It is a truth long acknowledged that an epic quest needs a Chosen One. The One Character, Chosen by Fate, Long-Prophesied, riddled with Marks of Great Portent, whose Birth Was Foretold, and Who Will Bring Balance/Right Wrongs/Overthrow Injustice.
But what about those heroes who aren’t chosen? Who see all of their friends, all of their world, go quiet in the face of an obvious evil? What about those who take up the lightsaber, the armor, the Ring, knowing all the while that, at any moment, they could be revealed as frauds? Or die without making anything better?
Today, we’re celebrating the “Unchosen Ones”.
Vin and Kelsier (Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson)
Vin and Kelsier live in a world of extreme injustice, swarming with monsters and mist, curated by the all-powerful Lord Ruler. There is no resistance. Resistance always fails. As thieves, Vin and Kelsier know this; all they want to do is get ahead and live out their days as part of the comfortable noble class.
Or at least that’s the reason Kelsier, himself an all-powerful Mistborn, initially tells Vin. As a rare Mistborn herself, Vin develops her powers to assist Kelsier with his heists, and continues to help him when it becomes clear that what Kelsier is really seeking is vengeance against the Lord Ruler. In the end, it becomes clear to Vin that what Kelsier really wants is a better world for everyone, that not only is he aiming straight at the source of evil in their world, he’s intent on creating something better as a replacement.
Kelsier fails. But in doing so, he solidifies Vin’s resolve. The evil of the Lord Ruler cannot remain unchallenged. And if she must be the only one to stand against that evil, then so be it.
Phillipe Gaston (Ladyhawke)
Phillipe Gaston is a thief—a damned good one, but still, just a thief. (We’re sensing a pattern here…) He’s not an epic hero or an orphan with a mystical birthright or a hidden prince. And he doesn’t have an overwhelming evil to fight; just a wrong that he feels he can’t ignore.
When Gaston stumbles across the dark fairy tale/curse shared by Etienne de Navarre and his ladylove, Isabeau, he does everything he can to resist it, first running away, and then trying to talk “sense” into the two lovers. But in the end he realizes that they have impossible odds against them, and that no one except an alcoholic friar is willing to help. He gives in to the story and plays several roles: saving Navarre, keeping hope alive in both of the lovers’ hearts, and reverting to his old cunning to smuggle the pair into the city to try to break their curse. He can’t save the world, but he can leave some lives better off.
Rey (Star Wars)
As The Last Jedi made clear, Rey is not a traditional chosen one. She’s a nobody, abandoned on a junk heap of a planet by parents who couldn’t (well, wouldn’t) take care of her. When she’s offered a gig that would take her across the galaxy she balks at the idea of a larger life. When she’s offered a straight up call to adventure, she runs the other way. She is desperate not to be chosen, because being chosen is terrifying. Even at the opening to The Last Jedi, she is still trying to pass the lightsaber back to Luke. She wants to hang back, be an apprentice, defer to an older authority.
But she’s seen the evil that pervades the galaxy (shirtless and all), and once Rey realizes that Luke is refusing his old responsibilities, she finally decides to step up and become the hero that her new friends, that the galaxy, needs her to be.
Heloise (The Armored Saint by Myke Cole)
Offer deference to the Empire, always. Even if they ask you to commit unspeakable acts. Especially if they ask you to commit unspeakable acts. If you don’t, demons will rip open the world, your family, and you. Heloise, the main character of Myke Cole’s The Armored Saint, is a young teen in this world, caught in that confusing in-between age where she understands what the rules are, but not why she or anyone else has to continue to obey them.
Cole’s The Armored Saint continually examines this question, pitting the “wisdom of youth” against unquestioning obedience, even to the social and cultural mores that protect and support her.
