History of Vampires & Gothic Romance: From Monsters to Romantic Icons
- Courtney Leigh
- Jul 11
- 13 min read
Hello my sweet, wonderful bookish found family. Care for a deep dive?
Today we are talking about the sexy, yet dangerous immortals we all love. Especially here in the reading community, we can’t seem to get enough of a handsome, broody bloodsuckers. Yes, we are talking about vampires. Whether you’re a fan of Ann Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or Stephani Meyer’s Twilight Saga, I’m sure we’ve all been seduced by one or more broody love interests.
But where did these creatures come from and when did we start romanticizing something that has been considered evil throughout most of history? Well, to know that, we need to backtrack hundreds, nay, thousands of years because the notion of vampirism has been mentioned in numerous cultures across time. In fact, most cultures seem to have their own tales of blood-drinking demons and spirits, which many consider a precursor to what we call vampires today.
Vampires have been considered evil, disease spreading monsters and were never described as being pleasant to look at or encounter. Some historians theorize that vampires being these undead creatures that rise from the dead was an attempt to explain death and decomposition at a time when people may not have been able to understand it, but that’s the undead version of these blood drinkers. The truth is, bloodsucking monsters predate that.
As I said, vampires were not limited to one place on the globe or to one culture. It seems that almost every society had its own version of vampires and how vampires were made.
The Persians were one of the first civilizations thought to have tales of blood sucking monsters who attempted to drink blood from men and depictions of said monsters were found on excavated pottery shards.
In ancient Babylonian lore, you have the Lilitu, which many associate with Lilith from Hebrew
lore, who was Adam’s first wife before Eve, but did not want to be subservient to Adam so she was banished and became queen of the demons. Lilith was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies and their mothers.
In ancient Greece, you have the empusa, Lamia, and Striges, all of which have their own awful traits. Empusa was the daughter of Hecate, and by disguising herself and a beautiful woman, she could seduce men and drink their blood. Lamia was one of Zeus’s secret lovers, but naturally, Zeus’s wife found out and killed all her offspring. This, in turn, caused Lamia to take revenge by killing and sucking the blood of children in their beds.
Because that’s a completely logical way to take revenge on Hera… kill all the babies.
Unlike the Lamia, the Striges preyed on women and adults. Keeping your horizons broad there…
Striges are not to be confused with the Romanian Strigoi, however, which are creatures said to have risen from the grave. They can transform into beasts and can go invisible and gain vitality from consuming blood.
You also have the Albanian Shtriga and the Slavic Strzyga. They’re all fairly similar in that they feed on either children or the blood of humans in general.
In Chinese lore, you have the Jiangshi, or Chinese hopping vampire or hopping corpse, which i don’t know why that’s a scary image, but it is. These are reanimated corpses that are often described as being stiff and wearing Qing Dynasty attire and in order to sustain themselves, they must absorb the “qi” or life force of the living.
In the Philipines, you have the Aswang, or more particularly, a kind of Aswang called a Mandurugo since Aswang is more of an umbrella term for shapeshifting evil creatures. The Mandurugo appears as an attractive woman by day and transforms into a winged creature with a hollow tongue that can suck the blood of sleeping victims.
And speaking of blood sucking tongues, we even have a vampire legend here in Arizona, or more accurately, Mexico, called a chupacabra, which sucks the blood of animals. No joke, here in the west, we very much believe in chupacabras and it’s hard to go anywhere without hearing of someone who has claimed to have encountered one.
Not only did these different cultures have different beliefs on how they were created, but they also had different beliefs on how to ward them off, many of which I’m sure you have heard of. From garlic to crosses to hanging amulets on their children’s cribs to sprinkling mustard seeds around their graves (supposedly this stems from a belief that vampires are so OCD that they have to stop and count every seed?)
Now, the kinds of bloodsucking creatures i just mentioned doesn’t even scratch the surface. There are countless myths and legends of these monsters and I’m not going to get into every single one. Just know there are MANY.
In medieval times, with the rise of Christianity, naturally, vampires began to take on more Christian characteristics. The Christian churches claimed vampires were minions of Satan saying that “Just as a vampire takes a sinner’s very spirit into itself by drinking his blood, so also can a righteous Christian by drinking Christ’s blood take the divine spirit into himself.”
This is generally the version of vampires we know today. The version that is warded off or even wounded by things like crosses and holy water. But, as you can see, the idea of a bloodsucking, disease spreading, undead creature is not contained to one region or culture and though they all are different in appearance, tradition, and the manner of their creation, they all have 2 things in common. They’re malicious and they suck blood or consume the life force of others.
