> From now on I will dedicate my body and soul to freeing my Kingdom!
> Were you born to a noblewoman of ancient linage at the hight of the winter solstice?
> N-no. My parents are cobblers
> Then you can't REALLY save the kingdom. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Chosen Hero when he stumbles along!
Everybody knows a defining trait of a Hero is a significant birth. Doesn't this strike anyone else as elitist? Especially in stories where it turns out the seemingly common hero has Noble liniage and so is the only one 'allowed' to save the kingdom? At best the idea that someone is born to succeed and you are not seems a bit Calvanist.
> inb4 you are being an autist by overthinking this
Obviously, why else would I be on this Anonymous Taiwanese Gaming Forum?
>>47290155
>Everybody knows a defining trait of a Hero is a significant birth
Never heard of this. In all the stories I've read with a chosen one, it's always some podunk farmboy nobody.
Besides, a "significant birth" could happen to just about anybody.
>>47290155
Westley from Princess Bride
>>47290198
>In all the stories I've read with a chosen one, it's always some podunk farmboy nobody.
You never got to the part where they were actually the descendant of some great wizard or old king?
But plenty of stories feature humble people from humble beginnings with no inherent worth doing great things. The Hobbits from the biggest pillar of fantasy are a perfect example of that. You cannot get more salt of the earth or mundane and, yet, they happened to be the grandest heroes.
Sure, other stories have their birth or natural gifts be super important to the hero's journey, but just as many ignore it or subvert it.
Im trying to think of a story where the hero is highborn, but doesn't have any skills or abilities greater then the common man because of his birth, like his great great grandmother was a dragon or something.
Weren't Frodo and Bilbo a couple of NEETs?
>>47290324
>have a bitchin' hole and a ton of inherited money
>get taken on an adventure by a magic hobo and a bunch of midget wrestlers
>pick up a bagful of powerful artifacts on the way, get literal tones of gold from the dorfs
>spend the next half century getting blazed on longbottom leaf and writing a book
Bilbo had it figured out
>>47290380
>get taken to the dank elf party island instead of dying
wisdom
>>47290297
Technically, Bilbo was nobility. He was the equivalent of a landed gentleman; he wasn't just a farmer. Remember, he didn't have to work to make a living.
Also, King Arthur was secretly the son of Uther Pendragon, and - as we all know - the heroes of Lord of the Rings all hail from ancient houses of their respective race.
>>47290155
I don't know, I really like the idea of noble blood naturally rising to the top. I don't believe the everyman can be a hero: Cannon fodder, maybe, or a companion. But the real protagonist needs the grace of god/a lineage of nobility.
Being born to succeed is great. Hell, the Joestar bloodline is an example of a bloodline that is naturally drawn to supernatural weirdness...And they were nobles, too!
Quite liked how they handled it in Morrowind. You were prophesized, but werent. All the ghosts in Azura's cave were just as much the Nerevarine as you are, except they died while completing the prophesy.
>>47290499
But being rich isn't what made Jonathon or any of his descendants heroes. That was something they earned by kindness or their courage.
I always wanted a setting where everybody talks about the Legendary Heroe's linage, and how special and unique it is/was. Then it turns out the dude was just the best man for the job and the lineage thing was made up for morale reasons.
>>47290606
They were explicitly of noble blood, though.
>>47290380
MFW movie fags actually think pipe weed means marijuana. It's just tobacco ya dumbasses but tobacco doesn't sound fanciful enough for tolkiens writing style.
>>47290499
The divine right of kings is quite appealing. I keep saying that we should have a king or emperor, not for the sake of the government but as an uncorruptible, perfect symbol that the whole country can rally around to end this plague of division.
Then again, I dream of conquering a third world country and bringing it out of poverty and onto the global stage as its king, and suffer from some pretty bad memory loss, so I might actually be a time traveling colonial soldier.
>>47290155
>Everybody knows a defining trait of a Hero is a significant birth
I want to contest this claim, because after thinking about this for some time, this trope seems nowhere near as common as you seem to imply. In fact it seems that the inversion of this idea (the prophecy was made up all along) is far more common.