Maia (The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison)
Maia is not supposed to be Emperor. He’s the fourth in line to the throne, the son of an unloved wife, banished and nearly forgotten. But when a freak accident takes the lives of the Emperor and his three elder sons, Maia is summoned to court. But how can he possibly govern? Half-elven, half-goblin, he’s hated by his courtiers, untrained in the ways of state, isolated from the people he’s meant to rule, and fighting scheming rivals at very turn. Katharine Addison’s immersive, disarmingly gentle take on epic fantasy follows Maia as he learns not just how to rule, but how to rule well. Maia wasn’t ever meant to be Emperor, but as the book rolls along, he’s shocked to find he might actually be up for the challenge. Addison’s novel is even more notable in that the “unchosen one” already comes from a life of privilege, allowing The Goblin Emperor to explore what motivates someone to rule well, to ward off evil, when the stakes aren’t life or death.
Deeba (Un Lun Dun by China Mieville)
Obviously if we’re going to talk about “Unchosen Ones” we have to talk about UnLondon’s Deeba. When she travels to UnLondon with her friend Zanna, it’s under the belief that Zanna is the “Shwazzy,” the Chosen One prophesied by The Book (who can talk) to save UnLondon from the noxious Smog. But since Smog knows the prohpecy, too, Zanna is soon incapacitated in battle. The two girls are sent back to their own London, and all hope seems lost..unless Deeba decides to ignore prophecy. Can she find her own way back, and continue the battle without the benefit of Fate?
Taran (The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander)
Taran’s epic quest began because he chased after a pig. After daydreaming of heroics for his entire youth, he fails at his actual job—assistant pig keeper—and then has to make things right when the pig (who happens to be Oracular) escapes. He crashes right into what would normally be the A-plot, Prince Gwydion’s fight against the Evil Horned King (Ooooooh.) Over the course of the Prydain series, Taran learns how to be the hero his land needs, and stops worrying so much about whether or not anyone considers him “Chosen.”
Bilbo, Frodo, But Mostly Sam (The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)
All three of Tolkien’s hobbit Ringbearers count as Unchosen Ones. Bilbo may be “chosen” by Gandalf, but he’s a thief, and not terribly well-equipped for his quest at first. The only reason he stumbles into the much larger [trumpet flourish] LORD OF THE RINGS [!!!] story is that he pockets Gollum’s Ring.
It is Frodo who treats the obvious evil of Sauron selflessly, countering the bickering of the Council of Elrond and the political and personal interests of everyone involved by offering to take the Ring to Mordor. But it is Samwise Gamgee most of all, a quiet gardener who can’t even pluck up the courage to ask Rosie the Barmaid out for a night on the Hobbiton, that exemplifies Unchosen Heroism. He is small and terrified, and in way over his head, but when Frodo fails it is Sam who carries the Ring, remains incorruptible, and makes it possible for Middle-earth to dispel its great evil.
But Taran is chosen at least in the sense of being prophesied, Dallben adopts him in the first place because of a prophecy that the high King to succeed the Children of Don will be a child of no background.
Samwise Gamgee was bad-ass.
Yes, Taran turns out to be Chosen just when he finally accepts that he isn’t.
The hobbits are mostly probably unchosen, but Gandalf suspects the Valar have a thumb on the scale.
Is there a series where there is a Chosen One doing his thing, but is not shown directly in the story being told? Like it’s just some random person just wanting to do good during the Apocalypse and the Chosen One happens to be out there in the world. This random person gets swept up in the big events. That sounds like a good story idea to me.
I’d argue that Bilbo, Frodo and Sam are very much chosen ones – Eru Ilúvatar had his thumb on the scale when the ring ‘chose’ Bilbo.
Aargh! Ninja’d by StrongDreams! Even to the metaphor I used.
Vin and Rey don’t quite fit the mold here. They both have rare abilities in their respective universes that automatically grant power to the bearer. If they didn’t, no one would have much cared for them. In Vin’s case, it actually gives her the power to take some control of her life and, uh, annihilate armies. In Rey’s case, being a force user is automatically more important in the SW universe than basically anything else.I also wouldn’t be surprised if the next main Star Wars undid some of the revelations in the Last Jedi.
