Saint-Germain, Vampire

[bibliogramma]

I have a vampire fetish. Male, female, good, bad or inbetween (though I prefer the ones who are, while somewhat ambiguous, mostly good), I'll read about any of them at least once.

One of my favourite literary vampires is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's magnificent creation, Ferencz Rakoczy Count Saint-Germain - or multitudes of variations thereon. Yarbro has written some 20 historical fantasy novels (and counting) about Saint Germain and the other vampires "of his blood" - that is, vampires he has created.

Hotel Transylvania, the first novel Yarbro wrote in the cycle (though not the first one in the life of Saint-Germain) was published in 1978, and is based very loosely on historical references to a Compte de Saint-Germain who made a certain name for himself in upper class 18th century European society as an inventor, an alchemist and a man of mystery. More than one occult organization has featured in its own writings the historical Saint-Germain's claims to be immortal or nearly so, and a mystical adept of great power and knowledge, and he often shows up in the more occult-inspired conspiracy theories.

Yarbro's fictional Saint-Germain uses some of the historical Compte's attributes - he is an alchemist and a student of some forms of occult philosophy, his manner is that of a nobleman or courtier, and he is highly literate and well travelled. He can also write independently and simultaneously with both hands - a trait that the historical Saint-Germain supposedly had, and shared with a number of legendary Chinese sages and healers. The vampire count has, of course, studied in China.

From this beginning, Yarbro has over the course of the novels developed the story of the vampire Saint-Germain. Born circa 2000 BC at the dark of the year into a proto-Etruscan royal family ruling somewhere in the mountains of Carpathia, he is initiated into a vampiric priesthood as a child. As a young man, still an initiate but not yet a vampire himself, he survives the invasion and destruction of his homeland, is taken into slavery, leads an unsuccessful revolt and is executed by disembowelment - leaving his spinal cord intact, and allowing him to rise as a vampire.

Yarbro's vampires - Saint-Germain, and the other vampires in her books, almost all women he has loved, or people they in turn have loved - survive on blood, animal if necessary but human when possible, but to thrive, they also need to "drink" powerful human emotion. In the religion of his long-vanished homeland, the vampires are the gods, and their priests nurture them with freely-given blood, love and devotion, becoming gods in turn when they die. Some vampires, including Saint Germain in his early centuries, feed themselves on the terror they can evoke in their prey. This, however, is not the Saint-Germain that Yarbro gives us. While in several of the books, Saint-Germain refers to these early centuries as a time of immaturity ruled by anger and vengeance when he fed on blood, fear and death, Yarbro's novels focus on a mature vampire who chooses to sustain himself by inducing sexual ecstasy when he feeds, usually on women, who are for the most part unaware of his actions, as he uses the hypnotic powers of his kind to approach then while they sleep, takes very little blood, and leaves them with memories of erotic dreams. Sometimes he finds people who, for any number of reasons, are willing to be a partner to him, not always with full knowledge of what he is. Always, he seeks but rarely finds the ultimate nurturance of the conscious giver of both blood and love.

Most of the novels tell the story of one of those rare times when Saint-Germain finds a remarkable woman who dares to go against the sexual, social and religious laws of their society to love a vampire.

One interesting aspect of the sexual bond he creates is that, in Yarbro's universe, male vampires are impotent - a rather logical development, seeing as they have no heartbeat and therefore no blood circulation. Sex for Saint-Germain is exclusively about creating pleasure - primarily for women, and then deriving his sustenance from that pleasure.

Because Saint-Germain prefers to create these bonds with women, the novels that Yarbro centres on him are also inevitably explorations of the lives that women lived and the limitations they faced in the various times and places throughout history in which she places her vampire count. Yarbro's novels are always extensively researched, and the reader cannot avoid being struck, over and over again, by the ways in which women's lives have been circumscribed the ways in which men have viewed women in various societies, and the great difficulties and often fatal consequences experienced by most women who stepped out of the narrow lives prescribed for them throughout history.

