We’ve had discussions before about how Disney has to do away with the parents of the vast majority of their main characters. And how, for many of the plots, if said parent or parents were around, horrible plot would not have happened.

But, I’ve realized, they aren’t the only ones who do it. Let’s take a look at some of the main characters of the Urban Fantasy Genre:

Anita Blake
Mother killed in a car wreck when she is very young (five or six, IIRC). Father remarries. Anita and her mom are Hispanic, stepmom (and children born to dad and stepmom) are blonde. Anita doesn’t fit in. She sticks out like a sore thumb in pictures. And she and the stepmom are like night and day, opposites who do not attract. (As an adult she realizes she has multiple boyfriends so that no one person can ever die and leave her alone again.)

Sookie Stackhouse
Parents killed when she’s young (sevenish, I think). Raised by grandmother.

Night Huntress – Cat
Mother raped and impregnated by newly turned vampire (new enough the sperm isn’t dead yet). Young Katherine (later to be known as Cat) is raised to believe that all vampires are evil. But she’s half vampire, so doesn’t that make her evil? Much of the first and second books have her trying to overcome the brainwashing of her mother as she comes to terms with who she is, and that she is in love with a vampire who is far from evil. She finally tells friends who are saying things like “the only good vampire is a dead vampire” that she is half vampire and they are talking about her, too. She gives them some crack about Aryan’s inviting Hallie Berry to join them, trying to explain to them why she is upset. Because they don’t get it. When Cat finally finds her father and see that she is the spitting image of him she realizes why her mom has hated her all these years, her daughter looks just like the evil vampire who raped her all those years ago. Plus, she’s part vampire, and her mom has just been waiting for that evil gene to kick in. And yeah, she’d tell her that. What a horrible thing to say to a child.

Rachel Morgan
Mom still alive, dad died a while back. It turns out (to be learned later in the series) that her dad wasn’t her biological dad.

Kitty Norville
Parents are still married. Very functional family. Even when she is forced out of town for a few months she still talks to her mom on the phone a few times a week. See all you authors out there? It is possible to write an interesting character who was raised by both parents, who has a good relationship with said parents, and who’s parents are not psychotic.

Kate Daniels
She’s an orphan, and then even her guardian gets killed, which leaves her completely alone. I’m having trouble remembering the details of what happened to her parents right now. I really need to re-read this series before the third book comes out next month.

Mercy Thompson
Mother dated rodeo guy, Native American guy named Coyote-something-or-other. She gets pregnant and he promptly dies in car crash. Mother has no idea boyfriend was a shapshifter and is shocked when her infant daughter shapeshifts to a coyote in the crib. There is a great uncle somewhere who is a werewolf, she contacts him and the baby (Mercy) ends up being raised away from mom with in a pack of werewolves. Mom visits Mercy every summer for a week or two. Mom marries and doesn’t tell husband or kids she has with husband about this other daughter (how would you go about explaining your child shifted into a coyote and you doubted if you were capable of raising her so you sent her to someone who could?). When Mercy is 16 the pack leader’s several hundred year old son plans to run away with Mercy and elope, the pack leader is sure that’s a bad idea and he sends Mercy back to her mom (she can control her changes by now, it’s safe). Mom and stepdad and sisters take her in and love her and accept her, but she never feels she fits in. Just as she (a coyote) never fit in with the pack of wolves. (Adult affect: She’s never fit in anywhere, so she became a loner and took steps in early adulthood to make sure no one got too close.)

Meredith Gentry
The ultimate dysfunctional family. Her mom died left when she was very young, her dad loved her and did his best to protect her from the rest of the family. Dad is dead now and she has to hide from the family as the series starts so they won’t kill her. Her dad’s sister happens to be Queen of the Unseelie Court. It doesn’t get much darker and crueler than that. Merry is also somehow related to the King of the Seelie Court, and I think he’s worse than the Queen of the Unseelies.