Maia also doesn’t fit. Though not explicitly prophesied, the power he gets is from “royal” blood. He’s not some nobody chosen to lead his people: he’s the backup monarch.
5….yes. In Lawrence Watt-Evans books, there’s a big war on at the beginning. Suddenly it ends, because somebody else summoned the Gods and they crushed the enemy. His Touched by the Gods also has the Chosen One AFTER the problems of the world were solved.
I’m trying to think of more stories, but Bean in the Ender’s Shadow series might not quite count.
There is also an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where damn, I forgot his name for a moment, Xander, is on the sidelines and yet we see everybody else saving the world.
Anyway, I’d agree with not quite counting Taran. And I’d say being a Nobody abandoned, and not willing to jump at the call, IS one of the traditional versions.
Vin is the chosen one. Preservation chose her to succeed him so she could destroy ruin. That is why she could draw on the mists. The twist in HOA is there are two chosen ones, and vin’s destiny is separate from the Hero of Ages.
@10 Kelsier and Vin were both chosen by Ruin, too, though not to save the world.
@9 LordVorless I always loved the Buffy episode “Grave,” where everyone else opposes and fails to stop Willow from unleashing a cataclysmic Bad Thing in her grief…and then Xander succeeds.
when the stakes aren’t life or death
The assassination attempts against Maia? And part of the reason he resisted abdication in favour of his fourteen-year-old nephew was familiarity with the historic average lifespan of an Emperor under a Regency; Maia might have accepted exile in a monastery for himself, if he weren’t convinced neither he nor Idra would live out the year.
@9 – The Zeppo. Truly an awesome episode, and all the more hilarious to see the over-the-top dramatics of the “heroes” from an “ordinary’s” point of view. And then Xander goes about his usual bumbling way and manages to save them from destruction they didn’t even know about. Fun times.
I would argue that Rey and the hobbits are in fact chosen ones – the Refusal of the Call is actually a key part of the heroe’s journey, so the fact that they initially don’t want to do it doesn’t really impact their chosen status. Vin/Kelsier also I think fit the standard archetype. I haven’t read the other stories so I can’t really speak to those.
That said, I don’t take ‘chosen one’ to necessarily mean a literal god or prophecy singled them out – just that circumstances arranged it so that they were the ones with the power to do something, and they decided to do it (even with some reluctance).
I’ll put in a plug for Jorg of Ancrath from Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire trilogy. Not a good man, by his own admission but one who saw the world needed drastic changes and trusted no one else to do what needed to be done. While he did come across a good man that he believed to be the Chosen One and was ready to throw his support behind him, it was not to be. “Fine” thinks Jorg. “My way it is.”
“No sympathy for Jorgie” he mocks himself through the series. But I’ll admit that I cried for Jorg Ancrath and his brother.
The German children’s book Der durch den Spiegel kommt (literally: He who comes through the mirror) by Kirsten Boie fits in here nicely. Ten-year-old Anna is one day told by a talking rabbit that she’s the chosen one who must fight the Big Bad in its home fantasy realm. They go there using the titular mirror and embark on a dangerous journey together. Anna is never worried; she knows that the prophecy protects her. Until they meet someone who owns a portrait of the chosen one, who turns out to be a grown man. The rabbit admits that it has botched up its assignment and simply recruited the first available person. Anna is understandably devastated, but eventually decides to try to finish the job anyway.
The book is far from perfect; especially the way the heroes win the day is too simplistic. But I liked its twist on the chosen one/unchosen one trope.
Not only is Maia not a Chosen One, but he doesn’t win in the traditional way, either; he wins by being good and kind and nice. We need more books like that!
But neither Vin or Kelsier are truly “the Chosen One” in the Mistborn. And the true chosen one, while always there in the story, is in the background doing something that seems boring and pointless (going through all the old religions to find the “true” religion), but is actually something very important for him to be able to save the world.
