General Sakuma Kichiro: Did the master find me wandering the ruins of my conquered village, as he says? Did he rescue me?
Daimyo Torii Mototada: Yes, and no. You see, it was he who conquered, first your clan and then your family. He ordered your parents to death. (...) The master has always seem in you a man with great promise. You must share his confidence.
Daimyo Torii Mototada: Yes, and no. You see, it was he who conquered, first your clan and then your family. He ordered your parents to death. (...) The master has always seem in you a man with great promise. You must share his confidence.
— Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, Act I: Japan
This trope takes place when the children of a conquered tribe/nation/whatever are taken or sent away from their birth parents in order to be raised by the nation that conquered them.
Considering the usual role of conquerors in fiction, this is usually played as an evil deed, with the children learning the Awful Truth in adulthood; however, there are cases where the conquering party actually improved the conquered people's situation, by the conquered people's own admission.
Note that the key part of the trope is that the captured was raised by the conquerors, so children being taken as slaves don't count for the trope.
This trope usually has two developments: either the character in question fights the oppressors that raised them upon learning the Awful Truth (especially if they had an awful infancy), or choose to stay with them due to how happy of a childhood they had in spite of their life story being a lie. A third, less frequent development has the character Walking the Earth after learning the truth, in order to find themselves; ill will against their raisers is optional.
Subtrope of Kill the Parent, Raise the Child. Can overlap with Raised by Orcs if the conqueror is Always Chaotic Evil. Compare Adopt-a-Servant, where orphans are hired (or part of a Slave Race) instead of being raised. Also compare Orc Raised by Elves, where the orphan originates from an evil faction and is raised by another, more benevolent faction. Contrast with Raised by Natives, who are usually portrayed as the conquered.
As a spoileriffic trope, Spoilers Off apply, so read the examples at your own risk. Also, due to the nature of the trope, Real Life examples are forbidden.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Eagles of Rome: The story adds the fictional character of Marcus to serve as a foil to Ermanamer (better known to history as Arminius): one is Roman (his mother is a German princess), the other a German raised by Romans, both grow up and serve in the army together though they end up on opposite sides.
- The Flintstones (2016): Barney and Betty Rubble's son Bamm-Bamm is actually one of the Tree People, adopted by the couple after Fred and Barney participate in the genocide of his tribe.
- Star Wars Legends: A comic detailing the backstory of Jango Fett reveals he was not initially a Mandalorian, but rather a native of the planet Concord Dawn. When a civil war among the people of Mandalore spilled over into his homeland, his sister and parents alike were killed in the crossfire upon interrogation by the Death Watch, young Fett had no choice but to go with the True Mandalorians faction whom he had helped lead out of danger. As a reward, he was allowed to join their ranks and take up training in their warrior caste.
Fan Works
- Triptych Continuum: Griffins don't kill children, and adopt the children of the species they've conquered/defeated in battle, raising them as their own.
Films — Live-Action
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Thor: in the flashback, after Odin Borson's Asgardian forces subjugated the Frost Giants, he took a lone baby Frost Giant to be raised as his child. That baby is Loki Odinson.
- Avengers: Infinity War: Flashbacks show that Thanos adopted Gamora after killing her parents and half of the population of her homeworld, and raised her as his child.
Literature
- The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale. Many years prior to the story proper, Theseus had conquered the Amazons, married their queen Ypolita, and taken her younger sister Emelye captive. Given how many years passed before Arcite and Palamon saw Emelye, and how many more years before they escaped and fought over her, it is likely that Emelye was a child when Theseus took her captive.
- The Legend of the Condor Heroes: This is Yang Kang's backstory. His parents' village was conquered by Jurchen troops while he was still in the womb, and Wanyan Honglie, the leader of the Jurchen forces, took her mother in as consort (there was some trickery involved, but in her view, it's consensual). He was born in Jurchen and as a member of the extended Jurchen royal family; only later in the novel does he know his father is also Han.
- The Masquerade: Boarding schools are one of the ways the Masquerade establishes control over its provinces: uprooting whole generations of children and raising them to be good imperial federati, disconnected from their original culture and heritage.
