I Love You, Vampire Son

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Ahh, being turned into a vampire! It is known across fiction as a fall from grace, the loss of humanity, and rebirth...But also love!

Yes, rebirth and love! Did I mention they lost their humanity?

I Love You, Vampire Son is when there is a romantic—or at least affectionate—relationship between the turner and the turned. This could be mutual or one-sided. Bonus points if it is directly stated that some pairs have a parent-child or mentor-student relationship, yet others are romantically (and physically) involved.

Vampires can be that way.

It is often implied that vampires choose who to turn specifically based on romantic attraction. This applies to both good and bad vampires: "I turned him because I wanted him to become my lover" and "I turned him because I wanted us to be together forever".

Vampires are especially tempted to do this when their beloved is dying, either right now and only an Emergency Transformation will save them; or else they fear being alone once old age runs its inevitable course for the mortal object of their affections.

This is not a trope about vampires having sex with their human family members, but rather, belonging to the same vampiric bloodline, which is seen as the equivalent of—and often replacing—being related by human blood.

Inversion to I Hate You, Vampire Dad, though one-sided vampire incest can be a source of hatred. Related to Parental Incest. Compare Resurrected Romance.

Examples of I Love You, Vampire Son include:

Anime and Manga

  • Blood+, Saya and Hagi. To the point that when Saya apologizes to Hagi for making him her chevalier, he tells her it was the best thing that ever happened to him because it allows him to stay by her side.
    • Diva was off-handedly implied to have had sexual relations with some of her chevaliers, although that was Amshel's initiative, not hers. At least one of her chevaliers, James, definitely holds some sort of affection for her.
      • Subverted with Nathan, as while he seems to care for Diva a great deal, he's not really one of her chevaliers. He was her mother's chevalier. Diva never realizes this, though.
  • Nightwalker, Cain towards Shido.
    • Eventually, Shido towards Riho. (And she loves him back!)
  • The one-shot Yuri Genre manga Nightmare Syndrome by Natsuneko focuses on a Vampire Hunter who is trapped inside a vampire's castle and mysteriously spared by her captor, despite repeated attempts to kill her. Eventually, it is revealed that the vampire has fallen in love with her purported slayer and awaits a chance to offer her immortality. She eventually succeeds via Emergency Transformation and the two of them spend undeath happily together.

Film

  • Park Chan-wook's Thirst plays up the Wife Husbandry aspect of this trope. The protagonist Sang-hyeon first feels drawn to Tae-ju out of sympathy, since her foster mother Mrs. Ra adopted her so she could raise her to be a wife to her son (and basically a slave to the both of them). Sang-hyeon later saves her life via an Emergency Transformation, and there is the feeling that Tae-ju has merely gone from one relationship of quasi-incestuous dependency to another. Her feelings toward him begin to shift after her transformation.
  • In a short film of Paris, Je T'Aime, a tourist in the Quartier Madeleine of Paris (played by Elijah Wood of all people) falls in love at first sight with a vampire. She seems to like him, but refuses to turn him... until he falls down the stone steps, nearly dies, and she gives him an Emergency Transformation. He rises again as a fearsome vampire, and they chomp on each other. Awwwww...!

