This subplot comes to a close in the final issue, when Mister Miracle is confronted by visions of allies who died throughout the series. Though he either ignores them or laments their deaths, his response upon being approached by the Highfather is to violently punch him and tell him to fuck off. He abandons the vision as it falls to the ground, ignoring its screams of "I'm your father! I'm your God!"

    Fan Works 
  • Advice and Trust: Done by Asuka in chapter 9 when she revised her will and next of kin stuff, and she cut her father and her step-mother out of her will, declaring "Screw my father and that woman, Shinji gets everything". From that point on, she doesn't regard her parents as family.
  • Rainbow Dash in Alicorn makes it repeatedly clear that she does not consider Celestia her mother, and only ever calls her "mom" when she's being sarcastic or when she's delirious from sickness. There are multiple reasons for this: First is that she's deeply resentful of Celestia for abandoning her as a child, second is that she sees accepting Celestia as her mother as a betrayal of her deceased adopted parents whom she loves dearly, and third is that being seen as Celestia's daughter would overshadow anything else she does in her life. When Celestia tries to convince her to let her make their familial relationship public, Rainbow refuses because introducing her to Equestria as Celestia's daughter would mean that nothing she ever does will be more notable than being Princess Aurora, daughter of Celestia.
  • In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, Nova Shine and his parents start off on rocky terms, to say the least. However, things come to a head when Nova visits them in an attempt to fix the relationship between them, and poorly-timed comments from his parents press Nova's Berserk Buttons, leading him to disown them as his family.
  • Blackbird (Arrow): Laurel Lance disowns her mother Dinah after Dinah trades Laurel to the League in exchange for her younger sister Sara's freedom. It's implied that the only reason Sara (who only went along with the trade because Dinah used her trauma against her and forced her to accept the decision) hasn't disowned Dinah as well is because of her massive Guilt Complex in regards to the situation, in addition to having to live with Dinah since she couldn't bring herself to tell their father Quentin about what happened.
  • Destiny is a Hazy Thing has Naruto outright disowning his parents and pretty much handing over parenting duties (and himself) to his loving Eldritch Abomination parents (It Makes Sense in Context) who proceed to torment Naruto's parents when he leaves the room.
  • Junior Officers:
  • In Chapter 10 of the The Loud House fic Loud Heroes, Chandler utters to his father Mr. McCann that he had decided he has no father just as he's about to kill him, as revenge for Mr. McCann telling him that he disowned him (which Mr. McCann regretted too late) not long before.
    Chandler: Now I have decided that I have no father, figuratively AND literally!
    Mr. McCann: No, nooo, NOOOOOOOO!
  • Only Flowers Fall ends with Lillie disowning her previously emotionally abusive mother and leaving for Kanto on her own. Lillie prefers to see Professor Burnet as her surrogate mother.
  • Owl's Hell That Ends Well: After being led by a combination of gaslighting and other tragic factors to believe that Stolas and Stella willingly gave her away to her kidnappers and never loved her, Octavia disowns them both, informing Stolas upon their reunion that she now considers Blitzo to be her real parent after he saved her from her kidnappers and cared for her for ten years. Later, Octavia gradually becomes willing to extend an olive branch to her original parents, but even so it's made clear that she emotionally considers Blitz her parent first, Stolas and Stella second if at all.
  • Past Sins: After Nyx is taken away by Princess Celestia under the suspicion that she is Nightmare Moon, and her adoptive mother Twilight doesn't stop it, Spell Nexus tricks the princess into letting him cast the spell that restores her to her adult form. When this happens, Nyx/Nightmare Moon rages at Twilight for letting Princess Celestia take her away, and with tears in her eyes, says, "I am ashamed that I ever called you my mother."
  • The Raven's Plan:
    • Thanks to the malfunctioning of a Time Travel spell, Stannis, his wife Selyse, and their daughter Shireen all remember how Stannis allowed Melisandre to burn Shireen alive as a Human Sacrifice in the original timeline. Shireen promptly disowns her parents, leaving Dragonstone with Ser Davos. Stannis' guilt drives him deep into alcoholism, while Seylse hangs herself.
    • Tommen disowns his mother Cersei, then disowns Jaime as well upon learning that he's his biological father, deciding to Shed the Family Name and become a Waters.
    • After they learn that their father Randyll threatened to kill their brother Sam if he didn't give up his inheritance and join the Night's Watch, Dickon and Talla both spurn him as well.
  • Syngenesophobia: It's implied by Lynn Sr. that Lana doesn't see him as her father anymore after learning that her pet snake, El Diablo, was put down for eating other animals at the animal shelter Lynn Sr. gave all of Lana's pets to. Lynn Sr. tells Rita that Lana hardly talks to him or looks at him unless she needs something, and last night when he heard the twins talking through the ceiling, Lola asked Lana something about him, which Lana tried to skip. He hopes that Lana would forgive her by buying her a Two-Stripped Water Monitor.
  • To Reclaim a Dream: Silas refuses to consider Gris as his father.
  • RWBY: Scars: Yang tells her biological mother Raven this. She had spent years looking for her but was disappointed by how cruel and distant Raven was. Yang's deceased stepmother Summer was a better mother than Raven. Yang doesn't want Raven anywhere near her family and threatens to kill her if she does get too close.
  • Synépeies - A Collection Of NTR Consequences: In Retaliation, Yui cheated on her husband Kosuke with his own father, resulting in a daughter named Aya. Kosuke exposes the affair and wins custody of Aya, raising her as his little sister, while Aya makes clear that she doesn't consider Yui to be her mother at all.
  • Vulkan Ascendant: Vulkan gradually builds up a Broken Pedestal towards his father the Emperor over the course of the story; by the end, he explicitly disowns the Emperor, partly in response to him confessing he never viewed the Primarchs as sons, making it mutual. Roboute does the same, albeit less dramatically.
    Vulkan: There is no place for me in your father's Imperium.
    Roboute: (smiling) The Emperor is not my father.
  • We’re Still Going to Try, a My Hero Academia fic, has Shouto do this to Endeavor after Endeavor accidentally hurts Izuku to the point of needing an arm amputated and losing much of his sight and Shouto gets really ticked off.
    Endeavor: Shouto, son…
    Shouto: You haven’t had a son by that name in a long, long time. And you certainly don’t now.

