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{{trope}}
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{{quote|''"The LORD said to her, 'Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.'"''
|''[[The Bible]]''}}
▲{{quote|''"The LORD said to her, 'Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.'"''|''[[The Bible]]''}}
A common [[Fairy Tale]] situation. Whenever multiple siblings are portrayed, the youngest is the hero; the older ones are either evil or just [[Muggle|boring]].
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However, if the older children are [[Wicked Stepmother|stepchildren]], that usually trumps this trope; the younger children usually succeed only if they are not hostile to their half siblings. (When the children are stepsiblings, the hero is usually both the youngest and the stepchild.)
Also, this trope usually applies to a set of all sisters or all brothers. "[[
Indeed, in some tales, the older children do not feature as characters; their only purpose is to make the hero a youngest child.
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Often this carries undertones of underdog vindication, as in any setting in which inheritance occurs by primogeniture the youngest will naturally get the short end of the stick.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* This trope is rife in adverts for family games, such as board games and multiplayer platforms. The advert will typically display a family of four in which the youngest child (typically a girl, though not always) will win. On the boxes for older board games, the young child will be grinning with clenched fists whilst the father will have head in hands.
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Misty from ''[[Pokémon (
* ''[[Lyrical Nanoha|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' has eldest Kyouya, middle Miyuki, youngest Nanoha. Guess who gets mad magic skillz.
** Inverted by ''[[Triangle Heart 3
* There are three Tendo sisters in ''[[Ranma
** Also note despite all three of them growing up in a dojo, Akane seems to be the only one who knows martial arts...
* Played with in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
* In ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'':
** Kenshiro, the youngest of the four Hokuto brothers, ultimately becomes the official successor of the deadly 2000-year old martial art Hokuto Shinken.
** Kaioh, Raoh and Toki are siblings (in that order) and Toki is the most talented among them.
* Otori Kyouya from ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' is the youngest of his brothers (with a sister thrown in the middle somewhere), but his father fully expects him to take over the company over his two brothers after pulling a major [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment on the old man.
* Myrrha/Husky from ''[[
* In the series finale of ''[[
** {{spoiler|Carline (along with Odysseus and Guinevere) most likely died when the not evacuated city of Pendragon was destroyed by a F.L.E.I.J.A nuke. She, Guinevere and the rest of the royals were explicitly last shown cleaning the palace there as servants. So Nunnally likely was the youngest left of Charles' named children.}}
* Deconstructed with the Kongo Brothers of ''[[Eyeshield 21]]''. Although they're twins, the elder brother is completely overshadowed by his younger brother's incredible talent. As a result, the younger twin is very arrogant and treats his elder brother (and everyone else) coldly, while the elder twin's self esteem is completely crushed and feels his only purpose is to help his younger brother.
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== Ballads ==
* The song [https://web.archive.org/web/20120714010158/http://www.justsomelyrics.com/1412499/Loreena-McKennitt-The-Bonny-Swan-Lyrics "The Bonny Swans"] by Loreena McKennit, which combines this trope with a standard English [[Murder Ballad]] template. This is a version of a specific ballad called "The Twa Sisters" ([[Child Ballad|Child #10]]) which is sometimes also known under other titles such as "The Cruel Sister". Other forms can be found elsewhere in the [[Child Ballad|Child ballads]].
* In the [[Child Ballad]] "[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch011.htm The Cruel Brother]", the knight wooes the youngest daughter. (On the other hand, her brother murders her at her wedding.)
{{quote|
But the youngest was beyond compare.
The midmost had a graceful mien,
But the youngest lookd like beautie's queen.
The knight bowd low to a' the three,
But to the youngest he bent his knee.'' }}
== [[Fairy Tale
* "[[Cinderella (
* In the Grimm tale of "[[The Wolf and The Seven Young Kids]]", it's the youngest kid who manages not to get eaten by the wolf.
* In most versions of "[[
* "[[
** In some variants, the hero is young and again takes the youngest, probably because the power of the original trope is so strong that retellers of the tale felt the need to "correct" it.
** In others, the hero basically says "All your daughters have proven themselves not to be trusted. I'm not going to take any one of them!"
