Tragic Backstory Examples

Lucas Ashton and I have secretly dated for five years. We're preparing to announce our relationship during a business dinner. However, he doesn't mention a word of it during the dinner. Instead, he leans close to me and whispers half-jokingly, "I'm sick of sleeping with you and want to call it quits. Shall we not disclose our relationship?" I smile and nod. Then, I point at Emily Lane, his first love. "This is Lucas' girlfriend." In my past life, I pleaded with him not to leave me. All that got me was torment and death.

The year my boyfriend is dead broke, I leave him. Later, he becomes a mafia boss and uses every means at his disposal to marry me. Everyone says that I am the first love he can never forget, the wife he cares about the most. However, he then starts bringing home a different woman every night, making me a laughingstock. Still, I don't cry or make a fuss. I quietly stay in my own room, never interrupting his affairs. Elton Carter is furious. He pins me beneath him, kisses me harshly, and growls, "Aren't you jealous?" He has no idea that I'm gravely ill. He could buy half the city with violence, threats, and money. He could buy my freedom, my marriage… and each night bring a different woman home, oblivious to the truth. Little does he know, I have just seven days left to live.

I have a deal with Aldric Cromwell, the so-called King of Equinox Street, a billionaire lawyer-turned-CEO. If I confess to him 142 times while wearing a wedding dress, he will cover his limited-edition Koenigsegg in flowers, drive me to the most magical castle, and give me the grandest wedding imaginable on my 143rd try. However, Aldric is nowhere to be seen that day. Instead, he makes headlines by renting out the entire Wondergrove Theme Park just to celebrate his sweet new girlfriend, Bianca Alvarez's birthday. Bathed in the glow of brilliant fireworks, they share a tender kiss, cameras flashing like stars all around them. That moment quickly becomes the top trending story on the internet. Meanwhile, I go viral in my own way for showing up in a wedding dress for the 143rd time outside his company building. Speculations and theories swirl about the mystery man I keep confessing to but never reveal. People also wonder how long it will be before I make the 144th declaration. When Aldric realizes I have faithfully kept our agreement, he promises me, out of pure guilt, that he will finally fulfill the vow he's made to me after the final confession. Dressed to the nines, he arrives at his company, driving that flower-covered, limited edition Koenigsegg, only to receive a final text from me. "There won't be a 144th confession, Aldric. We're over."

I am diagnosed with severe systemic lupus erythematosus, and I only have three days left to live. When my husband rejects my 188th plea for help, I take my test results and enter the hospice care center. "Hello, I'd like to schedule my own cremation process and apply for government aid." Ten minutes later, they arrive. Before I can speak, my lawyer husband, Jasper Horton, coldly slaps me across the face. "You're faking a terminal illness just to steal attention from Janice?" My doctor brother, Casey Carter, snatches the medical report from my hand and scoffs at it. "Lupus? If you're going to fake being sick, at least make it believable. Only one in a million people gets this." I endure the pain in my body, return to the counter, and hand in the application form and my medical records once more. The staff member sees the butterfly-shaped rash on my wrist and sympathizes with me. "I have no family left," I say. "I'm requesting cremation in three days, location doesn't matter. I just don't want my death to burden anyone."

My husband—one of the top elites of Raventon Street, cold and ruthless to his core—keeps a stray orphan girl he rescued from the slums hidden in an apartment. Rowena Fletcher is clean and fragile, like a newborn creature untouched by the world. And somehow, that innocence softens something in Micah Benson—a man who's spent years clawing his way through the brutal wilderness of capital. He thinks this secret game of his goes unnoticed, but I find out anyway. At the Benson family's charity gala, I smash his favorite antique vase in front of everyone. He doesn't even flinch as he simply signals the bodyguards to clean up the mess and then hands me a divorce agreement. "Sign it, Sabrina. The penthouse in Ashbourne City is yours." I burn the divorce agreement—and that's when he finally shows his true colors. He freezes all my accounts and launches a hostile takeover of my gallery. On the night the storm hits, I get a call from the hospital. My sister, Roberta Slater, has been in a car crash—she needs emergency surgery. In the security footage, he stood there, watching coldly. "Sign the papers, or start planning a funeral." I dropped to my knees and slammed my forehead against the floor, blood trailing down my face as I begged, "Micah, please… don't…" A long, flat beep echoed from the other end of the line, slicing through the sound of rain. Then a voice on the line says, "We did everything we could." However, I have gone back in time—to the day I first found out about Rowena. This time, I no longer cry. Instead, I plan my divorce on my own terms. I call Valebrook Bank that same night and begin preparing for a quiet disappearance. But the moment I truly vanish from his world, Micah loses his mind.