    Films — Animated 
  • Kung Fu Panda 3: After meeting his biological father Li Shan, Po travels with him to the mountains to learn the art of chi. While there, he finds out from Tigress that Kai has stolen the chi of all the kung fu masters and destroyed the Jade Palace, and frantically demands that Li teach him chi. Li confesses that he doesn't actually know anything about chi, and lied because he knew something bad was coming and he wanted to protect Po from it. Po is so hurt and angry that he disowns him, but this doesn't last, as he instead decides to teach kung fu to all the villagers, including Li, so they will be prepared when Kai attacks.
    Li Shan: I already lost you once, I don't want to lose you again. I can't.
    Po: You just did.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • She doesn't get to say it to his face until Avengers: Infinity War, but by Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Gamora has disowned the Mad Titan as her adoptive father. She goes out of her way to emphasize this dissociation, explicitly mentioning to Drax that she's no family to Thanos (no one has mentioned Thanos; Drax is trying to kill Gamora as an indirect method of getting revenge on Ronan), and sharply backtracks when she makes a Freudian Slip in a conversation with Quill.
    Gamora: My father didn't stress diplomacy.
    Peter: Thanos?
    Gamora: He's not my father.
  • The Incredible Hulk (2008): Betty Ross is furious with her father for causing Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk by lying to them about what the experiment they were conducting was for (he told them that it was to build up resistance to gamma radiation when it was really an attempt to create a new Super-Soldier) and refusing to take responsibility for it, as well as hunting down Bruce to perfect the Super-Soldier serum. When she finally confronts him, she shows just how bitter she is about the whole thing:
    Betty: I will never forgive you for what you've done to him.
    General Ross: He's a fugitive...
    Betty: You made him a fugitive, to cover your failures and to protect your career. Don't ever speak to me as your daughter again.
  • The Irishman: Frank's daughter Peggy completely cuts him out of her life after her mother passes, having realized years before that he murdered her Honorary Uncle Jimmy Hoffa on the Mafia's orders. When Frank visits one of his daughters who will still talk to him, she admits that they've all been scared of him their entire lives. Frank ultimately dies alone with none of his family there to comfort him.
  • Scream VI reveals that Tara has cut her alcoholic mother out of her life for refusing to see her runaway sister Sam after the events of Scream (2022).

