Vampires In Modern Romance
The Undead Find a Home In Today's Popular Literature
Vampires have long been a point of fascination for people worldwide. These days, the undead have found an established home in the romance novel genre.
Vampire. Just the word sends a chill up the most stalwart of spines. While some cringe in terror, fearing what the undead might do in the dark of night, others embrace the darkness, dreamily hoping for a dark lover to lead them through the mysteries of midnight.
Ever since 1897, when Bram Stoker breathed life into the undead anti-hero Dracula, some have been horrified while others tantalized by the thought of a vampire.
The Changing Vampire Myth
Since that time, worldwide legends have been brokered into an thriving industry around the vampire. Books bring the vampire's struggles to life. Films bring the undead to movie screens and home television sets in vivid color. Vampires have taken over video games and are the subject of popular role playing games called "Vampire: The Masquerade" or "Vampire: The Requiem." These are modeled after the popular Dungeons and Dragons game.
In the late 1970s, Anne Rice birthed a creature named Lestat DeLioncourt, who is only slightly less well-known than the original Dracula. Rice's books known as The Vampire Chronicles, brought to life the struggle of the vampire. What could a vampire be struggling with? Long life and uncanny financial know-how make mundane worries like money too gauche for your average night-dweller. Instead, Lestat and friends dealt with the age-old struggle of good and evil and examined what it really means to be human. Just as Louis lamented the loss of the sunrise, he tried to remind his audience to enjoy every sunrise they could.
The Romantic Vampire
The modern vampire has found a home in the romance novel. Just as Dracula searched for his beloved wife, the modern romance novelist has taken up the torch, creating different types of vamps with different issues and concerns, some creating entire societies and religions for their mythic creatures.
The Modern Vampire
The vampiric act of drinking blood is an intensely personal thing, no matter how you look at it. Rice's vamps were incapable of sexual intercourse, instead using the blood exchange as a substitute.
Today's romance heros and heroines have no such problem between the sheets. The average romance-novel vamp hero has a body stacked with muscle, a face carved by angels and a burning desire to find the one woman that will make his eternity of darkness bearable. Once he finds her, no queen could be worshipped more.
Authors like Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and J.R. Ward have created different worlds, different societies and a creature that is noble, lovable and in some cases, out to save the unsuspecting humans from the things that go bump in the night.
New Vampires, New Characteristics
Just as the old physical appearance has given way to movie-star handsomeness, the old limitations are falling away as well.
The Dark Hunters created by Kenyon and members of Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood wolf down large amounts of human food. The modern-day vamp needs more than just blood to keep themselves in top condition. Kenyon's creations only take blood recreationally, it's not a requirement for survival. Ward's Brotherhood must feed, but only from a female of the vampire species, and then only occasionally.
While Dracula may be afraid of garlic, crosses and holy water, they don't hold any fear for the modern-day vamp. Feehan's Carpathians enter churches and have been known to rescue and befriend a priest or two.