After I announced my exit from the music industry, the public response was overwhelmingly positive. The only person who voiced his objection was my girlfriend's rumored lover, the up-and-coming songwriter Lucas Zacker. He put on a show of sincerity in front of a crowd of reporters. "It's all a misunderstanding. Matthew is an irreplaceable talent in the music industry. I sincerely hope he returns to the stage." I shut off my phone and turned a blind eye to his public plea. In my past life, one of my songs had been identical to his supposedly original single. As such, netizens accused me of plagiarism, cursing me and wishing death upon my family. Frustrated, I posted the entire creation process online, but it couldn't stand up to the timeline. His new song had been released ten minutes ahead of mine. Just because of the ten-minute difference, netizens sent me photoshopped mourning portraits of myself and even went so far as to come to my house and vandalize it with paint. The relentless cyberbullying went on for years, and it drove me into a deep depression. My parents exhausted their life savings trying to clear my name, only for crazed fans to set our house on fire, causing my parents to burn to death. In the end, when his song won an award, I jumped off a building. But who would have guessed that when I opened my eyes again, I was reborn on the very day the new song was set to release.

I am an Omega. One day, Alpha Carl Blanchard found me in the Borderlands and took me in. After we formed the mate bond, he spoiled me senseless, never once caring who was watching. Now, everyone was whispering about the cold, ruthless Alpha who treats me—an Omega who used to be a Rogue—like I'm something sacred. They said it defied everything the Moon Goddess ever intended. I used to think he loved me down to the bone, that he just couldn't help showing the whole world how crazy he was about me. But then, I overhear him talking to his close friend. "I'm the Alpha of the Eastlands. I rule ten packs. If I don't paint Daisy as my weakness and my one obsession, how else am I supposed to keep Fiona off my enemies' radar? Turns out every wound I took for him was a damn joke. If that's how it is, I'm done playing Luna of the Eastlands. On my last day there, I made one call. "I'm in. I'll head to the Borderlands and spend the next ten years in closed research on medicinal herbs." When Carl found me gone, he came after me with bloodshot eyes and his pride in ruins. "Daisy… are you really leaving me?"

I'm about to marry Andre Lawson, a Waller Street tycoon, while my boyfriend of ten years, a blue-blooded attorney, still has no idea. His first love returns from Galoria, and now his phone floods with intimate photos of the two of them reliving their Lierre League alma mater days. On Valentine's Day, he reserves a private room at one of Zradstin's top Talision restaurants and orders a mango-nut cake, completely forgetting I'm allergic to both. We end up in a full-on whipped cream fight before he recalls my allergy. When the doctor arrives, I'm the one signing the emergency paperwork alone. That's also the moment I agree to the marriage my family arranges.

After six years by Archie Valez’s side, everything changed when his uncle died—and Archie took over the family legacy… and with it, the responsibility of caring for his “young” aunt, Betty Cruz, whose age was practically the same as Archie’s. Still, whatever Betty wanted, Archie delivered. I just never thought it would include a baby. Betty said she wanted a baby with the Valez bloodline. And with the uncle gone, Archie was the only one left to do the job. So he gave her that, too. “Just wait a little longer,” he would say to me, “Sabrina. As soon as she’s pregnant.” What started as once a month turned into once a week… Then it became a nightly routine. Of almost eight months that we lived in New York, Archie went to Betty over a hundred times. And she finally got pregnant. Shortly after, the Valez family announced that Archie would be marrying Betty. “Mommy,” my daughter asked softly, climbing onto the couch beside me. Elly—our Elly. My Elly. The daughter Archie never had time for. “Is someone getting married?” I held her close and kissed her hair. “Yes, sweetheart. Daddy’s finally marrying the love of his life.” Elly blinked at the screen. “But what about us?” I smiled. “We’re going home, baby,” I whispered in her ear. Archie forgot that I was Sabrina Marcellus. And the Marcellus women didn’t beg for rings. And certainly not love after betrayal.

On our tenth wedding anniversary, my husband, Jaxon Wilde, walks through the door with his hundredth new mistress. From my neck, he snaps the necklace that was once our token of love and fastens it around hers. Amid the guests' jeers and mocking laughter, the lady tugs timidly at my gown and murmurs, "Mr. Wilde wants me to wear this dress tonight, Scarlett." It was a dress altered from my wedding gown ten years ago, and I wore it tonight like a fool, hoping he might remember. But now, he wants to strip his wife bare in public and give it to his mistress on the wedding anniversary. Under the weight of everyone's sneers, I look up at him and give him a genuine smile for the first time in a decade. "Let's get divorced, Jaxon."