Our heroes tend to be orphans. Beowulf, Batman, even Harry Potter. There are plenty of plausible explanations. Perhaps they all began as spectacular individuals, and not having parents afforded them more room to define their identity in a spectacular way? Or does the loss of parents endow them with a drive to do greater things? Do they just have more to prove? Or do we simply view the loss of parents as the most tragic of situations, so that a person who overcomes such a circumstance is necessarily imbued with some aspect of heroism?