>>47290198
This, usually he's still the "chosen one" which means he is the only one who can save the kingdom because magic.
>>47290606
It probably helped. Dio was poor as fuck, and filled with an immense bitterness towards the world.
>>47290629
So, that Dwyane Johnson Hercules movie?
>>47290499
Noble lineages start and end with an anonymous grunt stabbing someone in the back with a pointy bit.
Great moments are what make great men, the rest is just the legend that gets hyped up around you after you've already become important.
>>47290701
> implying anon watched that movie
> implying anyone watched that movie
> implying you watched that movie
>>47290380
>get literal tones of gold from the dorfs
It was two small chests! One of silver and the other of gold.
Also, who cares if Legendary Magical Peasant With Blood of Kings kills the Demon Lord Astragolarth? The real thing oppressing the kingdom for years has been Duke Fried's taxes, and now that Amanda Cobbler the cobbler's daughter has led an army successfully to take the capital and put his head on a pike, she's in charge and will get to invent legitimacy for her dynasty. And if that fails she'll just marry off herself or her children to Legendary Swordsman so that even by the old dynasty's standards her line, once her unique genius and cult of personality is gone, will be legitimate in terms of blood and magic destiny.
>>47290763
A half-meter cubed box of gold is about two and a half tonnes.
>>47290745
Not that anon, but I watched it and it was fuckin' sweet.
>>47290745
I did watch that movie. On a streaming site. Two hours of my life I'm getting back, but at least I can be satisfied the chucklefucks who made it didn't get a dime from me.
>>47290806
I'm NOT getting back
What the hell.
>>47290155
Heroes aren't born, they are made.
An old Magic Card, from like second edition, had "You don't have to step forward to be a hero. Everyone else has to step back." or something. I think it is very true.
All it takes for anyone to be a hero is them not stepping aside.
>>47290155
I've always liked it better when the hero isn't the one chosen, but the one who steps up (well, and actually succeeds). It's a nice literary plot device for there to be some kind of fate or something, but I've always been a fan of a hero who has to step up to the challenge.
There's variations as well, the hero's initial stepping up might get him noticed, and therefore "chosen" by some power or another, or they might exhibit some form or combination of character and traits that make them worthy of the choice, but ultimately still have to go through the trials necessary to receive whatever it is that makes them the chosen one.
But inheriting that fate for no reason and not really having a problem with it is kind of dumb. Even Aragorn had to step the fuck up and take back his title, rightfully commanding the armies of the dead and holding their oath fulfilled because it was in his inherited power to do so as king. Still, he did have to make those choices, despite some good counterpoints.
>>47290803
They didn't ship him off with a meter-meter-meter cube of solid gold, anon. A small chest, so a dwarf or hobbit even, was probably half that width and half again as short in width and height, made of loose golden objects stacked more loosely rather than fit together like Tetris blocks.
>>47290629
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn kind of did this.
>>47290155
"Fated hero" and "hero by birthright" are both pretty good. In theory I like how Exalted sort of kinda ish separates them into genres:
Hero by fate
Hero by birthright
Hero by survival
Hero by Faustian pact
Hero by gang rape
Hero by luck
Hero by series of increasingly rarefied reincarnations
The powers tie into this usually only indirectly or bizarrely, if at all, however (for example, you are the hero of fate, so you can fire chickens out of a crossbow with deadly effect, a housecat can bear your weight comfortably and you can stand on its back to move at breakneck speed, and you can tie a city to your waist to drag it around).
>>47290297
>Bilbo and Frodo
They were wealthy gentlemen whose prestigious family tree included a general who invented the sport of golf by decapitating a goblin-chief (with a club!) so hard that the head flew across .a field and into a rabbit-hole.
Having a significant birth or lineage is a common trait for heroes, but it is not definitive of heroes in general. I think it's common both because it's a convenient reason for the events of a story to elevate an seemingly-unexceptional person to heroic deeds, and because revealing a significant inheritance is fantasy itself. After all, who doesn't dream of being heir to great power or riches?
