Quote:The Wanderer wrote:Of course there's counterexamples. Heck. there are _plenty_ of counterexamples. That said, even if it's not 50%, Main characters, Lead characters, whatever, they tend to have 'tragic backstories'. And Tragic Backstories tend to involve dead parents (Or crazy parents, or abusive parents or... you know. whatever).
He was talking about parents of main characters, not about main characters themselves.
I can think of at least one counterexample, of a main character whose parents are alive and happily together for the entire length of canon, right off the top of my head. I'm not sure there are enough others to refute the alleged pattern, though.
Leaving like she did, Mika's mother effectively forstalls a lot of the nastier options. That said, unless the parents are _super_ minor, they're almost required to fill _some_ sort of trope.
Whatever happens to, I don't really think you can argue that being the parent of a main/lead character will probably involve 'crap going wrong'.