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Character Library // Give Them Roots

Character Backstories

Give them roots.

Thirty-one backgrounds and upbringings, from loving to strange to difficult. Not every past is a wound.

All backgroundsChildhoods only

Starter ideas

  1. 01
    They spent one summer as somebody else entirely, and nobody in their life now knows.
  2. 02
    Raised by a lighthouse keeper, a cook, and the radio.
  3. 03
    The family's one good memory is a holiday that, it turns out, never happened.

Browse by background

Happy Childhood

  • · A genuinely happy childhood, so adulthood feels like a long, polite disappointment.
  • · Their parents were kind, funny and present, which makes them suspicious of anyone who isn't.
  • · They grew up feeling safe, and now take risks nobody else understands.

Privileged Childhood

  • · Raised with every advantage and a quiet terror of being found out as ordinary.
  • · They didn't know they were rich until a friend asked why the house had a name.
  • · Every door opened for them, so they never learned how to knock.

Poor but Loving Family

  • · There was never enough money and always enough soup. They still make too much soup.
  • · Their parents turned every shortage into a game, and they only realised as an adult.
  • · They're generous to a fault because generosity was the only luxury at home.

Strict Household

  • · A house with a rule for everything, so they're brilliant in emergencies and lost on holidays.
  • · They still ask permission before sitting down in their own apartment.
  • · The strictness was love, badly translated. They're only now learning the language.

Overprotective Parents

  • · They weren't allowed to climb trees, so now they climb buildings.
  • · Someone who has never once broken a bone and secretly feels cheated.
  • · Their mother still texts them when it rains.

Emotionally Distant Family

  • · A family who said 'I love you' through practical favours: oil changes, packed lunches, rides at 3am.
  • · They learned to read moods from the way a door was closed.
  • · Nobody shouted. Nobody hugged. Everybody watched the news together.

Golden Child

  • · The favourite, and they've spent their life quietly apologising to their siblings for it.
  • · Praised for everything, so the first failure at 29 nearly ended them.
  • · They know exactly how to be loved, and not at all how to be known.

Black Sheep

  • · The family's designated problem, and the only one who saw the real one.
  • · They left first, and now everyone says it like an accusation.
  • · They're the black sheep who sends the nicest birthday cards.

Only Child

  • · Grew up at adult dinner parties, and still talks to children like colleagues.
  • · They invented a sibling so convincingly that relatives still ask after them.
  • · Excellent at being alone. Bad at sharing the last of anything.

Large Family

  • · One of seven, so they've never eaten slowly in their life.
  • · In a big family you are either loud or invisible. They chose a third thing.
  • · They had to share everything, so the one thing they own is guarded like a crown.

Raised by Grandparents

  • · Raised by grandparents, so their slang is forty years out of date and their manners are perfect.
  • · They knew death was coming sooner than for their friends, and loved accordingly.
  • · They can darn a sock, play cribbage, and tell you exactly what the war cost.

Raised by Siblings

  • · Their big sister raised them at nineteen, and neither of them has forgiven the world for it.
  • · Half sibling, half parent, fully unsure which one to be at Christmas.
  • · Raised by brothers who knew nothing about children and everything about loyalty.

Parentified Child

  • · They were the adult at home, so being looked after feels like an insult.
  • · Brilliant manager, terrible at relaxing, has never once played a board game for fun.

Foster Care

  • · Seven homes in nine years. They unpack in twelve minutes, and pack in four.
  • · They kept one object from every house and can tell you the whole story behind each.
  • · One foster parent got it exactly right, and they've measured everyone against her since.

Adopted

  • · Adopted into a loving family that looks nothing like them, and very much like each other.
  • · They found their birth parent, and the parent was completely, disappointingly ordinary.
  • · They've always known, and they've always been completely fine. Everyone else isn't.

Constantly Moving

  • · Eleven schools. They can make a friend in a day and lose one without crying.
  • · They answer 'where are you from?' with a different place depending on the mood.
  • · Home was the car, and they still sleep best on motorways.

Military Family

  • · Grew up on bases, so they salute strangers by accident and fold towels in thirds.
  • · Their father came home different each tour, and they learned to meet him again each time.
  • · Every goodbye was efficient. They are still terrible at slow ones.

Family Business

  • · Raised behind the counter of a hardware shop. Knows the price of every screw.
  • · The family restaurant is failing and they're the only one who's seen the books.
  • · They were born into a funeral home and are completely comfortable around grief, and nothing else.

Famous Family

  • · Their mother is famous, so strangers have opinions about their haircut from 1998.
  • · They use their grandmother's maiden name to find out if people like them for them.
  • · The family legend is a lie, and they're the only one who knows which part.

Political Family

  • · Grew up being photographed at dinner. Still checks the angle before laughing.
  • · Their father's opponent was the kindest adult in their childhood.
  • · They know how to give a speech at a funeral and not how to grieve at one.

Criminal Family

  • · Their uncle taught them to pick locks and to always, always leave a thank-you note.
  • · The family 'business' paid for their law degree. Awkward.
  • · They love their family deeply and keep their own front door locked twice.

Religious Household

  • · They left the faith and kept the hymns.
  • · Still prays, privately and badly, before anything frightening.
  • · Their faith was the warmest thing in the house, and they're furious nobody believes that.

Sheltered Childhood

  • · They saw the ocean for the first time at twenty-four and had to sit down.
  • · Knows Latin, three hymns, and nothing about money.
  • · They mistake rudeness for honesty, because they've never seen either up close.

Competitive Household

  • · Family board game nights ended in silence and once in a hospital visit.
  • · They can't do anything casually, including grief.
  • · Their siblings still keep score. They pretend not to, and win.

Academic Pressure

  • · Top of every class, now works in a bakery and has never been happier. Nobody at home knows.
  • · They still dream about exams they've already passed.
  • · Brilliant on paper, completely lost the first time someone asked what they enjoy.

Child Performer

  • · A child actor who can cry on cue and hasn't cried for real in a decade.
  • · Strangers still sing their old jingle at them in the supermarket.
  • · They peaked at nine and are, honestly, at peace with it.

Family Secret

  • · Everyone knows the secret except the person it's about.
  • · Their grandmother had another family in another town, and they're the one who found the photos.
  • · The family secret is boring, which is why it's so carefully kept.

Lost Family Wealth

  • · They grew up in the big house, then visited it as a tourist.
  • · Still has the manners of money and the bank balance of a student.
  • · Their parents never admitted the money was gone. They just kept setting the table for twelve.

Sudden Wealth

  • · The family won the lottery when they were fourteen, and nobody spoke the same way again.
  • · They're rich now, and still steal sugar packets from cafés.
  • · Sudden money made every relative a stranger and every stranger a relative.

Found Family

  • · Their real family is a rotating group of night-shift nurses who share one fridge.
  • · They chose their people at nineteen, and it's the only promise they've never broken.
  • · Found family, slightly by accident, and nobody's brave enough to call it that out loud.

Raised in Isolation

  • · Grew up on a lighthouse island. Knows every bird, no pop songs.
  • · Raised off-grid. They find supermarkets genuinely frightening and libraries holy.
  • · They talk to animals the way other people talk to friends, because for years they were.
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