Oedipus didn't know that he was adopted, so he fled Corinth to escape his fate. He was assaulted on the road by a carriage driver who was a herald to Laius, Oedipus' biological father. Oedipus killed the driver and Laius.
Oedipus defeated the Sphinx and became king of the Thebans. He was given Jocasta, his biological mother, as a wife. Laius and Oedipus tried to avert fate, but Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and became his mother's lover. Because of the main character's attraction to his biological mother, Freud called his theory of the same nature the Oedipus complex.

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