Riley Jensen
She and her brother are half werewolf half vampire (supposedly impossible, but somehow it happened). They were raised with their pack, but were never really accepted. They are now outcast and it’s just the two of them. Wolves need a pack, but they are making do with a pack of two.

Cassandra Palmer
Her parents died when she was young and the vampire they “worked for” took her in and raised her. It is so much more complicated than that. There is time travel. To explain it would take longer than the original book is long. Let’s just say that after the death of her parents she was not raised in an especially warm and nurturing environment – good schooling and adequate care, but no nurturing.

Bella
Both parents alive and not psychotic, though divorced.

Acheron
What can I say, other than this is the ultimate adoption-gone-wrong. Acheron’s mother was a goddess, and the other gods and goddesses wanted to kill her baby, being that he was foretold to be the one to kill all of them. So she implants him in a mortal’s womb, thinking her son will be safe raised by the King and Queen. Uh, wrong. And now, even though Acheron is more than 10,000 years old, he still bears some pretty strong mental and emotional scars over the things done to him. His story has to be one of the saddest ever written. But, like the sword that is forged over and over, it made him strong. And, lucky for mankind, he somehow managed to turn out good, not evil.

Cal Leandros
Mom is a crack wh.. uh, prostitute. Dad was a very evil thing. Think, much worse than the most evil vampire ever written. Maybe closer to one of the dark Fae than a vampire. Or a cross of the darkest of those mythologies. Cal and his big brother basically survived on their own while their mom was wasted or gone. Cal’s big brother protected him, since as a child and young adult Cal was nothing more than a week human with non-human things that watched him sometimes.

Harry Dresden
Parents killed. Raised by an uncle. Err, make that evil uncle. Killed evil uncle. Found guilty of murder, which is an automatic death sentence for a wizard, but since he was a minor and there were other circumstances, he was put on a type of kill-him-at-the-first-bad-thing-he-does-probation and sent to live with a wizard/mentor capable of killing him if he got out of hand.

So out of 14 series there is one main character (Kitty) raised by two biological parents where both parents are still alive and still together, and one main character (Bella) with two biological parents still alive (though divorced) and active in her life.

Six of the characters were not raised by a biological parent at all (Sookie, Kate Daniels, Mercy Thompson, Cassandra Palmer, Acheron, Harry Dresden. Of those, Mercy and Acheron now have a relationship with their biological mother.)

Six were raised by one biological parent after losing (or never having) the other bio parent (Anita Blake, Night Huntress – Cat, Rachel Morgan, Meredith Gentry, Riley Jensen, Cal Leandros), unfortunately for four of those six the remaining parent was pretty much a failure and there was still no nurturing (Anita Blake, Night Huntress – Cat, Riley Jensen, Cal Leandros).

Only five of the fourteen had a happy and nurtured childhood (Kitty Norville with two bio parents, Sookie raised by her grandmother, Rachel Morgan with bio mom and not-bio dad, Mercy Thompson raised by foster parents within the werewolf pack, Bella living with mom and visiting dad in the summer). The other nine had a childhood worthy of screwing up just about anyone.

I have no idea what made this all come together in my head. But it did, so I typed it out. In some of these stories the parental non-human is necessary for the supernatural portion of the plot. And for some the issues left over from childhood help make the character real – I think Anita Blake falls into this category because since she’s almost perfect in every way with the exception of her issues left over from her stepmom and dead mother (and father who doesn’t have a clue). It gives her a flaw so she isn’t perfect, because characters aren’t supposed to be perfect.

At any rate, is it the nature of the urban fantasy beast that makes these characters have to (for the most part) be brought up without both of their biological parents? I wonder if a list of other genres would look this way? We know Disney and Urban Fantasy look this way, what about just plain old mystery, or just plain old romance, or just plain old crime thriller?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am and is filed under Book, CD, & DVD Reviews, Misc Discussions, News discussion, Polls & number gathering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.