Karna, The Sun's Forsaken Son

They called him suta-putra — charioteer's son — every time he picked up a bow. He was the eldest Pandava and never sat at their table. He was the Sun's child and died in the mud. He was offered an empire and chose the man who gave him a crown when the world gave him nothing. On the seventeenth day at Kurukshetra, his chariot wheel sank into the earth. He stepped down to lift it — and in that moment both curses came due. He forgot the Brahmastra. The ground held his wheel. He asked for the pause that the codes of war allow to an unarmed man. It was not given. The arrow that found him was fired by his own brother, who did not know it, on the counsel of a god who did.