Adversity has a huge role to play in shaping the person. Most people bow down and back off when faced with adversity, but some of those who don’t accept the marginal existence rise to the top. History is filled with examples of illegitimate, outcastes & disowned children rising up as powerful tycoons, rulers and generals. Few of the names are:
1. Mahabharat: Karan was a bastard, Krishna was not raised by his parents, Dhritrastra & Pandu did not have even an ounce of the royal blood, Pandu was impotent yet he had 5 sons.
2. Ramayana: Sita was found abandoned in the fields, Ram was not supposed to be the legitimate ruler.
3. Ashoka was neither the eldest, nor was he born to the queen.
4. Aurangzeb was the 6th child of his father and had to resort to Fratricide to consolidate power (he arrested his father and hence did not have to indulge in Patricide)
5. Rome was founded by 2 abandoned orphans (sulking on the wolves milk)
6. Alexander was born out of wedlock and had to resort to Patricide the moment the crown prince was born (he was the head of the royal bodyguards and the king dies under his guard paving way for his rise to the throne)
7. Nobody knows who Jesus Christ’s father was
8. Hitler stepfather Johann Georg Hiedler was recognized as the birth-father only 20 years after his death (and 30 years after the death of Hitler’s mother)
The list goes on: Confucius (ca. 551–479 BCE), St. Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev (980–1015), William the Conqueror (1028–87), King Joao I of Portugal (1358–1433), Leone Battista Alberti (1404–72), Antoine, bastard of Burgundy (1421–1504), Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536), Ferdinand Columbus (1488–1539), Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603), Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83), Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), James Smithson (1764 – 1829), Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824 – 95) etc.
Some say that one needs ruthlessness to succeed and bastards are born with it. However many of them were kind and gentle. What they had was an obsession, the passion to succeed against all odds. The world was not handed to them on a silver platter, but that never scared them. The out of the box thinking and challenging the status quo. While the common man lives to collect his inheritance, these guys go out of the way to create theirs.
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