History DarkAndTroubledPast / Literature

* In Morgan Ray Hess's ''Literature/{{Rainbow}}'', both of the main leads had ''very'' tragic and traumatic childhoods.

* ''Literature/SeventeenAndGone'' gives Luaren one from a traumatic incident with her babysitter, Fiona Burke, who left her alone during a house fire when she was 10.

** Kaz came to Ketterdam at the age of nine. Almost immediately, [[spoiler: his brother is tricked into signing away all of their money, they become homeless, a plague kills his brother, he is left for dead on a barge full of dead bodies, and he returns to shore using his brother's corpse as a float]]. No wonder he became the Bastard of the Barrel.

** Jesper's[[spoiler: Grisha mother died because she pushed herself too far, his father encouraged him to stop using his powers (likely causing mental illness)]], and he ended up with a gambling addiction, working as a sharpshooter for a gang, after dropping out of university.
** Wylan [[spoiler: was absolutely tormented by his wealthy father due to his dyslexia, and ended up nearly being murdered by men his father hired before making it into the Barrel and being taken under the wing of the Dregs]]. To top it all off, his beloved mother [[spoiler: who he had been told was dead turned out not to be dead after all, but locked away in an insane asylum so his father could control her money and assets]].

* A lot of characters from Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire because Westeros truly is a CrapsackWorld.
** Sandor Clegane killed an innocent peasant boy and laughed about it, however the fandom forgave him as soon as he confided that his older brother Gregor had burnt his face as a child.

*** Han's past also counts-he was a street urchin recruited by a criminal into working on his behalf as a beggar, con artist and thief. Before that, though details aren't revealed, it's implied that his parents were murdered and he wound up on the streets with [[LaserGuidedAmnesia his memories of them erased]] for an unknown reason.

* ''Literature/{{Tasakeru}}'''s primary characters, the Outcasts, are shining examples of this trope, it's pretty much a prerequisite for being one. [[spoiler: One is a runaway {{Samurai}} suffering from SurvivorGuilt, one was disowned by her family for [[MagicIsEvil being a mage]], one grew up in poverty and had to steal to survive...]]

* Most of the vampires from ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' seem have dark and troubled last minutes of their '''''human''''' lives; the terrific pain of the transformative venom doesn't help matters.

* Barbie, from Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/UnderTheDome'', has a [[MyGreatestFailure greatest failure]] in the time he [[spoiler: allowed his military unit in Iraq to torture and kill a prisoner for no reason]]. He regrets this for the rest of his life, and his remorse thinking back on it is bad enough [[spoiler: to get an EnergyBeing who sees him as an ant to show pity on him]].

** Scourge was bullied by other cats, including his own siblings, for being small, with one cruelly telling him that he would get [[UnwantedKits thrown in the river]]. When he was only a kit, he was savagely attacked and nearly killed by Tigerpaw for ''accidentally'' walking onto ThunderClan territory.

** Iseult has ran away from home shortly after Corlant started taking unhealthy interest in her mother, and nearly died when she was discovered by a Carawen monk. She had to leave the monastery as well, and then almost died again before Safi saved her and they became Threadsisters. All the time, she had to manage the copious amounts of FantasticRacism that all Nomatsi face - in the Dalmotti Empire, they're considered animals.

* The Marquess from ''The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making'' has a very troubled past. [[spoiler: She stumbled into Fairyland when she was 12, lived there for many years, fell in love, became a heroine and queen, and became pregnant. Then she was snatched back into the human world, stuck in a 12 year old's body and with her alcoholic and abusive father, no husband, no child, and no Fairyland.]]

* Jez from the ''Literature/{{Spaceforce}}'' series, a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent space vampire]] whose entire race was almost totally wiped out in a genocidal uprising by their own 'bloodservants' when she was a teenager. The remnants were exiled from their homeworld, and now face fear-based prejudice in a supposedly liberal galactic Union.

* In ''[[Literature/ThePrecipice The Precipice]]'' the concept is played with and deconstructed. Grace comes from a loving home, has a great relationship with her parents and clearly has a bright future ahead of her. However, it is all but outright stated that the expectations placed on her by her many opportunities have left her emotionally and mentally vulnerable, and the pressure eventually produces cracks. The emotional fallout of her [[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke One Bad Day]] leaves [[spoiler:two dead]] and her life in tatters.

** Kamijou Touma has an AntiMagic right hand which also has the unfortunate side effect of negating [[BornUnlucky his own luck]]. He was derided as cursed his entire childhood, which is why his parents sent him to Academy City, where such superstition was frowned upon.
** Index, due to PhotographicMemory, was forced to memorize countless forbidden magical tomes, which filled up her mind so much that she had to have her memory erased once a year or go insane from information overload. Except that was a lie; the truth was that people were just afraid of how powerful she would become if she had all that knowledge and no limits. The fact that her "name" is ''Index'' is a big hint for how much she was dehumanized.

** Misaka Mikoto is initially unique among high-level espers in that there doesn't seem to be anything terrible in her past; she wasn't put through especially terrible experiments, she didn't lose any friends to the city's horrors, and she's even still on good terms with her parents. Then she finds out that she was tricked as a child; researchers asked for her DNA map so that they could use her electromaster powers to help children with muscular dystrophy. But they actually used it to clone her twenty thousand times so that the clones could be systematically murdered to level up Accelerator. By the time she finds out about the experiment, over nine thousand of the clones have already been murdered; she spends a few sleepless weeks desperately trying to stop the experiments with absolutely zero success, turning her into a DeathSeeker who comes up with a SuicideByCop plan that almost certainly wouldn't have worked anyway.