@32 The problem is that Sanderson is playing a shell game with regards to the tropes of prophecy. So even though the “real” Chosen One doesn’t figure it out until the end, a host of other people play the role of the prophesied hero.
How is Ron Wesley not in this list?
@5 Predictably, this tends to be an element of any Star Wars book/game/series/movie that does not involve a Skywalker. Notable series include the (multi-author) Rogue/Wraith Squadron novels (following two squadrons of fighter pilots in the New Republic) and Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando series (following a squad of clones family during the Clone Wars), both of which are no longer canon, sadly, because only the Skywalkers matter.
In more traditional fantasy, I have to mention Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing, who meets the Chosen One, then bashes his head in with a rock, and spends the rest of his life trying desperately to avoid inheriting the Chosen One’s duties.
The ‘not the Chosen One’ aspect of Deeba in Un Lun Dun felt like a cheat to me. I’ll admit that it has been a while since I read it, but I don’t remember anything that properly distinguished the two girls other than the fact that one of them was the designated “Shwazzy”. The friend wasn’t any more plucky, brave, clever, powered, or groomed for the role. So, it was basically a conventional YA Chosen One story in which the author keeps saying “aren’t I clever for making this about the one that wasn’t the Chosen One?”. It wouldn’t have been at all surprising for it to come out at the end that she was the real Chosen One, but the book misspoke/ got it wrong/ intentionally used misdirection.
As others have pointed out, many on this list are a little suspect as they follow traditional Hero paths (which is common, thought not perhaps mandatory, for Chosen Ones). In many, there doesn’t seem to be an actual Chosen One. I think the more interesting (albeit harder to pull together) list would be of the real Unchosen Ones — the Sam Gamgees that are neither Chosen not Heroes, but by dint of their basic decency do extraordinary things. What makes this harder is that there really needs to be a Chosen One or a Hero around to do much of the heavy lifting, lest our Unchosen One ends up just being the Reluctant or Unlikely Hero.
@17,
I’m a little confused about what you’re saying here, isn’t the fact that a god/prophecy singled them out what differentiates a Chosen One from an UnChosen One? I mean everything else could apply equally to a Chosen or UnChosen hero right?
Will Wight’s House of Blades.
You got traditional choosen one, child of prophecy, born with unique and powerful magic, destined to change the world. Who gets a call to action when his small village is attack by the big bad’s armies and is burnes down. So he goes off on an amazing adventure fill with discovery and wonder. Your standard choosen one story.
But that is not the main character. The main character is his neighbor, who is quite pissed that some asshole burned down his village and killed his friends and family. He doesn’t want to save the world he just wants revenge. He has no magic and no destiny, but he does have anger and determination with nothing to lose. The story follows him in his self appointed quest to hunt down the asshole who attacked his hometown for apparently no reason.
Mystery Men?
@26 – I think it’s ambiguous. I suppose it could be fate, destiny, etc. Prophecy/divine intervention is possibly a subtrope of that. Then again, I could also (in my head) be combining it with a Hero’s Journey trope which also overlaps.
Rand al’Thor. Perrin Aybara. To a greater extent, Matrim Cauthon.
Specifically not chosen by the big bad- Neville Longbottom, who still stood up and slew Nagini.
@31, I just came here to say that!
Neville. Freaking. Longbottom.
@austin, #5
Ben-Hur?
Completely disagree on Rey.
Rey was chosen by the Force. It’s in Snoke’s speech to her…Kylo became powerful in the dark side, and the Force needed balance, so Rey became strong in the light side.
Vin, I’ll grant you, but Kelsier chose himself, as early and as often as possible. He would not have accepted any higher authority.
@8: He’s of royal blood, but he’s also visibly half-goblin, which designates him as the Other in-universe, and made him the least favorite in his father’s eyes. As a result, he was kept well away from him and the court, first by sending him off with his mother, then pretty much exiling him to Edonomee with the abusive Setheris when she died. On top of that, he quickly realizes how much he doesn’t know and needs to learn, no thanks to his isolation.
