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Entire Thesis (pdf)

Chapters:

  1. Summary of Known Information
  2. The Order of Aurelius
  3. An Alternate Theory of Vampirism
  4. Appearance and Habitat
  5. Feeding Habits
  6. Preferred Victims
  7. Sexual Idiosyncrasies
  8. Torture
  9. Other Known Idiosyncrasies
  10. Pre-Death Biography
  11. Summary of Strengths and Weaknesses
  12. Conclusions

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INTRODUCTION

Why Study William the Bloody?

The Line of Aurelius

The Line of Aurelius has been much studied in the last century. As one of the most virulently powerful demonic lines, it has nine times been associated with apocalyptic attempts, eight of them in a leadership role. The entire clan has been responsible for many of the most flagrant scenes of vampiric cruelty, torture, mayhem, carnage and devastation recorded in the last five hundred years. Most vampires and vampire clans avoid the limelight; the Line of Aurelius seems rather to court it, to flaunt their activities under the eyes, if not on the very doorsteps, of the institutions, secular, religious and Watcher, that attempt to control them. To name only a few, in the Marseilles Convent Massacre of 1723, the Dresden Slaughter in 1824, and the destruction of the entire Singapore Watcher chapter in 1843, in which several members of the clan were observed in full vampire mode, coldly stalking and killing the terrified clerical staff before moving on to the Watchers themselves - in all of these the clan apparently deliberately left survivors who could identify them to police and Watchers. It was as if they wanted their authorship of the carnage to be known and recorded for posterity.

I will summarize what is known of the Line of Aurelius in chapter 2. Briefly, by the time of the siring of William the Bloody, its most visible members were Darla and her line. Darla was sired by the Master sometime before 1622, and traveled with her descendant Angelus, sired in Ireland in 1753 and responsible for the slaughter of his entire village as well as every member of his extended birth-family before he and his sire moved on to England, Yorkshire, and the continent, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. Angelus in turn sired Drusilla, after murdering her entire family and driving her insane. There are indications in the records that Drusilla was possessed of precognitive abilities which she retained when turned, in relatively inaccessible form, given her mental state, which has from all accounts never recovered from the damage inflicted by Angelus before he turned her.

It is unclear which of these sired William the Bloody, or even when. I will give the arguments for each sire and the probable dates given William's turning in chapter 3, and state my own hypothesis there. What is clear is that the addition of William to the clan made it if anything even more visible to Watchers and secular authorities. William was never one to avoid publicity, though paradoxically not one to seek it; but he seems not to have cared who knew where he was or what he did, as long as they did not interfere with his activities.

The group of Darla, Angelus, Drusilla and William, which traveled together for at least twenty years at the end of the 19th century, has often been described as a "family" in Watcher chronicles. This term is loosely applicable to their interpersonal dynamics, and I will use it in this thesis, but in many ways the word "gang" describes their linkage more closely. They possessed many of the characteristics of sociopathology: loyal to each other, vicious to outsiders. Whatever rules of interaction they acknowledged among themselves did not apply to strangers, even strange vampires, let alone, of course, their prey.

Given the relatively short lifespan of most vampire groupings, Darla's 'family' possessed a surprising degree of loyalty to each other. Most vampire groups break up in five years or less (usually much less) in internal revolt and assassination. In fact this characteristic of vampire groups explains not only the short lifespan of most vampires (far more of whom are killed by each other than by Slayers or other warriors for the light) but also the relative ineffectiveness of those vampires who choose to attempt world domination or apocalypse-induction. Such activities depend on planning, co-operation, and obedience to the authority of senior vampires over a considerable period of time, none of which characteristics are generally descriptive of the vampire psychology. Darla's 'family' does not seem to have been entirely harmonious, but by vampire standards, it was a comparative paragon of domestic felicity.

It is their ability to co-operate with each other that has made the Line of Aurelius dangerous over the centuries, and has caused it to figure so prominently in the carnage and attempts at the apocalypse to which I alluded previously. Consequently, it has drawn the attention of chroniclers, and has figured largely in the scholarship available on the entire vampire species. While I suspect that this is in some respects a mistake - for we should not take the obviously unusual Line of Aurelius as paradigmatic for the entire breed - their significance, and the importance of learning how to control and ultimately overcome this Line, is obviously immense. The easiest approach to this subject is through close examination of the individual members of the family.

William the Bloody

While a great deal has already been published on Darla and Angelus, and to a lesser extent on Drusilla, William the Bloody, the youngest member of the clan, has received comparatively little attention in critical scholarship on the Line of Aurelius. I believe that he has been overlooked in error. If we examine what is known of William, it becomes apparent that his flamboyant lifestyle and apparent lack of interest in world domination or destruction cannot be attributed to frivolity or stupidity. That he has survived this long, without the assistance and in some cases despite the best efforts of his clan members, is a tribute to his intelligence, courage, and cool-wittedness in a crisis. His lack of involvement in all but one of the Line of Aurelius' apocalyptic attempts can be attributed, rather, partly to youth, and partly to an apparent lack of interest in power, which we cannot be sure will continue. It surely behooves us to know as much as we can about a vampire whose power, while he lives, will only increase, and whose lack of interest in world destruction may well vanish over time.

