//Vampire Hunter D meta blabber no one asked for--but I gotta get it down
Idk if you’ve seen my theories about the Nobility, but I DO like to go on… In the novels, they talk about the “Greater Nobility” and sometimes there’s a number attached—I think it’s 1000, but you know that could also just mean “a lot but not a zillion”. They also refer to “Lesser Nobility”. There’s also a class called the “seven kings”. (And then ofc the Sacred Ancestor). Okay so since the books don’t ever explain WHAT vampires ARE… I’mma just throw this out there and say that it’s the headcanon system I usually run with when I write D.
So the seven “kings” are seven natural-born Vampires. They were born of human mothers and, at some point in their lives, died, but did not stay dead. Some legends hold that these people angered god to such an extent that he wouldn’t take them and forbade the devil to do so, so they’re cursed to wander the world forever, or some such—most likely, it’s a genetic divergence from the regular human genome, thus making vampires a mutation. Now, they’re not… REALLY undead, not these vampires; they can sire children. So, it seems, can the Greater Nobility (of which Magnus Lee is one). Obviously, he fathered Larmica, who is a dhampir, but he still managed to get a boner and do the do, so they can’t really be dead. The question is “can female vampires have children?” I’mma say yes and I’ll go into that l8r.
I’ve counted the “sacred ancestor”, Dracula, as one of the seven kings, in the past, but given the way the literature talks about him, I don’t think he is. Either way, he’s like the others. Carmilla is one of those seven “kings”. She got greedy and Dracula got fucking sick of it. That’s usually the story. Well, in my headcanon zone, her greed went far beyond bloodlust and extended to the dark lord’s son, a sweet little dhampir boy. Attacking Dracula’s son is a good way to get yourself impaled, just sayin’.
Ahem, back to the Greater Nobility. By the time we have these classifications, it’s thousands of years into OUR future. There’s been time for those “kings” to reproduce. Thus, my theory here is that the Greater Nobility are the biological children of the Seven Kings. Seven doesn’t seem like enough to pop out that many babies, but man the first Vampire Hunter D novel takes place in 12,090 AD—though the “decline of vampire society” kind of starts in the year 7,000 AD. So let’s do some math… Seven people of indeterminate gender have, let’s say one kid every… five years, starting with 0 AD, because I am just about sure some of these critters are older than THAT, but 0 is kind of an even number. They will only mate with each other, because well damn they’re like vampire royalty, why fuck a peasant?
7,000 years of fuckening. Divide that by five—oh and we’ll say it’s an even split between the Seven “kings” and for this exercise we will include Dracula in that number and then remove him for sanity’s sake—so six Nobles, three male and three female (again just for funsies). 1,400 per Noble, but let’s say 700 per coupling. Now, that’s damn near 1000 already, and we’re pretending they just stopped doing the do at year 7000. Not to mention the amount of screwing that might have happened outside that—or twins/triplets… who knows? My point is that 7000 years is plenty of time—and honestly, the rank of the “seven kings” might be a fairly new designation. There might have been more true born vampires before the Cataclysm.
Alternatively the Greater Nobility are those that come from direct lines... so like, if they’re not the children of the Seven Kings, they’re the grand children, and great grand children. That’s plenty of time for there to be 1000, no problem.
Now, I’ve always considered it somewhat canon that mating with humans is like… humping a cow to most Nobility. D’s existence is anathema, but back in the day, folks knew who he was without asking. He’s the vampire prince. The sacred ancestor had a son with a human and though they’d love to hate him to his face, they cannot. Tradition dictates he’s like vampire jesus. He might also be genetically modified and enhanced beyond the normal capabilities of a dhampir. But that’s for later.
So if the Greater are the biological children/grandchildren/greatgrandchildren of the seven kings (with whom they have a cordial relationship, hardly warm, but polite and honestly who’s to say the seven even remember who their children are? The kids might, you know, for lineage shit, but I’ll bet the “parents” don’t gaf, trying hard as they can to distance themselves from anything vaguely resembling humanity), then who are the Lesser Nobility? Simply put, these are bitten vampires. Any vampire turned by a Greater Noble is lesser Nobility. The Greater Nobles can make thralls of humans, as Magnus Lee did with Doris, but she had not drunk of his blood yet. That was the “induction into the house of Lee” Larmica feared, and the goal of Rei Ginsei, the mutant who could bend space. So these vampires DO have a power to turn! But it’s the ol’ blood exchange thing.
Now the question is can a bitten human-turned-Noble reproduce? I don’t think so. Magnus Lee says he enjoys “mating with the human female” meaning Larmica’s mom was human, if under his thrall, when Larmica was conceived. She was not a member of the Nobility, but it seems as if Larmica KNEW her mother as a vampire—so either the marks of Magnus Lee’s turning faded before Larmica was old enough to notice them, or Larmica’s mother did not survive long enough for Larmica to know her and all she knows is what she has been told by her father. She clearly thinks her mother was also a vampire, presumably one of the Greater Nobility. I sort of headcanon that traditionally, Lesser Nobles, while still treated as Nobility, don’t ever rise much higher than a Lord or MAYBE an Earl, certainly no Count (who had been administrator of Fronteir Sector 10 during his first reign over humans). A Greater Noble might look upon their Lesser progeny with favor and bestow lands and titles, but it’s not in their power to bestow an equal title to their own and why would Magnus Lee take a wife who was less than he? Larmica is all about Noble Pride™…
Could her mother have BECOME Lesser Nobility with this theory in mind? Sure! She’d be Countess and she would probably love her baby girl very much—but Larmica strikes me as a cold woman who never knew the love of someone who remembered being human because Magnus Lee, as a member of the Greater Nobility, never WAS human. He was born of two of the Seven Kings and that’s his whole life.. Cold detachment and a superiority complex the size of Rhode Island.