About: Single Line of Descent   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : dbkwik.org associated with source dataset(s)

Curious phenomenon where there's only one true descendant of the some legendary hero/villain or chosen one. Usually it's only that one person who can save the day or bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Because Destiny Says So, of course. And often it has to be the male line, or whichever keeps the last name. The fact that there's multiple branching into different last names doesn't count genetically for some bizarre reason. Note that, in the present generation, if there is another sibling, he or she tends to be recruited by the Big Bad as the Evil Counterpart.

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rdfs:label
  • Single Line of Descent
rdfs:comment
  • Curious phenomenon where there's only one true descendant of the some legendary hero/villain or chosen one. Usually it's only that one person who can save the day or bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Because Destiny Says So, of course. And often it has to be the male line, or whichever keeps the last name. The fact that there's multiple branching into different last names doesn't count genetically for some bizarre reason. Note that, in the present generation, if there is another sibling, he or she tends to be recruited by the Big Bad as the Evil Counterpart.
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dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • Curious phenomenon where there's only one true descendant of the some legendary hero/villain or chosen one. Usually it's only that one person who can save the day or bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Because Destiny Says So, of course. And often it has to be the male line, or whichever keeps the last name. The fact that there's multiple branching into different last names doesn't count genetically for some bizarre reason. This is curious in itself. Most family trees branch quite a bit due to multiple children having multiple children. In fact, if you look far enough into the past, you reach a point where every human being alive then is either the ancestor of everybody or nobody who is currently alive. Here apparently only one child was born per generation. In older legends, it was explicitly stated that only the firstborn "counts", but the socioeconomic systems that fostered that kind of thinking withered away, leaving only this trope. Similarly, the sole true descendant is generally treated as essentially equivalent to their ancestor, having the same powers, personality, ethnicity, and so on. Never mind that, if the legendary hero lived twenty generations ago, he had roughly a million contemporaries who are just as closely related to the modern-day version as he. Note that, in the present generation, if there is another sibling, he or she tends to be recruited by the Big Bad as the Evil Counterpart. Occasionally it will be explained away that the Big Bad found and eliminated the rest, and the Supporting Leader happened to get to the last one in time. Possibly related to the Identical Grandson. Only one in a generation can take the "legacy." The last offspring of a Single Line of Descent is by definition the Last of His Kind. Examples of Single Line of Descent include:
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