As for being the backup, as Varenichibel’s fourth son, he’s more like the backup to the backup’s backup. Under normal circumstances, nobody would have expected him to reign. (There’s a reason why Egg/Aegon V is referred to as Aegon the Unlikely.)
My favorite take on this was China Mieville’s Deeba. The Chosen One craps out in the first act, and the “funny companion” saves the day.
DrBlack, you completely miss the point. Deeba’s friend was The Chosen One. She was supposed to go on her Quest Tour with her Designated Sidekicks, get all the tokens, and Win. She couldn’t hack it and was taken out in the first couple chapters.
Deeba was explicitly NOT The Chosen One. She was supposed to be the inept humorous sidekick. The Prophecy said so. She ignored the Prophecy, did everything she wasn’t supposed to, waved away the Tour, the Quest Tokens – “What’s the last one?” – and took the world on its own terms.
Pretty should Kvothe should be at the top of this list. Well, probably. I guess we won’t know for sure unless Pat Rothfuss ever actually finishes the Kingkiller Chronicles. Maybe his life will just progress from childhood tragedy to badass youth to washed up barkeep to end without ever actually putting a hurting on the Chandrian. Oh well, at least he got to bang Felurian and live to tell the tale.
I disagree with choice of Rey; it might have been true in The Force Awakens, but by the time you get to The Last Jedi and Snoke is going on about a force of Light always rises to meet the darkness, I think we’re pretty firmly in Chosen One territory. Finn, though? Unchosen all the way. Dude was just a nameless drone until he decided to run away from battle, steal a ship with some chick he just met, and somehow wind up in the middle of the Resistance.
I’m surprised Katniss Everdeen isn’t on this list. Her participation in the Hunger Games is completely arbitrary – she volunteers to replace her sister (herself chosen at random) as tribute. Besides her hunting skills and strong will to survive, she has nothing that makes her special, and people underestimate her at every turn because she comes from an impoverished, backwoods district. She would have died an ignominious death from hunger if it wasn’t for Peeta. And when her actions in the Games cause a ripple effect of revolt, she’s terrified of both the violent consequences of what she’s done and the attempts to cast her as a heroic savior of the people. She has no ambitions beyond keeping her family and home safe, and continually struggles with the idea of herself as a leader.
More response to #5… Not fantasy, but something similar happens in much, maybe most historical fiction, with the main characters caught up in the sweep of events while the great figures of the day are mostly off-screen. War and Peace and The Charterhouse of Parma are two great works of historical fiction about the Napoleonic period, with Napoleon (the Chosen One to a bunch of people in his day) at most a peripheral figure in the story. The main character in Charterhouse even goes to fight at Waterloo, but never sees the battle or has any idea of what’s going on before he runs away in the general panic.
I also think of a lot of Christian stories about people peripheral to the life of Jesus, the most famous of which is probably Ben-Hur. Jesus is in it a lot and the main character becomes a Christian, but it’s still Judah Ben-Hur’s story. A little less devout is Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, another story set around the story of Jesus with a hero is definitely not a Chosen One.
Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom, yeah. But don’t overlook Hermione Granger. She’s the brains, the time traveler (Time Turner) and the problem solver. And she doesn’t have to but she’s smart enough to figure out what’ll hit the fan if people don’t think.
I don’t think such a person needs to be given a title other than “responsible” or maybe “normal”. No sane person want’s to get killed, or worse (extenuating circumstances excluded), but if their loved ones, or they themselves are in danger, then you (perhaps with trepidation) step up and do what is necessary to divert or remove that threat. “Thank you mommy, for killing the monster under my bed!“. A tip for parents who have a child which has a monster living under their bed: Remove the legs from the bed!
