Harry Potter Family
One of the most common endings to a hero’s genre (besides death) is settling down and having kids. That epilogue where the hero is seen with his or her young child is a hallmark of fantasy endings. Many people scoff at the happy ending, but I feel that many characters earn this. Authors put them through hell, bring them back, and toss them back in again. They witness events and do things that will probably haunt their dreams. So, maybe they earned the happy family.
This event can also happen to a hero in the middle of an adventure, which tends to signify one of a few things:
- The character will be retired and adventure will finish with a new hero.
- The adventure will be pushed on many years, so the children will continue.
- The character’s family will be killed/kidnapped/corrupted and he/she will be an angry, bitter hero.
Personally, I always worry when a hero has a kid and I know there are more books coming up. Messing with a person’s family is a classic method of getting a stale hero back onto the road and set up a personality change. Imagine what would happen if someone killed Harry Potter’s kids? We’d get a new series with a darker edge. It’s a dangerous path though because those who loved the happier version of a hero won’t be happy. Some fans will take the family as closure and refuse to carry on under the belief that you’re only doing it for money. Yet, you’ll gain fans who enjoy a fallen hero. It’s all in what you feel is right for the character and yourself when you give them a family. I know when my surviving heroes have kids, they’re designated to cameos.
So, what do people think of the ‘now has kids’ ending? What about having kids mid-adventure?
Legends of Windemere 
You have built a legacy…at the end of it all, the children could continue that which has been bequeathed. In reading reviews recently, I actually saw a lot of reviewers talking about that…they seem to like it. especially when it kicks off a whole new series. Can’t recall the titles though.
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I’ve that a few times. People don’t want the series to end or to leave that world. Kids tend to be a natural progression to keep things moving. I guess it depends on how one ends the first series too.
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Don’t even joke about killing Harry Potter’s kids – that’s just all kinds of wrong! But it would make an interesting story.
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I agree that such an option isn’t really a Harry Potter one. I can see that for grittier series.
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I think that ending the series with the birth of children or the start of a family is a good idea. It gives the readers hope for new stories in the future! 🙂
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True. At the very least it can grant some closure and tell the readers that there’s a happy ending.
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I’m actually working through this myself, right now. In Seven Exalted Orders, my book through Sky Warrior, a female main character became pregnant during the course of the novel. This led her to make a commitment to her lover. But then, my publisher asked for a sequel! Two of my main characters will begin said sequel with an infant. Not what I had planned, but it should be an interesting challenge.
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You just reminded me that one of my series has two of the female heroes getting pregnant. I need to figure out what to do with that since it’s impossible to remove them from the story. This is the problem with basing books off D&D games. Unless I do a time passes thing.
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I think that kids, if introduced right, allow a series to go on almost indefinitely. You may lose some fans of the original series, but pickup new fans with the emergence their children in a new one.
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Good point. Switching characters tend to be shaky in a series. I think children have an easier transition because it can keep the older characters in.
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A family seems a natural ending to a series and a neat beginning to another chapter in the world, especially if we’ve lived through multiple books with that character. But I have to say that I’m not crazy about a writer who produces one book with an engaging character and then skips ahead twenty years so that he or she can write about the offspring of the main character. We’ve just become invested in this character and now the focus is totally off him or her. I know. Perhaps the author only had one book in mind for that character. But I can’t say I like the piecemeal approach.
I love what Dorothy Sayers did with Lord Peter Wimsey. After several books his life changed. I won’t say how to avoid spoilers. But I love what she did.
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I agree. Though I think it could work if the character gets closure. A danger for authors is getting so invested with a character or series that they push it too far. I see this happen a lot in anime.
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I like the idea of characters having kids. Especially in the Star Wars expanded universe, where Luke and co.’s kids were so awesome, and had just as amazing adventures as their parents. Certain other books (*cough*HarryPoter*cough*) just felt kind of tacked on at the end and didn’t have much emotional impact. Still, especially for when the kids are an indication that the trials and tribulations are over, it’s nice to know that the heroes were able to have a semi-normal life, settle down, have kids, etc. Then again, I’m a huge fan of happy endings, so that could be part of it as well 🙂
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Kids are certainly part of many happy endings. I think with their addition it brings a true ‘end’ to the hero’s trials. The idea about having children means they’re settled down and have responsibilities. I wonder if the Star Wars kids will be in the next movie.
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I hope so!!! I absolutely love love love Anakin Solo … except for the part where he dies. That part wasn’t quite so good. But the rest was awesome!
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He dies!?
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Pfff. No. I was just messing with you. He most definitely doesn’t die.
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Next thing you’ll tell me is that Chewbacca was killed.
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Which would also be a blatant and totally unfounded lie.
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I do wonder what the new movies will be like. So much material to choose from, but they might ignore it completely.
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Ooh, interesting question! Personally I like children as the ultimate symbol of Happily Ever After: the hero saved the day, found his or her life partner, and starts a family. That’s the dream right? And you can’t have the dream until you fix whatever’s wrong with the world first, right?
But that’s not the way it works in real life, so maybe fiction shouldn’t limit heroes to the childless. The tricky part is that priorities change once you have kids. It’s much harder to make a self-sacrificing epic hero to save the world, because he or she has to stay alive for their family, darn it!
That’s not to say it still couldn’t be a fascinating story and maybe even more complex, but I can see why the heroes of fantasy are almost always young, unmarried, and without children. My own personal tastes as a reader would be for children to come late in the story because it means I get to see the full relationship development and romance arc and I’m a sucker for romance.
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Children really do seem to mean retirement due to a priority change. There’s only so many things you can do to keep a character going after that. Like you, I prefer them late in the story. Mostly epilogues because a hero going on while children are at home gets iffy. I’ve read a few stories where it happens and the hero either never thinks back to them or is constantly talking about them. I think there’s always another hero somewhere.
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