system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: A majority of orphan protagonists are just orphans to have easy motivations

I'm very much into the fantasy genre, namely for books, but I find that an absurd amount of books (both in and out of the fantasy genre) have orphan protagonists. Inherently, there's nothing wrong with the protagonist being an orphan or having their parents killed at the beginning of the story, but usually there is no actually weight to them being an orphan/their parents having been killed.

Often an orphan protagonist is an orphan so that they can go out on their quest/adventure without having to answer the question of why their parent would allow something like that to happen. Or the protagonist is a more dark and edgy character and they're the orphan to justify being dark and edgy. Having them be an orphan for *plot* reasons makes sense, but it's usually done just to not have to elaborate as to why the protagonist is the way they are or why they're all alone.

Then there are orphan protagonist because they need a motivation for the quest/adventure to occur. The protagonist's parents were killed by antagonist-name and now they're off for revenge/to find out why because there it was the easiest and catalyst to force them into action. And this will even be amped up to the protagonist's entire village/home being killed so they can go off and be the cool lone survivor who fights against the world on their own.

The problem isn't just that the protagonist is only doing anything/engaging with the plot because the orphan, but the actually effects of them *being* an orphan are usually just sprinkled on if not outright ignored. The protagonist's family was murdered right in front of them/just off screen from them and they rarely have any actually trauma/lasting effects from this event. Unless it's "they were killed now I'm angry/edgy because there are no other emotions to react to such an event with."

So are orphan protagonists usually just orphans to have easy motivations to engage with/start the plot, or are they orphans for reasons that actually mean something (or entirely nothing because that it's just how life works sometimes)?
gpt
I think you're forgetting another really important reason to make a protagonist an orphan in the fantasy genre. If they weren't an orphan, it's not just that they wouldn't be *motivated* to go on an adventure. They wouldn't be *allowed* to. 

Fantasy novels are (usually) set in worlds where the political economy and social structure is, well, medieval. Or not necessarily always medieval *exactly*, but at any rate provincial, conservative, and in a word old. You don't just go off to seek your fortune and leave your folks at home. You work their land or their trade and you support them in your old age or you're a *bad person*. And people don't want to write their fantasy protagonists just abandoning their family from the jump, mostly.