Looking for stories where an abandoned child's allegedly real parents come back for them

Cafe Society
1

Full disclosure, I’m not looking for a specific story, but something I thought might be interesting after watching a chic flick with a parent returning years later. And I’m open to any type of storytelling, except video games and print comic books, so movies, TV shows, and web comics are fine.

Anyway, can you think of any stories, probably with either a historical or fantasy setting, in which an orphan is left while very young with others for a few years, only to have their “real” parents show up - and the people who take them away aren’t really their parents but either: a. criminals or b. something supernatural like fairies, witches, vampires etc?

You can see how this work either way, right? Both would end up adventure stories. In a real-world setting a kid is taken off by regular people who get them into a life of crime, or in a fantasy they’re taken away into a fantastical world, but both would likely be for at least semi-dangerous, nefarious purposes.

The vital element is that the child hasn’t seen their parents long enough to be unable to prove it’s not them even if they express doubt (or they could simply believe…at first), and the setting is either fantastical or long enough ago that they could be taken away without their current guardian’s consent.

I guess a modern story with really weak-willed or apathetic foster parents could do, but probably not family or friends as their carers because while those people might feel helpless letting the kid go, they would know the “parents” are impostors.

Know anything like this?

2

Like Annie? We saw the traveling Broadway show where the fake mother was Black (Annie was white). It didn’t make any sense.

3

Maybe? I haven’t seen Annie since I was 6 so I don’t remember much.

4

The film version of “Stuart Little” had the title character adopted, then fake “real parents” showed up to reclaim him. (This did not occur in the book, which had Stuart somehow biologically related to the Littles.)

5

I believe Stuart is a sooterkin.

6

Before the thread gets longer, I do want to say I’m hoping for stories not meant for very young readers (or viewers). Think of meant for if not teens or adults, kids at least old enough to read Bridge to Terebithia or Tuck Everlasting.

7

I’d never heard of a sooterkin before, but that seems plausible.

8

A movie with a similar idea is the 1983 film Without a Trace about a boy who get kidnapped, but it takes a while for the police to figure out that they are not the child of the kidnappers who have kept him for months while pretending that he is their son.

9

In the 1990 Zorro series, Felipe is a young orphan who works for Zorro. A mysterious woman (Hunter Tylo) shows up to claim Felipe as her long-lost son, using her knowledge that Felipe’s parents were MIA. She almost gets away with it.

10

There was an early two-part episode of Diff’rent Strokes where a stranger pretends to be a relative of Arnold and Willis so he can claim an inheritance the boys are supposed to receive.