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Analysing
River Song's life according to the
Hero's Pattern (as identified by Lord Raglan):
- The hero's mother is a royal virgin - hm. Well, no. But she is a one-woman man who lives next to a crack in reality, so is singled out for the attention of the god for that reason.
Her father is a king
And often a near relative of the mother
- The circumstances of her conception are unusual - no fooling! On the tardis, which makes her a Time Lord.
- She is also reputed to be the child of a god. How many people weren't sure who the father was? All of us, and it keeps coming up, over and over; the series really yanks our chain on this one.
- Atbirth an attempt is made, usually by the father or maternal grandfather, to kill her.Not kill, in this case, but abduct, destroy what she was and make her into something else entirely; not the father, who does his best to save her.
- She is spirited away - by the Silence
- And reared by foster-parents in a far country - indeed; in the demonic orphanage, by Madame Kovarian, and the Silence.
- We are told nothing (or little) of her childhood - pretty much; we have seen the orphanage, we see her when she's 9 and she's dying and regenerating, we see her briefly throughout her teens.
- On reaching adulthood she returns or goes to her future kingdom - is sent to meet and kill the Doctor, which is, or with whom is, her future home.
- After a victory over a king, wild beast, giant, or dragon - in this case the Doctor, and twice (kills him once, persuades him not to die once)
- She marries the princess - the point of this is that the hero marries the person by and through whom she becomes a ruler herself, which works fine
- And becomes ruler. Time Lord, Ruler of Time and Space, Master of the Universe, who can fly the Tardis better than her husband can.
- For a time she reigns uneventfully - read "carries on adventuring with the Doctor", which is implied throughout her story -
- And prescribes laws - not sure what this would correspond to -
- But eventually she loses favour with the gods and/or her subjects - which happens immediately,with her incarceration in the Storm Cage -
and is driven from her throne and city - actually by the time of her death she seems to have been restored to full honours, as Professor Song.
- After which she meets with a mysterious death - true enough!
often on top of a hill - in the bowels of a library in this case
- Her children, if any, do not succeed her - we don't know yet
- Her body is not buried - nor, indeed, ever found
- But she has one or more holy sepulchres - the computer, which contains and maintains her heroic spirit for visitors, just as the sepulchres did for hero cults.
That's 15, plus a few maybes, so could be as high as 19. Hercules himself only scores 14.
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