    Folklore 
  • In the climax of the Indonesian folklore Malin Kundang, the titular character, after becoming rich through hard work, came across his old and poor mother. Out of shame with his new peers, he rejected his mother and said that such a poor woman couldn't be the mother of his new rich self. Said mother, out of grief, then cursed him to turn into stone as the retaliation.

    Literature 
  • John from Beautiful Music for Ugly Children has barely been in contact with his kids since they and their mother left in 1974. Gabe calls them when John is in a coma, and while Margaret is willing to see her father, Patrick tells Gabe that his father died in 1974.
  • Guardians of Ga'Hoole: In "The Outcast", the titular outcast owl (later called Coryn) rejects the evil family he's from, saying:
    The egg that held me came from the body of my mother, but I am not my mother's son, nor my father's. ... I have no parents.
  • Heralds of Valdemar: After Bear and Lena elope in the Collegium Chronicles, Bear's father Healer Tyrall tries to kidnap Bear to force an end to the marriage. After he gets arrested for charging up to the Royal Palace (and home of the Healer's Collegium) with armed mercenaries, Bear publicly declares that he is no relation to Healer Tyrall. It's implied that this will have actual legal force.
  • In the Horus Heresy novel Know No Fear, when the primarch Lorgar responds to an invocation of his father, the Emperor, with a whisper of "I am an orphan".
  • I Wish You All the Best: Ben de Backer's sister Hannah, who's ten years older than they are, used to constantly fight with her parents, especially her overbearing father. She moved out the day she graduated high school without saying a word to her family, other than leaving Ben a note with her phone number. The de Backers don't hear for her from another decade, until Ben's parents kick them out for being nonbinary and they call Hannah from a payphone.
  • In Jane Eyre, after Jane's aunt unfairly punished Jane and locked her in a room that Jane was terrified of, the 10-year-old Jane vowed to never call her "Aunt" again. Since the aunt was Jane's legal guardian, this counts.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Strongly implied with Posthumous Character Chloe Halford, who was born into the Sherwood clan but attended Kimberly Magic Academy under a pseudonym and apparently never contacted her birth family again. We learn later in the same chapter that her grandfather, the family patriarch, is an Affably Evil controlling sociopath, but Chloe never directly addresses the issue during the flashback in question.
  • The Truce at Bakura: Anakin Skywalker appears to Leia Organa as a Force ghost to ask her forgiveness. She tells him to pound sand: as far as she's concerned, her father was Bail Organa and Anakin, who (as Darth Vader) personally tortured her and then stood by as her adoptive parents and her entire planet were murdered, is just a guy who had sex with her mother a few times. She only slightly moderates this attitude later in Star Wars Legends, being willing to admit that Anakin had once been a good man before he turned to the dark side, but still never forgives him the way her brother Luke did.
  • What Maisie Knew: After being abandoned by her biological parents, Maisie is forced to stay with her adoptive parents, Mrs. Overmore and Sir Claude. Years later, she has to decide whether to stay by them or stay with her governess, Mrs. Wix. Figuring that her adoptive parents would likely end up in the same situation as her biological parents, she decides to leave them and go to Mrs. Wix as she was dedicated to looking after Maisie where her parents failed at.