It’s all Rey, Rey, Rey — what about Han? He keeps stepping in to pick up the pieces despite having nothing to do with the Force. (Yes, I know some have claimed he couldn’t have wielded Luke’s lightsaber, even on a dead tauntaun, without the Force; I don’t think this is part of the movie-verse.) To me it’s the stepping up that matters, not staying after the need for a hero has passed (noting Han’s going back to his old life in the decades between Kylo’s birth and his becoming powerful); this is another story shape, as in Cincinnatus (who allegedly left off plowing to lead an army, then went back to the plowing afterward).
I think that many cases the hero would be more of a “reluctant” hero than “unchosen.” For instance, Rey certainly seems to have been chosen by the Force to counter Kylo Ren, but she certainly is reluctant to do so.
I hereby nominate Richard Mayhew from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Just an ordinary guy, who had enough empathy that he couldn’t turn his back on people in need.
Has anyone here read The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness? It’s entirely about the unchosen ones! At the beginning of each chapter is a snippet of the A story, which features the Chosen.
By the way, Rosie was only the barmaid in the film of LOTR. In the novel she was a farmer’s daughter and Sam’s girlfriend who had to suggest, gently, that maybe it was time they got married. And they did, but moved into Bagend so Sam could go on serving “Mr Frodo.”
But yes, Sam is my favourite unchosen one, though he does end up as Mayor of the Shire, with a daughter who has become an aristocrat, and goes to the Undying Lands. Where, no doubt, he continue to serve “Mr Frodo.” ;-)
Then again, there is this:
https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Corrupted-Internet-Summoned-Hero-ebook/dp/B01B2BP726/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1518648527&sr=8-2&keywords=girl+corrupted
How about Thomas Covenant from Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever? He’s constantly fighting the reality of the Land and his place in saving it.
Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels!
http://diggercomic.com/
I will take any opportunity to plug Digger. She’s awesome. Her story is awesome and won a Hugo. Go check her out.
Nynaeve al’Meara.
And, even more, Egwene al’Vere.
Zoey Redbird, Stevie Rae Johnson and Aphrodite la Font. None of these are hero material. At all. They just have to ignore it and step up anyway. And that is BEFORE one becomes the (partly willing) romantic target of an evil angel, one becomes an rabid undead bloodsucker (vampires in House of Night were alive before her death and resurrection), and one loses her vampirism and becomes a boring, normal human again (and she hates humans).
But my best example is Vaurien Scapegrace. He transforms from a failed serial killer, wanted for dozens of failed attempts of murder, to someone who in the latter books not only sides with, and is actually useful to, the heroes, but also is cruical to the literal salvation of every living thing in the universe. And he becomes king of the undead as a totally unexpected side effect. And this is the guy who always wanted to be someone and to matter, but always failed. He is one (of many) awesome characters in the books.
@25 – naw, it wasn’t cheating. Zanny was the archetype hero right from the start – good-looking, fairly good at everything, with that ‘it factor’. Whereas Deeba, the designated sidekick, blatantly ignores the prophecy, skips steps in the quest and takes shortcuts to eventually complete the mission and save the world.
@43 – that reminds me of that movie Little Monsters where the protag does indeed saw the legs off the bed. Didn’t stop the monsters though.
@46 agreed, Richard Mayhew belongs in the pantheon of unchosen heroes! I’d also like to throw in Murderbot, who just wants everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day, and the Expanse crew (with maybe the exception of Holden.)
I think Samwise will always be my favorite.
In a sense kelsier didnt fail he succeeded, maybe not in the form we expected but he planted the seed to overcome the lord ruler.
Vin was a kind of chosen one, a temporary one you could say? she has a big role given to her since little.
Terry Pratchett’s young witch Tiffany Aching is a perfect poster child for “I’ll do it because it needs to be done (right).”
I also thought of Carrie Vaughn’s Celia West from the “Golden Age” books because she is the normal daughter of superheroes and has to deal with all their baggage in spite of that—very much a Not-Chosen One.