* In "[[Puss in Boots (
* In "Lord Kotura of the Winds", an Arctic village is being threatened by harsh winds, and a father with three daughters surmises that Lord Kotura of the Winds is angered and can only be appeased with a wife. He sends his eldest daughter to Lord Kotura's dwelling with very specific instructions. She ignores every single one, and then when she finally gets to Lord Kotura's dwelling, she also ignores ''his'' instructions; and in the end Lord Kotura angrily casts her out of his home to freeze to death in the snow. The winds grow stronger, and the father sends out his second daughter. Pretty much the exact same thing happens, and when the winds grow harsher once again, the father sends out his youngest daughter, who follows his and Lord Kotura's instructions to a T. Greatly pleased, Lord Kotura makes her his wife, the winds die down, and the village is saved.
* "[[Hop
* In the "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130313070907/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/masterthief.html The Master Thief]", the hero has two older brothers who do not feature in the tale; their only purpose is to make him the youngest.
* In "[[East of the Sun
* In "[
* In "[
* In "[
* In "[http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/426.htm The White Dove]", a [[Wicked Witch]] gets two brothers to promise her their
* In "[https://web.archive.org/web/20060523212750/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/firebird/index.html Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird, and the Gray Wolf]", only the youngest of the three princes first stays awake to see the Firebird, and second presses on after [[Threshold Guardians|the stone warning of dangers]].
* In "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130718151331/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/firebird/stories/birdgrip.html The Bird Grip]" and "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131027163722/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/firebird/stories/goldbird.html The Golden Bird]", despite warnings, the older princes go to [[Threshold Guardians|the merry inn]], where they forget their father, and their quest. The youngest goes to the dark inn and travels on to complete the quest.
* In "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130313071035/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/sevenfoals.html The Seven Foals]", [[Threshold Guardians|an old woman]] tries to lure aside the men set to watch the king's foals all day. She succeeds with the older two of three brothers, but the youngest runs by her.
* In "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131020140115/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/babayaga/index.html Vasilissa the Beautiful]", the [[Wicked Stepmother]] justifies rejecting all of Vasilissa's suitors on the grounds that her stepsisters are older than she is.
{{quote|
* Utterly inverted by the "[[
* "The Honey Princess" does this twice. The sons of a king travel to a cursed castle, where the dwarf running the place gives them three tasks to complete. If they fail, they are turned to marble. Natch, the eldest sons are quickly turned to statues while attempting the first task. The youngest son not only completes all three tasks, but has to figure out which frozen princess ate a spoonful of honey before turning to marble. The youngest princess did.
* The tale of "Three Mayflies", who learn that they only have one day to live. The first one decided to fly really fast, so that Death would never catch up. He got tired, stopped for a rest, and Death took him there after just 20 hours. The second one figured that if he flew backwards, he'd never age. It worked, but he was so tired that he couldn't live through the second day, and Death took him with ease. The third mayfly decided to make the most of the time he had, living 25 hours and dying with no regrets.
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== [[Film]] -- Animated ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[Brother Bear]]'', Sitka is the oldest, Denahi is the middle one, Kenai is the youngest. Guess which one is the main character.
== [[Film]] -- Live Action ==
* In ''[[
* Parodied with the two Lindberg brothers in ''The Apple War''. They were originally three, and the older brothers would fail at everything they did, while the youngest would always succeed. After their life project went wrong they decided to commit suicide... and the two older brothers failed.
* In ''[[
* Quite possibly ''[[Scanners]]''. By the end of it, {{spoiler|[[Grand Theft Me|they're basically the same person anyway]].}}
* In ''[[Repo!
* Inverted in ''[[Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves]]'' when Robin's younger half-brother reveals his identity. Robin and his father had bad blood because after his mother died, his widowed father took up with a peasant woman for companionship. Robin never forgave his father (while he was alive), for this perceived betrayal of his mother's memory even after he left the peasant woman. Robin never even knew that he had a half-brother who got left in the lurch in the process.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Lampshaded and subverted in [[Diana Wynne Jones]]'s ''[[Howl's Moving Castle (
* In [[
* One story from
* In ''[[The Indian in
* Played with twice by [[Isaac Asimov]] in two separate stories. In the earlier one, a queen has triplets, causing the king a bit of consternation as to which one will have the adventures. (Things take care of themselves, however, as the last one out has the most success.) In the later, the protagonist prince is an only child, and again the king cites this trope (whereupon his wife points out ''he's'' not the one that had to give birth).