So, the question remains. How did we get here? How did people start taking these hideous, blood sucking, baby eating, plague bringing creatures and make things like this (pictures)?
Let’s time travel back to the early 19th century when the romantic movement in literature was on the rise. You had poets like Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor, and John Keats spearheading an era that explored emotion, nature, and the individual. And among these founders of the romantic movement, a man by the name of John William Polidori wrote “The Vampyre,” a short work of fiction published in 1817 about a mysterious vampiric figure who preyed among high society.
The story centers around Aubrey, who meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven at a social event and soon finds himself traveling with him around Europe. Although, when Aubrey starts to pick up on Ruthven’s ruthless nature (see what did there) he leaves and travels to Greece. It’s there that he meets Ianthe and falls in love. Ianthe tells him about the legend of vampires and Aubrey inevitably begins to suspect Ruthven to be one.
The romance is short, Ianthe is killed, Aubrey ends up back in Ruthven’s company, but when they’re attacked by bandits, Ruthven is wounded and is dying. As he dies laughing, he makes Aubrey swear not to tell anyone about Ruthven for a year. He returns to London and wouldn’t you know it! Ruthven is there and somehow becomes betrothed to Aubrey’s sister. Really, the whole thing ends in tragedy, HOWEVER, this is, according to many, the catalyst that spurred this whole ongoing era of vampires dawning a romantic aura.
Polidori transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into the form that is recognized
today—an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society, which, if you’ve ever read Ann Rice’s vampire chronicles, you can definitely see reflections of this in the literature following.
Jumping forward a little, we have J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla which is a 1872 Gothic novella about a young woman named Laura living a solitary life in a secluded castle in Styria, Austria, who becomes increasingly entangled with a mysterious and beautiful guest named Carmilla. The story details Laura's growing fascination with Carmilla, who exhibits increasingly strange and volatile behavior, including nocturnal wanderings and a detrimental effect on Laura's health, resulting in a deep, unsettling bond with undertones of desire and supernatural danger. Most would agree that if you’re trying to pinpoint the FIRST real romantic vampire story, that this is where it all began.
Next, we have another very well known piece of literature by Bram Stoker, aka Abraham Stoker, an Irish novelist who, in 1897, wrote the famous Gothic horror novel, Dracula.
Dracula is a novel written as a collection of fictional diary entries, letters, ship logs, and newspaper clippings. Granted, this wasn’t considered a romance and was in fact known as Gothic Horror, it still created a vampiric figure that differed from previous renditions. The story begins with Johnathan Harker, who is traveling to Count Dracula’s castle to help him buy a
house near London. A series of bizarre events happen during Johnathan’s time in the castle, one of those events being his encounter with Dracula’s three creepy vampire wives. First, the count saves him, but later, he surrenders Johnathan to his wives and sails to England on the famously known fictional ship, the Demeter with boxes of dirt from his castle. During this time, the captain’s log narrates how the whole crew progressively disappeared until he was the only one left until the ship ran aground.
More happens in this creepy castle that leads to Johnathan escaping and ending up at a hospital in Budapest. His fiance, Mina, soon catches word of this and travels there to nurse him. While this is happening, Dracula begins to stalk her friend Lucy, who starts to fall victim to bouts of sleep walking, suffering from mysterious blood loss, and eventually dies and rises from the grave to be slayed by none other than professor Abraham van helsing, who stakes her in the heart and then shoves garlic in her mouth.
Eventually, the hunt is on for Dracula and Johnathan and Mina join in. Van Helsing reveals that vampires can only rest on soil from their homeland so they begin to search for the boxes of dirt that dracula brought with him. Dracula then begins to pay visits to Mina, feeding on her and then forcing her to take his blood, damning her to a vampiric fate, before fleeing back to Transylvania. The crew gives chase, using some kind of psychic connection that Mina has to him, and eventually find Dracula in a box en rout to his castle and destroy him. Dracula crumbles to dust and Mina is freed of her curse.
Crazy enough, the original 541 page transcript was thought to be lost until as recent as 1980 when it was found In a barn in Pennsylvania.
Although, allegedly, 80-100 pages were missing from the beginning of the manuscript, which was originally titled “The Undead,” eluding to the fact that the original story didn’t start with Harker on his way to Dracula’s castle but in fact that happened well into the story. There are a few other differences in the found manuscript and there was a lot that was found to be crossed out and possibly referencing a missing portion of the story, but as a writer, i know that first drafts are usually absolute trash. So while it’s awesome that the original manuscript was found, it doesn’t mean the published manuscript is not just as authentic.
MOVING ON! We are not quite done. If you’ve heard of Dracula, you’ve probably heard of Nosferatu.