    Live-Action TV 
  • All in the Family: In "Edith's 50th Birthday," Edith is nearly raped by an assailant in her own home, and suffers badly from post-traumatic stress, refusing to identify the man in question even though he's been released and attacked another woman. Gloria urges her to think of all of the women who the man could hurt, but when Edith refuses, Gloria (who's been trying to get through to her for weeks at this point) loses her temper and screams that her selfishness has turned her into an entirely different person: "YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER ANY MORE!" Edith then slaps Gloria across the face, but the shock of what she's done finally breaks her out of her depression, and, after apologizing, she decides to identify the man after all.
  • Astrid: Astrid's mother Mathilde abandoned the family when Astrid was an infant, out of fear she might harm her autistic daughter as her own mother had Mathilde's autistic brother. She tries to reconnect with the now-30-year-old Astrid in season 1, but Astrid rejects her as a parent, having no emotional connection to her that way. Instead, having reconnected with her at a tangram tournament, she chooses to think of her as "Mathilde the fabulous tangram player".
  • Breaking Bad: After learning that his father is a drug lord, Walt Jr. tells him that he never wants to see him again, and legally changes his name to Flynn so that he'll no longer be associated with him.
  • CSI: New York: Near the end of "Yahrzeit", the killer's Orthodox Jewish son disowns his father after it is revealed the father was a Hitler Youth member and only pretended to be a holocaust survivor in order to not be caught for his crimes.
  • Desperate Housewives: Gaby disowned her mother after being sexually assaulted by her stepfather and ran away to New York. Carlos convinces her to let her mother back into her life following the death of his mother, until Carlos learns that her mother really did know that Gaby was sexually assaulted, and throws her mother out.
  • In Family Law (2021), Abigail Bianchi disowned her father, Harry Svensson, years earlier for cheating on her mother, to the point that her kids thought their grandfather was dead before circumstances forced Abby to go work at his law firm.
  • Good Omens (2019): In the finale, Satan shows up to find out why Adam hasn't started the apocalypse. Adam Calls The Old Man Out on why, if he claims to be his father, he never showed up even once for all 11 years of Adam's life. He says that his real father is the man who raised him and cared for him, and since Adam is a Reality Warper, it becomes true.
  • Homeland: In Season 3, after her father, Nicholas Brody, was exposed to be a sleeper agent for Al-Qaida causing her to attempt suicide, Dana Brody changes her last name to disassociate from him. When Brody visits her to reconnect with her, Dana rejects him and tells him that she never wants to see him again.
  • L.A.'s Finest: Ben Walker has disowned his criminal mom, who's in prison, even telling his partner she died because she's now dead to him.
  • Money Heist:
    • In the flashback to the first season's fifth episode wherein the Professor assigns Rio and Tokyo to conduct an initial survey of the Royal Mint of Spain, Tokyo asks the Professor if it's because he thinks she's not good enough as a member of the heist team before following up with her mother, to which the Professor tells her that she died of a heart attack the previous day, and was worried about informing her because she wouldn't have been able to farewell her by that point. Tokyo tells him that she had effectively disowned her mother after her last call with her back at the beginning of the first episode, claiming that she was essentially trying to bring her to the police. She regrets her claim not long after, though, as she talks to Rio about her in a subsequent flashback.
    • Late in the Season 2 finale, Denver comes close to disowning Moscow as his father when the latter reveals to him that he had left his late girlfriend and Denver's mother alone at a drug market because she was always high on heroin and couldn't get back to functioning normally at all, long after previously lying to him about her being a Domestic Abuser who abandoned them herself (this lie being among his many attempts to ensure Denver's well-being). He quickly retracts when he sees Moscow receiving a fatal wound while defending Tokyo during her return to the Mint in the episode's climax.
  • Unforgotten: In Season 2, after finding out that her (now dead) father sexually abused her younger sister, and her mother was aware of it and did nothing, Elise takes her daughters out of her mother's house and says they will never see each other again and she will die alone and miserable, as she deserves.
  • Vera: In "Home.", the Victim of the Week tells her husband, children, and everyone else she knows that she is an orphan with no other family, and grew up in a care home. Once Vera and the team start to investigate her death, however, it turns out that her father and brother are very much alive, and she had walked out on them years ago, disowning them in the process.
  • Vida: Lyn disowns her dad over how he acted when Emma told him that she's queer.
  • The White Queen: Countess Warwick, who is her son-in-law Richard of Gloucester's captive and was declared legally dead by King Edward IV, tries to convince her daughter Anne Neville to leave her husband behind so that they can live together free from men. Anne is deeply in love with Richard, and she's so offended that she disowns her mother.
    Anne: (furious) Richard was right to shut you away. Now stay in here and be dead!
  • You (2018): Beck has disowned her father following his drug addiction, and tells everybody in her life that he's dead. She only recently got back in contact with him due to needing his financial help with grad school.