* Also toyed with, along with a great many other fairy tale tropes, in [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''The Fairy Godmother''. When the three sons of a king are sent out on a mission, the titular fairy godmother sets obstacles for them which only the youngest son, by virtue of his kindness and humility, passes, and so it's the youngest son who succeeds on his quest, as per the trope. However, the youngest son is only a minor character in the book, while the second son (despite being the biggest ass of the three... and punished accordingly) becomes one of the two main protagonists and ends up better off than he would have been if he'd succeeded on the original quest.
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* Used in Cecilia Dart-Thornton's mythological fantasy ''The Crowthistle Chronicles''.
* In the ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]], Anakin Solo is often portrayed as the brightest and most talented of the Solo children. It's subverted when, thanks to [[Executive Meddling]], {{spoiler|he dies in the New Jedi Order}}. The ''[[Legacy of the Force]]'' series makes it a [[Double Subversion]]: {{spoiler|the elder brother turns evil, and the sister becomes a warrior and slays him. Anakin continues to be held up as the only good-n'-pure Solo sibling.}}
* Deeply subverted in [[
* Alyosha of ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' is the youngest. While none of his siblings are evil, he is [[The Messiah]] whereas they are more morally gray.
* Inverted in ''[[Stardust (
* In [[James Thurber]]'s ''[[
* Also Thurber: The [[Fairy Tale]] spoof "The White Deer" features three brothers, of which the older two are brawny insensitive types, and the youngest a gentle romantic. The book surprisingly gives all three a fair amount of attention but still makes it clear the youngest is meant to be the most admirable.
* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Warhammer
* Done with a twist in the ''[[
* In ''[[Diary of a Wimpy Kid]]'', Manny has this with [[Parental Favoritism]].
* In ''[[
* In both of [[Robin McKinley]]'s retellings of "[[
* In the [[Pern]] books, Menolly is the youngest child of the Holder of Half-Circle Sea Hold, and [[The Unfavorite]] to boot. Despite parental abuse and general mistreatment, she escapes from her unpleasant surroundings and goes on to become the Master Composer of the planet. She even gets to keep in contact with the only one of her siblings who was ever kind to her, while managing to avoid everybody who wasn't.
* [[Conversational Troping|Conversed]] in [[David Gemmell]]'s ''White Wolf''. Rabalyn, reflecting on the stories told to him as a child, notes the [[Genre Blindness]] of the kings who would send their eldest sons to their death. He decides that if he were king he'd [[Genre Savvy|send the youngest boy first]].
* In the ''[[
* In [[Josepha Sherman]]'s ''[[The Shining Falcon]]'', a retelling of "The Feather of Finist the Falcon", while the [[Fairy Tale]]'s two sisters have been collapsed into one, it's still the younger who is the heroine.
* Both played straight and subverted in the [[The Tales of Alvin Maker]] series, Alvin is the [[
== [[Manga]] ==
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** Cronus was also the youngest of Gaia and Ouranos' children. First they had all the other male Titans, then all the Titanides, then Cronus.
* In fact it goes all the way back to the story of Psyche and Eros, from Apuleius' ''The Golden Ass'', in which Psyche's sisters are jealous both of her beauty and her creepy ability to be happy with a husband who won't let her see him in daylight. (Although, mind you, Psyche is not good at following basic instructions.)
* In Philippine myth, three brothers are looking for the legendary Adarna bird. Halfway through the story, Prince Diego, the middle child, marries Princess Juana, leading more or less a normal life with her; Prince Pedro, the oldest
* ''[[
** Three times in a row with Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers. Technically Joseph was the son of the beloved wife, and thus the favorite; true youngest Benjamin was kept at home to keep him away from danger and one of the older brothers had to basically call a curse on himself so the father would allow Benjamin to go to Egypt with him, and Joseph favors Benjamin there.