Pinion: People turned on us in the last couple years. Young people who came through the Masquerade schools, all of them calling us radicals and regressives. None of them knew a damn thing about being Taranoki.
- Redwall: The Taggerung follows the story of an otter raised by vermin to be their greatest warrior. Naturally he rebels and ends up finding his true family, while his adoptive father ends up killed by another vermin who wanted her son to be the Taggerung (despite his being painfully unsuited for the job and exceptionally incompetent and whiny among Redwall villains).
Live-Action TV
- Andromeda: Downplayed with President Sebastian Lee of Castelia. Castelia is home to many different types of genetically modified humans; the water-breathers are the majority, and the air-breathers are a legally equal, but still marginalized, minority. Decades earlier, Lee led the revolution that liberated the planet from the Volsung by destroying their orbital space station, which made many air-breathing slaves collateral damage, including the parents of Lee's adopted daughter.
- Barbarians Rising: Episodes 2 and 3 dramatize how Arminius and his brother, sons of a Cherusci chief in modern-day Germany, were taken as tributes by Rome and raised to be legionnaires. When Arminius returns to Germany, he defects back to his former tribe and leads a revolt, but his brother Flavius went native and eventually leads a legion in a counterattack against his brother, even capturing Arminius's wife and daughter and sending them to Rome, never to be seen again.
Mythology & Religion
- Moses in the Book of Exodus from The Bible is the Ur-Example, making this trope Older Than Dirt. Born to an enslaved Hebrew family in Egypt, his mother Jochebed set him adrift in a basket in the Nile during a purge ordered by the Pharaohnote of all male infants. The Pharaoh's daughter would find Moses' basket while bathing in the river, taking him in as her own son.
Video Games
- Age of Empires III: In the Japan campaign from the Expansion Pack The Asian Dynasties, we're introduced to protagonist Sakuma Kichiro, a general who serves in Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa's army. We're told that Kichiro was taken by Tokugawa after the death of his parents and raised by him. Later in the story, prior to the Siege of Fushimi Castle, Kichiro asks Daimyo Torii Mototada if it was true that Tokugawa just rescued him from an orphanage or if there was something else going on. As it turns out, Tokugawa razed Kichiro's clan, and killed his parents, taking the child as a trophy. However, Kichiro remains loyal to Tokugawa until the Big Bad of the campaign, Daimyo Ishida Matsunari, is killed.
- Crusader Kings: You can request to educate vassals' children, or children you captured while sacking a castle. This can be harnessed to get them to convert culture and/or religion to yours, removing a potential source of revolts.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Dunmer merchant Brand-Shei gets his distinctly non-Dunmer name from the fact that he was raised by Argonians after their people sacked his home city.
- GreedFall: An optional Sidequest Sidestory reveals that De Sardet is actually a native of Teer Fradee who was kidnapped by the colonizers as a baby and raised as their own on the mainland. This is also the real reason why this character is immune to Malichor, which does not affect Teer Fradee's indigenous population.
- Mortal Kombat has Princess Kitana, at least from the original/first reboot timelines. She was born to King Jerrod and Queen Sindel, but when Edenia was taken by Shao Kahn, the conqueror takes Kitana as a daughter and a personal assassin to boot. That is, until she discovers the truth and pulls a Heel–Face Turn. Note that one of the alternative timelines shown in Mortal Kombat 11 plays with this — Kitana is raised as Shao Kahn's daughter, but Sindel is a willing accomplice and helps him kill King Jerrod, only to be killed by Shang Tsung.
- Ratchet & Clank: In the backstory of the series, the Lombaxes went to war with the Cragmites and exiled them to another dimension, but found a single surviving Cragmite egg and decided they would raise it. The child inside the egg grew up to become Percival Tachyon, the Big Bad of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.
- Warcraft: Thrall was born after his people, the orcs, were defeated in the Second War, and was found as a baby and raised by Aedelas Blackmoore, the human responsible for running the internment camps where the orc survivors of the war were imprisoned.
Webcomics
- Goblins: The second page
of "Kore's Arrival" introduces a dwarf child cared for by the Orc who slew his father in battle, but refused to leave the child to die. We never see how the child would have been raised, as he, his adoptive father, and everyone else in the area are slain by the Knight Templar Paladin Kore.
