Character Development, Not

Character development is, perhaps, the most engaging and rewarding experience in reading literature. 

It occurs to me, however, that there is a category of characters, which do not conform to the traditional "boy lives comfortably in a rural village until a dramatic event changes his life forever, boy struggles, boy overcomes hardships, becomes the man nobody could have dreamed he'd become, wins" storyline. Rather, these characters are on the opposite side of development spectrum and are deteriorating, being deprived of something, rather than developing. They start off as older characters that have already established themselves and then undergo a cataclysmic event that simply takes away, forever, and leaves the character to re-establish themselves in the face of this irreconcilable loss. These characters struggle with the fact of life more profound than death - that it is never ever going to be (as) OK again; that they are past their peak and there will be no resting on the laurels, that no reward for past services will be rendered, that no quarter will be given despite the leniency they had showed before. With the fact, that fate has just screwed them over.

Perhaps it is more apt to think of this type of characters not as being on the opposite side of the spectrum from real development, but, rather, a mature version of it where the only sensible way to grow is to grow past a loss; i.e. a literary developmental red queen situation, where just to remain unchanged, a character must undergo constant development.

Here's a couple - Jaime Lannister from George Martin's A Game of Thrones and Saul Tigh from 2004 TV series Battlestar Galactica: