SFF: The 5 Unluckiest Characters in Books

The Sunday Fun Five #13

Sunday Fun 5:

#1: The 5 Stages of Reading a Bad Book

#2: The 5 Literary Antagonists You Hope You Never Meet

#3: The 5 Realms of the Written Word You Wish You Never Left

#4: The 5 Authors You Would Revive, If Only For a Day
#5: The 5 Books That Define You as a Person and a Reader
#6: The 5 Genres (or Subgenres) You Never Get Tired Of
#7: The 5 Husband-Material Characters You Wish Were Real
#8: The 5 Books You'd Rather Steal Than Wait For (To Be Published)
#9: The 5 Alternate Blog Names For Your Blog
#10: The 5 Books That Make You Want to Go Places
#11: The 5 Fatal Mistakes of an Author (Literary Pet Peeves)
#12: The 5 Stories/Books that Never Cease to Scare You
#13: The 5 Unluckiest Characters in Books
For the 8th of November: #14: The 5 Books You're Most Grateful For (that you've read in 2014)

Feel free to participate by commenting below or writing a blog post: I wrote up some guidelines for blog participation here.

A Countdown of

The 5 Unluckiest Characters in Books

Note: Due to the possibility of spoilers, I won't be fully explaining and exploring my reasons as to why these are the unluckiest characters in books I've read.

From Wikipedia and the Swedish Films

5. Lisbeth Salander from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson 
This girl was unlucky since before she was born, but she also has a knack for attracting the bad sort of attention. But with her gifts, a talent for recognizing faces and hacking, it almost makes up for her ill fortune, but she still deserves to be featured on this list.

From Wikipedia and the films

4. Frodo Baggins from The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Frodo was unlucky that his uncle was a wanderer, unlucky that he came in contact with the Ring, and unlucky that he had a resistance to its charms. He volunteered for the job, but really- it should have been someone else's burden. It isn't a poor hobbit's fault this all came to be.

From the HG Wiki and the film

3. Prim Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
First off, she was chosen via lottery for The Hunger Games, then her sister took her place, leaving her to take care of their rather difficult mom. The rest I can't really say, but it's pretty darn unlucky, if you ask me.

From the Kingkiller Wiki

2. Kvothe (pronounced "quothe") from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Kvothe has been struggling for a living since his parents met their untimely end. Again, I can't tell you much more, but he seems to be a magnet for trouble, much like Lisbeth Salander.

From the tv series and this blog

1. The Starks from A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
This is cheating, because it isn't one character, but I don't care- the Starks are the unluckiest characters ever, mostly due to Mr. Martin's love of making their lives as miserable as possible. Of all of them, if I had to pick a single Stark as the unluckiest, it would have to be Sansa. What happens in the first part of the first book to her seems like good fortune, but quickly turns sour.

Do you know any other characters that have terrible luck? Which author would you never trust to make a character after you, for fear you'd end up luckless in whichever book they wrote you into?