Labels:text | screenshot | font OCR: The principal character or protagonist in a tragedy. As admirable as the tragic hero is, we know at the outset that things must end badly for him. Oedipus is the tragic hero of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. A proud king of Thebes at the beginning of the drama, he is reduced to being a blind beggar at the end, a man without family or home and one haunted with memories.