Youngest Child Wins: Difference between revisions

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.)

 

 

Indeed, in some tales, the older children do not feature as characters; their only purpose is to make the hero a youngest child.

 

== [[Anime]] ==

* ''[[Lyrical Nanoha|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' has eldest Kyouya, middle Miyuki, youngest Nanoha. Guess who gets mad magic skillz.

* There are three Tendo sisters in ''[[Ranma One Half]]''. Guess which one gets to be the main character love interest of the titular martial artist? In the sense that the older two foisted the [[Arranged Marriage]] onto the youngest in milliseconds, at least...

** Also note despite all three of them growing up in a dojo, Akane seems to be the only one who knows martial arts...

* 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.

** {{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.

 

== [[Fairy Tale|Fairy Tales]] ==

* 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 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 "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.

* In the "[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 "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/crane/dancingwater.html The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird]", it is the youngest daughter who promises to have marvelous children and marries the king. This is the usual form of this tale, but [[The Brothers Grimm (Creator)|The Brothers Grimm]] "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/96threelittlebirds.html The Three Little Birds]" features the oldest as the heroine.

* In "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/index.html Bearskin]", the youngest daughter agrees to marry the hero while he is filthy, hairy, and wearing a bearskin. Other variants of this type of fairy tale include "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/stories/dongiovanni.html Don Giovanni de la Fortuna]", "[http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/bearskin/web%20pages/SoldierandtheBadMan.html The Soldier and the Bad Man]", "[http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/bearskin/web%20pages/RoadtoHell.html The Road to Hell]" (where she actively cleans him up), "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/stories/rewardkindness.html The Reward of Kindness]", [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0361.html#sutermeister "The Devil As Partner" and "Never Wash"]. Some versions of the story, however, have it that it's the middle daughter who consents to be his bride.

* In "[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| ''Never shall the younger be wed before the older ones!''}}

* "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.

 

== [[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 ==

* 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.

* Quite possibly ''[[Scanners]]''. By the end of it, {{spoiler|[[Grand Theft Me|they're basically the same person anyway]].}}

* 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]] ==

* 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.

* 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.}}

* 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.

* 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 40000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Legion'', the Cabal declares they have foreseen that the Emperor's oldest and youngest sons were the most significant. {{spoiler|They say this to the youngest sons, having deduced that Alpharius and Omegon are twins.}}

* In ''[[Diary of a Wimpy Kid]]'', Manny has this with [[Parental Favoritism]].

* 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 [[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 [[Numerlogical Motif|seventh and youngest son]]. Then, {{spoiler|Calvin gets born and is destined to be Alvin's greatest enemy, being the one to kill him.}} So technically, youngest child still wins.

* 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 child--who was pretty much a [[Manipulative Bastard]] towards his brothers--marries Princess Leonora and inherits his father's throne; Prince Juan, the youngest child, marries the most beautiful and enchanted of the princesses, Princess Maria, and inherits her father's kingdom.

** 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.)

 

== [[Theater]] ==

** 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]].

* 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.}}

* [[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"...}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

{{quote| She's a youngest, if y'get my meanin'.}}

* In ''[[Order of the Stick]]'', Belkar's [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0125.html sob story to gain experience] features himself as the youngest.

== [[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).

 

== [[Real Life]] ==