The Walking Dead: The Main Characters, Ranked By How Tragic Their Past Is

Within the dog-eat-dog world of The Walking Dead, tragedy is just a fact of life. Whether it was prior to the apocalypse or throughout it, every character who has managed to survive for any significant amount of time has experienced something horrific. But, it seems fair to say that some characters have had rougher goes of it than others.

Every character, whether they’re the villain, the hero, or anything in between, has lost a lot due to the brutal world they live in or the monstrous people they’ve encountered. But how do The Walking Dead‘s characters and their tragic backstories compare?

10 Eugene Porter

Eugene is not the type of person that anyone would expect to survive in the apocalypse, period, let alone survive as relatively unscathed as he has.

It hasn’t necessarily been an easy ride for him, but he hasn’t lost nearly as many people he loves as most of the other survivors have. He’s also had a lot of people look out for him and always seems to end up on the right side of any conflict, so he’s experienced much less tragedy than most.

9 Negan

Negan did lose his wife Lucille, and he did eventually lose his spot as the leader of the Saviors, however in the grand scheme of things he’s never been the one experiencing tragedy. Typically, he’s the one inflicting tragedy on those around him.

Although his backstory prior to the end of the world hasn’t been explored very much, it seems like, with the very significant exception of Lucille’s death, Negan’s life improved after the zombie apocalypse.

8 Father Gabriel Stokes

Father Gabriel transformed from a craven and seemingly careless man into a strong survivor with a close-knit group of friends and family who could rely on him.

But still, realistically speaking, he’s had an easier go of it than most of the other survivors in Rick’s group. Honestly, the biggest tragedy he’s probably ever experienced is the death of his congregation… and he’s the one who got them all killed.

7 Rosita Espinosa

Rosita is one of the toughest fighters in the history of The Walking Dead. And like most characters, she has experienced some serious losses in her life.

She’s made it far, and she hasn’t experienced as much heartache as some, but she was forced to sit there and watch as Negan beat Abraham to death, and the father of her child was senselessly murdered by a Whisperer who had infiltrated Alexandria.

6 Maggie Greene

What actually makes Maggie’s story all the more tragic is that it seems like before the world ended, she had a fairly idyllic life. And, even when everything went sideways, she still had most of her family and managed to survive on a safe and sustainable farm for quite a while.

But when things went badly for her, they really went badly. She lost her remaining family, and she had to watch her husband die while she was pregnant with their son.

5 Michonne

Prior to meeting up with Rick Grimes, Michonne had already had a very rough go of things. She lost her boyfriend and son, and the trauma of that experience nearly destroyed her.

She managed to find another family with Rick, Carl, and the rest of the group, but after losing one son she essentially wound up losing another. Adding to that, she had to kill children in order to defend her own, all because she trusted someone she shouldn’t have.

4 Rick Grimes

In the world of The Walking Dead, few characters have experienced more struggles than Rick. While he was a pretty average guy pre-zombieland, Rick did get shot while on the job as a police officer, and that meant that he was alone and in bad shape when he woke up after the world had ended.

Rick has loved many people over the course of his character arc, but he’s lost most of them too, including his wife and son.

3 Carl Grimes

Unfortunately for Carl, he’s had to go through nearly everything else that his father Rick did, but he had to do it all when he was still a child.

He put down his own mother in order to stop her from turning, and he experienced so much trauma that he almost couldn’t come back from it. Not to mention, he actually died before even making it to adulthood.

2 Daryl Dixon

Unlike most of the other survivors, Daryl Dixon’s life was a bit of a tragedy even before zombies took over the planet. He was wasting his life chasing his brother Merle, who was even more of a dead-ender than Daryl was.

And while Daryl has actually come into his own through the apocalypse, he lost his brother and has lost more people than he can count in the new world.

1 Carol Peletier

It’s safe to say that luck has never been on Carol’s side. Before the apocalypse, she was a horrifically abused and beaten down woman.

When Ed died she was finally free, but not long after, her daughter Sophia died too. When she started loving Lizzie and Mika like her own children, they both died, one of them by her own hand. And when she tried to open up again with Henry, he was beheaded. Carol’s life has basically been nonstop loss and tragedy.