    Video Games 
  • Chrono Trigger: Janus claims Queen Zeal "isn't [his and Schala's] mother" after she grows obsessed with using Lavos' power to obtain immortality. She succeeds, setting humanity's progress back for millennia.
  • Project × Zone: If the player pairs Leon with Jin and Kazuya, one of the possible pre-battle dialogues has him asking if they are treating the current adventure as some sort of family vacation. Jin coldly replies "I've never considered this man my father."

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Simon Keyes believes his father was murdered when he was a boy, as he refuses to believe that his father would abandon him. He doesn't take the revelation that this was in fact the case well at all. Not only does he hate his father for being a murderer, but he adamantly insists he's nothing like him until it's revealed that he tried to cover his tracks in a murder he committed the same way his father did.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry: Rena Ryugu completely cut her mother out of her life, to the point of changing her name from "Reina," after she divorced Rena's father. In this case, Rena discovered her mom had been cheating on her dad for months and even tried manipulating Rena into obliviously accepting her boyfriend (whom she only knew as a friend of her mom from work) in the lead-up to the divorce.

    Web Comics 

    Web Video 
  • Viral Texts: Indie cut all ties with her mother Louise because she resented her poor living conditions growing up. Indie lied to her fiancé and his family about her being an orphan. She regretted it 2 years later and tried to get Louise to meet with her husband's family but she refused and the couple divorced.

    Western Animation 
  • A variant in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Robotnik Jr."; Dr. Robotnik invents the titular robot to act as a a son to him and carry out his evil legacy. Robotnik treats Junior better than his previous robots, Scratch and Grounder, which leads to the two robots trying to get rid of Junior. After Sonic saves Junior, Junior turns to Sonic's side, even saving him from Robotnik when the latter tries to zap him with the beam from the Extend-O-Tower. When Robotnik orders Junior to do as he says before he disowns him, Junior's response to this is "Big whoop! I'm disowning you! From now on, I'm on Sonic's side!"
  • American Dad!: In "Roger Codger", Roger goes missing and is presumed dead, and Stan (who was getting fed up with Roger's freeloading behavior) takes Steve with him to burn every shred of evidence that he existed. Steve, horrified by this flagrant display of bitterness, calls him a monster and declares "I have no father!".
  • Disenchantment: Bean to her biological mother Dagmar. After learning that Dagmar never loved her and only intended for her to fulfill a prophecy, Bean spends the remainder of the series trying to destroy her while simultaneously working to fix her relationships with her father, stepmother, and friends, all of whom have looked out for her since the beginning of the series.
  • Legends of Chamberlain Heights: Montrel disowned his abusive father Marvin after the latter walked out on him. When he returns after spending seven years in prison to the Cummings brothers' lives allegedly looking to make amends with his family only to eventually be outed as just being after Grover to enroll the kids in his other family into a prestigious school, Montrel challenges his father to a basketball game for custody of his brother, with the condition that Marvin can never return to Chamberlain Heights if he loses.
  • The Owl House: Amity Blight has a very difficult relationship with her mother Odalia, who is extremely controlling, demanding constant obedience and caring more about their family's reputation than her daughter's happiness. It comes to a head when Amity learns Odalia has been complicit with Belos' Final Solution plot to satiate her own greed, resulting in Amity coldly stating she will never speak to her again. Later, when the kids display drawings of their families, Odalia is conspicuously absent from Amity's picture.
  • The Simpsons: In "Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words", Lisa Simpson disowns her father Homer Simpson after finding out he had bet against her in a crossword tournament. She goes as far as to change her last name from Simpson to Bouvier.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Raven finally defeats Trigon while delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that concludes with her disowning him as a father and accepting the Titans as her true family.
    Raven: You may have created me... but you were never my father. Fathers are kind! Fathers protect you! Fathers raise you! I was protected by the monks of Azarath. I was raised by my friends. They are my family! This is my home! And you are not welcome here!
  • Total Drama: Julia has cut ties with both of her parents, calling them by their names and only speaking to them through her lawyers because they made her work at their bakery every Summer as a child. Due to her successful influencer career, Julia is evidently wealthy enough to live on her own, and given her determination, self-sufficient enough to make it work.

 
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Grey Leaves His Home

After years of suffering his father's abuse and seeing him abuse the servants, Grey disowns his father and leaves his home forever.

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