Literature

  • In Breaking Dawn, Edward turns Bella into a vampire after she nearly dies during childbirth. The baby came out wrong, of course, because it's their baby and male vampires aren't suppose to interbreed with humans...
    • Also, Carlisle turned Esme. On the platonic side, Carlisle turned Rosalie, Edward, and Emmett, who all view him as a father.
  • In Carpe Jugulum, it's briefly mentioned that Countess Magpyr wasn't a vampire when the Count met her, and Vlad repeatedly offers to turn Agnes.
  • This is pretty rampant in The Vampire Chronicles in general, where many of the turned have relationships with their turner. For one particularly outstanding example, Lestat turned his human mother Gabrielle into a vampire and then they had a relationship. Vampiric incest indeed.
    • Also squicky is the (very strongly) implied relationship between Claudia and Louis. The Ho Yay (and sometimes Foe Yay) between Lestat and Louis, on the other hand, was just fun.
    • Take comfort in the knowledge that Ricean vampires suffer from permanent impotency.
      • According to them the sensations from drinking blood beat sex any time. Thanks to their Sense Freak nature they also can do sex in all but name only, despite of the fact that the organs normally required for the act are pretty much necrotic.
    • In The Vampire Armand and Blood and Gold Marius de Romanus rescued a Russian boy named Amadeo who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery from a brothel and the two of them had a pederastic relationship until Amadeo was poisoned during a fight and Marius turned him on the brink of death.
    • The two first vampires, Enkil and Akasha, were the king and queen of Ancient Egypt. They were plagued by a vengeful spirit who loved bloodletting before being mortally wounded by their own subjects who staged a coup. The spirit entered Akasha's body through a wound, making her the first vampire, and she saved her husband by turning him.
    • In the Queen of the Damned Film of the Book, Jesse is turned by Lestat, who has feelings for her. At the end of the movie, they are seen walking away, holdings hands. In the book, she is turned by her distant ancestor Maharet and has no relationship with Lestat.
    • Interestingly, in at least one case turning a lover results in the relationship collapsing. This is the case of Armand and Daniel Molloy. Daniel begs Armand to turn him, but Armand knows it's Daniel's fragile humanity that interests him. It's only when Daniel's liver starts to shut down thanks to his constant drinking that Armand is forced to turn him. The relationship does indeed end shortly after, especially since Daniel goes insane.
  • Pretty much the modus operandi of the White Court in The Dresden Files, with the love element and especially the incest element taken to very literal depth. I.e. they reproduce rather than turning humans into vampires like the other courts, and the White King has sex with his daughters in order to dominate them.
  • Anita Blake: Asher and Jean-Claude were both lovers of their maker, Belle Morte. Considering what her line is, this is par for the course.
  • The first Night World book has a terminally-ill girl being turned by her vampire boyfriend.
  • In Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, the trope is used literally, as the vampires in that book reproduce sexually instead of through Viral Transformation.
  • In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, it's strongly implied that Eric turned Pam for this purpose, though their relationship is strictly platonic by the time of the novels. The implications are...many, especially considering Pam's sexual orientation.
    • Lorena also seems to have turned Bill for this purpose. This seems to be the exception rather than the rule in the Stackhouse universe—Sookie notes in Club Dead that vampires consider it unseemly to have sexual relationships with other vampires.
    • Sophie-Anne and Eric both talk about the one sided relationship with the vampires who turned them, though Sophie-Anne's experience was while she was human. Appius Livius Ocella told Eric not to call him Appius, as Eric didn't know him well enough. Then Appius taught Eric how to get to know him.
  • By the beginning of Dracula, the Count has three vampire brides, and over the course of the novel he tries to recruit two others.
    • It's worth noting that the novel never describes these women are Dracula's "brides," though that seems to be the most common perception. The leader, a blonde, seems most explicitly romantic with Dracula, while the others may actually be the pair's daughters, since they're described as having the same features as Dracula. In any event, they're loyal to the Count, so the trope may well stand.
  • Played straight in the Mercy Thompson novels, with an additional twist for Stefan's "stable": the semi-vampiric humans he keeps as a voluntary blood supply are all terminally ill, have their illnesses kept in remission by his occasional reciprocal blood-donations ... and sleep with and bite each other. I Love You, Near-Vampire Sibling?
  • The canon epilogue to Let the Right One In reveals that Eli turns Oskar into a vampire after they get off the train. Word of God says that the epilogue was written due to people speculating what his fate was going to be.

Live-Action TV

  • In Buffy, Darla and Angelus become lovers after she sires him, as do Drusilla and Spike. I think Angelus sires Drusilla because he's infatuated with her, but I don't recall if they actually have a relationship.
    • Spike catches them having sex once. They do.
    • When Spike turned his human mother in Flash Back, she started to come on to him, but he was Squicked out.
  • Angel implies (and Word of God confirms) that Angel and Spike slept together at least once.
  • Forever Knight (which Angel completely, totally did not rip off): LaCroix's daughter Divia, who turned him just before Pompeii was destroyed by Vesuvius, wanted to start a more intimate relationship with him, but he refused.
    • Divia was made a vampire herself at about 12 years old.
  • Lorena and Bill on True Blood.
    • Eric and Pam are (probably) a platonic version. Eric, in turn, cared deeply for his maker, Godric...very deeply. This gets Squicky considering that Godric has the body of an adolescent when he turns Eric; even more Squicky considering the formula the two use to describe Godric's relationship to his progeny: "Father. Brother. Son."
    • Season 3 adds Russell Edgington and Talbot, his consort of centuries.
  • Played for laughs in one of J.D.'s fantasy sequences (part of the Dr. Acula Running Gag) in the Scrubs episode "My Transition":

J.D. Kim, wait! Unfortunately there's no way I can make you mine, unless I make you mine...
(pulls her to him)
J.D. (thinking) ...for eternity.
(bares fangs and bites her neck)
Kim (alarmed) Dr. Acula, don't...(sensually) stop.