* Accelerator in ''Literature/ACertainMagicalIndex''. Due to his [[SuperpowerLottery seemingly invincible powers]], he's been attacked ever since he was a child by people who either wanted to "prove their strength" or by people who thought [[PersonOfMassDestruction he was too dangerous to let live]]. He survived all of this without a scratch, but having that much violence directed at him all his life has left him rather messed up. And if people aren't trying to kill him, they're trying to [[TheyWouldCutYouUp use him in inhumane experiments]]. When he's introduced, he's willing to do just about anything to make sure people ''never attack him ever again''.

* In ''[[Literature/ThePrecipice The Precipice]]'' the concept is played with and deconstructed. Grace comes from a loving home, has a great relationship with her parents and clearly has a bright future ahead of her. However, it is all but outright stated that the expectations placed on her by her many opportunities have left her emotionally and mentally vulnerable, and the pressure eventually produces cracks. The emotional fallout of her [[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke One Bad Day]] leaves [[spoiler:two dead]] and her life in tatters.

* In ''Literature/ALegacyOfLight,'' main character Tutankhamun's parents, grandmother, and five of his sisters died before he'd turned nine, and before he was nineteen, he and his wife had lost two infant daughters.

* In ''[[Literature/ThePrecipice The Precipice]]'' the concept is played with. Grace comes from a loving home, has a great relationship with her parents and clearly has a bright future ahead of her. However, it is all but outright stated that the expectations placed on her have left her vulnerable, and the emotional fallout of her [[ComicBook/TheKillingJoke One Bad Day]] leaves [[spoiler:two dead]] and her life in tatters.

* The reason Rosalie in ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesFor300YearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'' is a CuteGhostGirl falls into this. Her family fell into financial troubles and her father decided the best way to do that was to sell her to prostitution, under the guise of marrying her off to a rich man. Rosalie discovered the truth and hung herself before it happened.

* Camille from ''Literature/SharpObjects'' suffers from this. She grew up with a DisappearedDad, an [[ParentalNeglect abusive]] mother, and an IllGirl little sister who died when Camille was only thirteen. She also got gang-raped at thirteen by a group of football players. She's been a cutter since childhood, and shortly before the book starts the problem got so bad she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. While there, she witnessed her roommate, who she had grown close to, kill herself. In the present day Camille is still a cutter, and a BrokenBird and TheAlcoholic to boot from these experiences.

* In Morgan Ray Hess's ''Literature/{{Rainbow}}'', both of the main leads had ''[[UpToEleven very]]'' tragic and traumatic childhoods.

* The reason Rosalie in ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesForThreeHundredYearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'' is a CuteGhostGirl falls into this. Her family fell into financial troubles and her father decided the best way to do that was to sell her to prostitution, under the guise of marrying her off to a rich man. Rosalie discovered the truth and hung herself before it happened.

* Vin from ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}.'' Born the daughter of a skaa (peasant) woman and an Imperial nobleman (a death sentence from the get-go), her earliest memory is of her insane mother killing her little sister [[spoiler: and performing Hemalurgy to transfer some of her soul to Vin]], before being rescued by her older half-brother. Said half-brother genuinely cares about Vin, but he's a cynical, abusive {{Jerkass}} who hammers into her head the idea that she can't trust anyone because everybody is selfish and manipulative. They spend the next several years working as petty thieves on the lowest rung of society, until the half-brother runs out on her, [[spoiler: though it turns out that he was actually captured and executed]], leaving Vin without a protector in a den of scum. Of course, from there, she gets recruited by LaResistance, finds out that she's an ExtraordinarilyEmpoweredGirl, and [[TookALevelInBadass takes a level in badass]], but still. Is it any wonder the poor girl spends most of the trilogy wrestling with crippling paranoia?

** Harry had both parents murdered before his eyes at age one, nine years living with abusive guardians, being bullied at school by his cousin and his cousin's friends, a dead godfather, a dead mentor, the most evil person in his world has a connection to him, a life and death battle every year, and sometimes his friends turn their backs on him.

* In ''Literature/RamaII'', Nicole failed to win a beauty pageant because of racism. After she won an Olympic medal in sprinting, she hooked up with the prince of France, who abandoned her when she became pregnant with her daughter. She had to move in with her father, who allowed her to raise Genevieve with him. Genevieve's parentage still haunts her public life, such as her questioning by Sabatini. Francesca was sexually adventurous as a youth, and some past experience has left her callous, to the extent that she uses everyone. Richard had a father who abused him and his mother, leading him to feel very isolated (and eventually near suicide); this was spurred by his father being unable to cope after he lost his job as an engineer, suffering a case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation. Adultery from his girlfriend when in college pushed him over the edge, such that he hurt, and then also nearly killed himself. Other characters are not generally shown to have explicitly traumatic pasts, but Brown was the cause of one for his wife and former [=PhD=] student, Elaine (whose scientific results he stole), and cosmonaut Janos is implied to have had to suppress homosexuality and political involvement, form his youth, in order to join the astronaut academy.

* ''Literature/VillainsByNecessity'': It's revealed that Sam grew up in poverty with his mentall ill mother, the pair squatting inside an abandoned warehouse to survive. Then he walked in once to find that she'd been raped and beaten by a random drunk. He killed the man, with the building catching fire when the lamp fell over. After he escaped, the assassin's guild recruited him.