Moreover, study of William the Bloody's career will enlighten us further on the singular nature of the Line of Aurelius and the attributes of the vampire species generally, as only the older members of the breed can. Most vampires die too quickly for us to study them. William the Bloody's survival can teach us a great deal.

Status Quaestionis

Much useful research has been conducted into individual members of the Line of Aurelius. Of the available bibliography I would single out for special mention Christine Bluhansen's "Darla: Duchess of Doom" (Morbid Press, Antwerp 1902) which despite its popularizing title is a carefully-researched and exhaustively documented account of Darla's career, with extensive bibliography. Another member of the clan who has attracted extensive attention is Angelus, on whom see especially Clemence de Sevigne's "Angel/us Un/Souled: Monster, Man, Metaphor" (Postmodern Pansy Press, NY 1984), which, while flawed by its unfortunate reliance on deconstructive criticism and now-discredited theories of the decentred multiplicity of personal identity, contains a thorough and carefully referenced account of Angel/us' career, contacts, and massacres, with a useful annotated bibliography and appendix of sightings and known victims. My appendix uses Dr. de Sevigne's as a model.

Little work exists so far on either the Line of Aurelius as a whole, to which it has been impossible to give more than a brief overview in this thesis, or to the specific figures of the Master, Drusilla, or William the Bloody. Too little concrete information exists for the Master (whom the current Slayer, Ms. Buffy Summers, defeated in May 1997) to make him an appropriate subject for this work. The mad vampiress Drusilla has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention (see e.g. Clarissa O'Leary, "A Dangerous Delirium: Drusilla the Mad", Vampire Quarterly 1942: 1-23) and would profit from further study. William the Bloody, like Drusilla, provides a fascinating nexus of personality preservation, atypical vampire characteristics, and noteworthy career, which render him a suitable subject for this study - the more so in that no previous monograph has been devoted to his career.

Research Methodology

I approached the subject of William the Bloody by first acquiring an overview of the nature of the vampire species, and in particular the nature of his "family", the Line of Aurelius. I believe that William the Bloody's particular character and the peculiarity of much of his behaviour cannot be properly comprehended without a thorough grasp of this background. In the course of my research into the career of William the Bloody I found a great deal of information that calls into question what is traditionally believed to be true about vampires in general. I have included a theoretical reappraisal of the nature of the vampire species as part of my provisional conclusions.

The primary sources used in this thesis were of three kinds:

  1. published written documentation - newspapers, books, articles.

  2. unpublished written documentation - Watcher's Journals, diaries, correspondence by and interviews with observers and surviving victims (the latter recorded by the interviewer), and manuscripts preserved in various archives. When these were inaccessible to me I relied on extracts and summaries of the relevant pages kindly provided by Quentin Travers.

  3. direct encounters - encounters with vampires during field research.

I found the approach of Wackernagel (Luhan Wackernagel, Theory and Phenomenology of Siring: Towards a Behavioural Analysis of Vampirism, London 1974 (unpub.)) most useful in explaining certain features of William the Bloody's career, and especially his apparent personality preservation, which the more common theory of vampire creation cannot explain. I believe that Wackernagel's work was unreasonably discredited and hope that this thesis will prompt a re-examination of his conclusions. I also found Al-Hazred's observations on the spiritual characteristics of the vampire demon telling and fruitful, when I could grasp his meaning (Abdul Al-Hazred, Necronomicon, 900-910 AD, tr. Richard Burton, British Arabic Association Press, London 1878). Standard precautions were scrupulously observed in consulting this text, the translation of which, rather than the syphilis given out as public explanation, drove Sir Richard Burton mad.

I believe however that in research of this kind it is a grave error to attach oneself slavishly to one theoretical model exclusively, given the complexity of the subject matter. Aside from these general theoretical underpinnings, therefore, I have used for each chapter the theoretical approach most appropriate to the subject under specific discussion, taking my models freely from anthropology, primate biology, economics, criminology, psychology, statistical analysis, or whatever school of thought yielded the most fruitful results for the data in question.

Although research into supernatural beings is not as consistently dangerous as research into (e.g.) applied magic, some risks are naturally incurred, especially since the beings in question are inherently hostile to humans and generally do not wish to be investigated. Every mandated precaution was taken to ensure that the researcher was not put at undue risk, and that no bystander was endangered or alerted to the existence of vampires, following the standard protocols established by the Council of Watchers (Protocols for the Use of Field Researchers, CoW Publications, London 1873, 4th ed. 1984). The necessary authorizations and post-encounter reports are filed with the Council Secretariat.