So I the last couple days I watched both Nicklas Nickleby and Jean De Florette. Both with major plot lines around a miserable lonely old man treating someone like shit, and is largely responsible for their death. Only to find out after they were dead that they were the lost son the man always wanted.
It got me thinking about that plot line, and now I’m driving myself crazy trying to think of some other very well known story that uses that plot. I know there are more than one, but the one in particular I can’t quite manage to remember is making me feel stabby.
It’s also not Oedipus which doesn’t really fit the ending.
ETA. Hmm. That title could really use some commas, oops.
…
Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes
Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear,
And shouted, Rustum! Sohrab heard that shout,
And shrank amazed: back he recoiled one step,
And scanned with blinking eyes the advancing form:
And then he stood bewildered; and he dropped
His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side.
He reeled, and staggering back, sank to the ground.
And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell,
And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all
The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair;
Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet,
And Sohrab, wounded, on the bloody sand.
…
And, with a fearless mien, Sohrab replied: —
“Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is vain.
Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man!
No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart.
For were I matched with ten such men as thee,
And I were that which till to-day I was,
They should be lying here, I standing there.
But that belovèd name unnerved my arm —
That name, and something, I confess, in thee,
Which troubles all my heart, and made my shield
Fall; and thy spear transfixed an unarmed foe.
And now thou boastest, and insultest my fate.
But hear thou this, fierce Man, tremble to hear!
The mighty Rustum shall avenge my death!
My father, whom I seek through all the world,
He shall avenge my death, and punish thee!”
…
Probably not what you were looking for, but, for me, the archetype of the genre, although not the original. (Inspired by Ferdowsi’s Persian epic Shahnameh)
Other cases of unwitting filicide in literature include George Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity, Robert Penn Warren’s “Ballad of Billie Potts”, and Rostworowski’s Surprise, but none of those seems to be exactly what you’re after, with a man causing the death of a son whose existence he had never previously known about.
There was an episode of the TV series “Hannibal” that had something resembling that. Quick synopsis: a serial killer kills his victims over a long period of time. His first kill was the husband of a woman that he was in love with at the time. His latest kill was what he thought was that man’s son. However, genetic testing proved that it was actually his own son – the woman had never told anyone.