This theme runs even deeper in the handful of novels that Yarbro has written from the viewpoints of two of the female vampires created by Saint-Germain: Olivia Clemens, trapped wife of a sadistic but socially and politically powerful rapist, made a vampire in Nero's Rome; and Madelaine de Montalia, selected to be the victim of a Satanist cult, made a vampire in 18th century France. Where the books about Saint-Germain have a large dose of historical adventure in them, the books focused on Olivia and Madelaine, while still adventurous, are also detailed examinations of how difficult it has been for an independent and unconventional woman to manage her own life at just about every point in time in the last 2000 years.

The interesting question for me is this: while the books have strong feminist themes - as well as other equally powerful themes, such as the futility of war, the terrible consequences of xenophobia and intolerance of all kinds, the corrupting influence of power and the importance of freedom - is Saint-Germain, the vampire, himself a feminist? (there is no doubt that Madelaine, who survives into the 20th century, is a feminist, and that Olivia, who dies the True Death in 17th century France, almost certainly would have been.)

Certainly, throughout all the books, Saint-Germain is drawn to and celebrates the personal power and accomplishments of strong women. He can only create a true bond with a woman who has the courage to make her own choices, choices which often go against some of the strongest prohibition of her culture. For centuries Saint-Germain has watched the women he is dependent on for his survival struggle against the weight of every limitation imaginable - he has seen women treated as property, sold into slavery, raped and tortured, thrown into nunneries that were really prisons, set aside as unimportant, killed for being women in situations where no man would have been so treated, at the very best admonished as the weaker sex, the less competent sex, the sex more prone to error and weakness.

In earlier centuries, the reader often finds him working to restore self-esteem in women who have been treated brutally by the men of their society - and not just women he has fed on or plans to feed on. In times closer to our own, he is seen encouraging women in the process of self-emancipation. No longer human himself, he lives by codes of justice and honour that grow increasingly archaic as time marches on, but unlike so many men of history, Saint-Germain actually sees women as people. He respects them, even though he must use them to survive, for willing partners are rare; he tries to give fair return for what he takes, both with the dreams he creates and, when possible, with material recompense of some kind when it is within his circumstances.

But he does take, almost always without consent. And that taking involves sex - at least for the women he takes blood and energy from - and his use of power, even if it is the power of a non-human being. It fits the definition of rape. This more-than-human being who has chosen for at least the last 2,000 years to respect and protect women because it is the right and just thing to do, also forces women to experience sexual pleasure for his own purposes on a regular basis, and does not really think of this as the same kind of behaviour he has punished other men throughout his long journey for engaging in. And what do we say about Olivia and Madelaine, who take (mostly) men in their sleep, without their consent, giving them wet dreams while they feed on the pleasure and the blood. That fits the definition of rape as well.

But then, there is the fact that none of them are human anymore - does that make a difference? And they need to drink emotion with the blood - does the drive to survive outweigh the morality of what they must do to survive? Are they to be congratulated for choosing sexual emotion over terror, or are they simply justifying to themselves acts that can have no justification? Despite all the other things they do that are good - and they all, were they human, would be considered good, often heroic people - are they irredeemable because they survive on what they take by deceit and force from others?

I don't really have an answer, unless it is to point out that, like Yarbro's vampires, most of us would not be living the lives we do without reaping the benefits of some form of exploitation - theft and violation by force - committed somewhere in the world today. If Saint-Germain is irredeemable, what about the rest of us?

The Saint-Germain books:

