Minamoto no Yoshitsune

Born the ninth son of a defeated warlord after the Heiji Rebellion killed his father, Ushiwakamaru grew up in a temple, then found shelter with the Ōshū Fujiwara clan in Hiraizumi. When his half-brother Yoritomo rose against the Taira, Yoshitsune raced to join him and became the architect of victory at Ichi-no-Tani, Yashima, and Dan-no-ura. The bond Yoritomo once described as "father and son" shattered when Yoshitsune accepted court titles without permission and moved too independently; declared an enemy, he fled back north to his old protector Fujiwara no Hidehira. After Hidehira's death, the successor bent to Yoritomo's pressure, attacked, and Yoshitsune died by his own hand at Koromogawa in 1189. The public grief that followed gave Japan a new phrase - hōganbiiki, sympathy for the brilliant loser - and a mythology that never let him go.