** Joseph's own children also get blessed counter to the cultural expectation, though this is not too big of a surprise considering Jacob is a youngest. (Joseph thought Jacob was making a mistake, but Jacob knows what he's doing and even crosses his arms so that the Right Hand of Blessing goes to the younger son.)
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== [[Theater]] ==
* Cordelia in ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
** As a famous actress once observed Bianca is the ''real'' shrew, or at least a manipulative bitch who's got her daddy and admirers twisted round her little finger and successfully gotten her older sister labelled 'the bad one'.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Not only is Ramza from ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' the youngest of three brothers, he's also ''half-brother'' to Zalbag and Dycedarg. And yet he is the most noble among House Beoulve. His younger sister Alma, the true youngest of the family, spends most of the plot as the [[Damsel in Distress]], but she still manages a personal [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when she rejects [[Eldritch Abomination|Bloody Angel Altima]] from pulling a [[Grand Theft Me]].
* Subverted in ''[[Wing Commander (
* In ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War]]'', Prince Jamka is the youngest son of King Batou of Verdane (the first nation to attack the protagonists) and joins Sigurd's army after his two brothers and his father fell under the machinations of the Lopto cult. {{spoiler|In the manga, he becomes the king of Verdane after his father's death.}}
* The [[Updated Rerelease|DS remake]] of ''[[
* [[Dragon Age Origins]] has a potential [[Subverted Trope|Subversion]] of this with [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Prince Bhelen.]] {{spoiler|He coordinates the death of his oldest sibling and causes his other Brother/Sister to get exiled for it, all so Bhelen can become heir to his father's throne. The subversion comes in with the fact that the main character (who ironically could also be the older sibling who got exiled) can decide to prevent him from getting the throne.}}
** Played straight in the Human Noble Origin, where {{spoiler|the younger son/daughter (the player character) gets left behind guarding the castle while father and older brother set off to war, and eventually ends up saving the world, accumulating riches and honors, and potentially marrying the king or queen as well, while the father dies and the older brother spends the whole story "missing in action"...}}
* In the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series:
** The series as a whole is an inversion. Solid Snake, the only one of the Les Enfant Terribles clones to have a decent ending, is actually the eldest of the clones, or at least the middle child (depending on whether Liquid, his twin was born first or not).
** This trope was actually referenced in an optional radio conversation with Zero in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'', where he notes the coincidence of Naked Snake and Major Raikov technically sharing the same name ("Ivan," Raikov's first name, is Slavic for "John" or "Jack," which is Naked Snake's name).
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Set in a fairy tale world, the webcomic ''[[No Rest for The Wicked (
{{quote|
* In ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', Belkar's [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0125.html sob story to gain experience] features himself as the youngest.
* In ''[[Narbonic]]'' Dave, the younger sibling, is constantly stressing over how much cooler, better looking, etc. his older brother was, despite the numerous things he'd done that made him unique, like going to the moon. His mind is almost put at ease when his friends meet his brother though.
{{quote|
'''Dave''': Really? Geez... You don't know how much this means! Everyone's always liked Bill more--
'''Zeta''': Oh we do like Bill better.
'''Artie''': We just think you're cool. }}
* In ''[[The Dreamland Chronicles]]'', the eldest child can not enter [[Dream Land]] while the king still lives. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120729144309/http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/the-dreamland-chronicles/chapter-15/page-1044/ Which explains why the younger twin was the one who did it.]
* In ''[[Tamuran]]'', [http://www.tamurancomic.com/?p=159 only the youngest son can inherit the throne]. In this case, distinctly bad.
* The younger brother of [[The Ace]] of ''[[Face All Red]]'' wants this to be the case.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Played with in a comic-only adventure of ''[[The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan]]''. Scooter solves the mystery and Henry comments that he "always lucks out", but he and the rest of the older kids aren't portrayed as evil or boring, only having caught the [[Distress Ball]] (they were being suspended mid-air from the top of a stage).
* In ''[[
* In the ''[[Tales
* The song "Alligator King" from ''[[
== [[Real Life]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Sibling Tropes]]
[[Category:Son of Trope Daughter of Index]]▼
[[Category:Fairy Tale Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
▲[[Category:Son of Trope, Daughter of Index]]
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