Hotel Transylvania (1978) - 18th century France
The Palace (1978) - Renaissance Florence
Blood Games (1980) - 1st century Rome
Path of the Eclipse (1981) - 13th century China, Tibet and India
Tempting Fate (1982) - Russia and Germany, early 20th century
The Saint-Germain Chronicles (1983) - short story collection, dates range from 17th century to 1980, mostly set in Europe and North America
A Flame in Byzantium (1987) - Olivia Clemens - 6th century Byzantium
Crusader's Torch (1988) - Olivia Clemens - 12th century Palestine
A Candle for D'Artagnan (1989) - Olivia Clemens - 17th century Italy and France
Out of the House of Life (1990) - Madeleine de Montalia - Egypt, both 19th century, and between 1500-500 BC
Darker Jewels (1993) - 16th century Poland and Russia
Better in the Dark (1993) - 10th century northern Europe
Mansions of Darkness (1996) - 17th century Peru
Writ in Blood (1997) - early 20th century Russia and England
Blood Roses (1998) - 14th century France
Communion Blood (1999) - late 17th century Rome
Come Twilight (2000) - Spain, covering a 500-year period starting mid 7th century
A Feast in Exile (2001) - 14th century India
Night Blooming (2002) - late 8th century France and Rome
Midnight Harvest (2003) - 1930s USA
Dark of the Sun (2004) - 6th century Asia
In the Face of Death (2004) - Madeleine de Montalia - 19th century USA
States of Grace (2005) - early 16th century Italy and Netherlands
Roman Dusk (2006) - 3rd century Rome

I've been reading or re-reading the Saint-Germain books over the past few years, and I'm almost completely caught up. So far this year, I've read: Writ in Blood, Crusader's Torch, Darker Jewels, Out of the House of Life, and In the Face of Death. I'm currently reading A Feast in Exile, and then I'll have read the entire series with the exception of States of Grace and the newest book, Roman Dusk, which is due out soon in hardcover.

Comments

[victoriacatlady.livejournal.com]

Is this a series you consider to be equally good throughout, or does it get better or worse as it goes on?

I read (and still own, somewhere) the first few books of the series. At some point I stopped buying them, possibly for financial reasons, or perhaps I got tired of them; I'm not sure. I do know that I no longer find cunnilingus revolutionary. But reading this, I'm wondering if I want to read some more. They're pretty much independent books, aren't they? Or would you suggest it's best to start at the beginning once again and read through?

On your main point: It's a good question. Is what Saint-Germain does really rape? It is non-consensual, there's no question of that. Yet he makes sure he gives fair exchange and does no harm. One analogy would be breaking into a store when it is closed, taking what you want, and leaving the money -- maybe even more than the marked price of the items -- by the till. That could hardly be called theft. But that analogy breaks down in that it assumes the items are already for sale, which a woman's favours, and blood, generally are not.

I don't know. It feels like a very different thing from rape. It feels non-abusive.

On the issue of it being necessary for his survival: You said he can survive, though not thrive, on animal blood. So it's not necessary for his survival to take blood and pleasure from sleeping women. One could say he needs to thrive to do good in the world, and perhaps that's true, but that feels like a rationalization.

I don't know. I still say it feels non-abusive. I suppose what I mean by that is that I wouldn't at all mind being visited by Saint-Germain. ;-)

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I think the series is of about the same calibre all the way through. If you read too much at one time, the recurring themes can become a bit repetitive, but that's not likely to be a common problem because I'm fairly sure that, unlike me, most people don't sit down and read five Saint Germain novels in one week just because you were given them for your birthday. ;-)

About Saint-Germain taking blood from women who are sleeping: I know it feels non-abusive, which is why it bothers me. Becasue we have to remember that there are ways of talking about things that are abusive and making them appear to be non-abusive. These novels are told from the viewpoint of the vampire - Saint-Germain, Madelaine, Olivia - and becasue these are all good people, they have to have found a way to justify their taking of blood to themselves or they'd probably have gone mad, in one way or another, over the years. Saint-Germain mentions in various books lovers who have asked to have their bodies burrned at their deaths, so they can't become vampires, lovers who have become vampires but allowed themseves to die the True Death becasue they couldn't handle becoming vampires, and lovers who have turned into monsters because of the potential combination of bloodlust and fearlust that can come with being a vampire. Some of the problem in a lot of these instances is the matter and manner of feeding.

And then, of course, Yarbro is writing the three - Satin-Germain, Olivia and Madelaine - as sympathetic lead characters. She's naturally going to write the feeding issue as a non-abusive one, becasue she wants you to like her lead characters.

So you have to dig beneath Yarbor-s intent and the vampire's viewpoint to try to analyse exactly what is going on - and at that level it appears quite ambiguous to me.