  • This was the reason Coraline turned Mick on their wedding night in Moonlight. He didn't appreciate it. Josef attempted to do this to a girl he loved, who asked him to turn her, but something went wrong and she was turned only partially before falling into a coma. It is implied that she will stay that way forever, as her body doesn't age. There was also the couple in the finale, who stayed together for nearly 150 years, and the husband (and vampire child) even chooses to die alongside his wife, despite her cheating on him.
  • In Blood Ties, Henry specifically mentions that a vampire only turns people he or she cares about. In his case, Christina warned him that natural vampiric territoriality would eventually force them apart, lest they kill each other.

Music

  • Possibly Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Hear". Given the lyrics, the song's history (it was used in the stage musical version of Dance of the Vampires) and the odd theme of the music video, one can surmise that the narrator is a lonely, heartbroken woman, staring into darkness and waiting for a vampire lover to come and take her.

Tabletop Games

  • The Daeva of Vampire: The Requiem often maintain a whirlwind relationship with their childer, but the love quickly turns cold and the childe is abandoned.
    • In the earlier Vampire: The Masquerade the Giovanni recruit exclusively from an extended family that has been known for incest. Likewise, the Toreador often embrace from artists, and being a clan that is compulsively drawn towards the beautiful, there's good odds they romance an artist during their prime before Embracing them to ensure the craft isn't lost to the ages.
  • Ravenloft:
    • Accessory RR3 Van Richten's Guide to Vampires described "Vampire brides and grooms" - vampires created through a slightly modified and more complex process, linked on equal terms, unlike usual enslaved spawn. Since this leaves the siring vampire weakened and later more vulnerable to the partner, and a vampire cannot create another until the existing partner is destroyed or disconnected via special ritual, this typically happens when a vampire falls head-over-heels in love with a mortal and wants to stay together forever - hence the name.
      • There are exceptions to this, however. The first vampire Van Richten himself faced was the cruel Baron Metus who kidnapped and converted Van Richten's son Erasmus. In his darkest contemplations, Van Richten often wonders if Metus intended Erasmus to be a vampire groom (which if true, would make Metus something of a pedophile, not that it would be surprising). If so, this is a subversion of this Trope, as Erasmus clearly resisted Metus' influence, and was slain by his father as a Mercy Kill.
    • According to other Ravenloft lore, in case some helpful soul kills the siring vampire after the link is established, but before the mortal subject dies, the result is a Vorlog: creature stuck between here and there, still alive, but with some vampire powers and partial vulnerability to sunlight. He is also pathologically obsessed with his incompleteness, and as such prone to becoming infatuated with people who remind of the lost vampire mate - then the Vorlog charms them, gets possessive, and eventually frustrated - which ends in killing... and after a while the cycle repeats.
    • Drow are possibly the only race that considers vampirism a blessing rather than a curse, as drow vampires (detailed in the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium) are created via the direct intervention of their goddess Lolth for exemplary service to the priesthood. This, of course, means almost all drow vampires have divine spellcasting abilities, making them truly formidable enemies.

Video Games

  • Shrowdy von Keifer is this way towards Mona in A Vampyre Story. She does not reciprocate. In a twist, Mona is in complete denial about being a vampire.
    • Of course, while we're at it, Shrowdy's affections are less than wholesome. For a start, Mona's the latest in a long line of girls who have met exactly the same fate, except that all her predecessors got iced as soon as Shrowdy got bored with them (Mona has lasted the longest of all the girls Shrowdy has thus imprisoned, which is either a very good or very bad sign depending on how you look at it). Oh, also, this all started when Shrowdy's mother disappeared, and he chooses his victims based on their resemblance to said missing parent. Yeek.
  • In Elder Scrolls, if the Dragonborn marries and then becomes a vampire, you can convert your spouse; said spouse resists at first (requiring you to use Vampire Seduction, which is often necessary to feed on any victim) but quickly grows to like it:

Converted Spouse: I never knew the darkness held such colors, or the night air smelled so sweet. You have given me a great gift.

Web Original

  • An element of Vamp You, both with the porn-like desire for sex, and with an actual relationship. Subverted somewhat, in that the vampires are always evil, and that often it's a rather open relationship.

Now, Troper. Let us be together, for eternity! *Chomp*

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