The original Nosferatu was a German silent film created in 1922. It was written by Henrik Galeen, and directed by FW Murnau.
The story is set in 1838 in the fictional German town of Wisburg. Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer to visit a client, Count Orlok, who is planning to buy a house across from him. Now, I’m not going to go to into this one because it’s quite similar to Dracula in that you have this malicious vampire looking to buy some real estate, a human man is sent to help him, said vampire travels via ship to his prospective new home during which time the crew perishes. Orlok, however, arrives not in England, but in Germany and he practically brings the plague with him. Hutter follows him back to find that the Count has developed an obsession with his wife. The story ends a bit more tragically than Dracula because Ellen actually lures Orlok to drink from her so he gets distracted and is burned up when the sun rises. Unfortunately, this also leads to her death.
And if you haven’t guessed, YES, this is EXTREMELY similar to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and in fact Stoker’s Widow sued over the adaptation's copyright violation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.
Film historian David Kalat states the film was "a low-budget film made by Germans for German audiences... setting it in Germany with German-named characters makes the story more tangible and immediate for German-speaking viewers"
Let’s jump forward now to 1976 when Ann Rice published Interview with a Vampire, the first in The Vampire Chronicles. If you haven’t read the book, I’m sure you’ve seen the movie or the TV show and if you haven’t seen or read any of it, you’ve probably at least heard of it. Anne Rice is widely considered “The mother of modern vampire fiction.” I know she was a big influence for me and I am SO happy that I got to meet her before she passed in 2021.
Anne Rice has said that she was largely influenced by Gloria Holden’s character from Dracula’s Daughter, a film from 1936 that centers on Countess Marya Zaleska, the daughter of Count Dracula, who seeks to be free of her vampiric curse after her father's destruction by Professor Van Helsing, but ultimately struggles with her bloodlust and desire for companionship, leading to a tragic end.
Rice says, quote, “It established to me what vampires were—these elegant, tragic, sensitive people. I was really just going with that feeling when writing Interview With the Vampire. I didn't do a lot of research."
Interview with a vampire and the other books in the vampire chronicles ultimately explored the internal lives and philosophical questions of her vampire characters, setting her apart from earlier depictions of the creatures. The series of novels began with Interview with the Vampire and continued with titles like The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, which have sold millions worldwide and explored themes of immortality, morality, and the human condition through the lens of immortal beings.
And I do personally believe this is where the modern, romanticized version of vampires really began. Romance EXPLODED and vampires as a subgenre absolutely dominated. Then you had the Vampires Diaries released in the early 90s and the TV adaptation by the same name, which centers on Elena Gilbert, a high school student who becomes entangled in a supernatural love triangle with two centuries-old vampire brothers: the brooding Stefan Salvatore and his dangerous, revenge-driven brother, Damon Salvatore.
The True Blood novels, also known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries or the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, began with the release of Dead Until Dark in May 2001. The series chronicles the life of telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse in a world where vampires have "come out of the coffin" due to the invention of a synthetic blood product called "True Blood". The TV show adaptation released in 2008.
And, as much as I am not a fan of Stephanie Meyer’s “vampires” from her outrageously
popular young adult series (Which I was very obsessed with back in the day and even got my books signed by Stephanie herself), Twilight, she is another author that kind of shoved vampires even further into mainstream popularity and pushed this idea of a very normal and uninteresting girl (aka most of us in high school) drawing the eyes of an extraordinary vampire. I feel like there have been too many memes and satire around the twilight movies for me to take it seriously anymore unfortunately. Although, i do still love the books for what they are. Kinda sorta badly written YA fantasy that i absolutely gobbled up at one point in my life.
HOWEVER, even when I was dragging my butt to some random high school auditorium for a signing event, I was not a fan of her vampires. Because they sparkle in the sunlight and they don’t even have fangs! Fangs… I need the fangs. I’m sorry, but I want fangs. Nothing beats those two sexy little punctures on the side of someone’s neck. But I digress. I did read Anne Rice before Stephanie Meyer and I think I am just too attached to broody, night stalkers to accept… sparkling vampires.
Of course, there are a lot of adult romance authors and with this influx of writers came broader and more unique takes on what used to be gross, undead demons incapable of love. One of my personal favorites is Lara Adrian, author of the Midnight Breed series. Her vampires were immortal, blood drinking human/alien hybrids covered head to toe in color changing tattoos that matched their moods which I KNOW! Sounds weird and maybe I have no right to criticize sparkling vampires when I’m in love with alien vampires, but here we are having opinions. I thought it was weird too until my now fiance forced me to read them and it changed my life and ultimately led to me writing my first romance novels and publishing them in 2019.
But, the arguably more popular vampire romance series, which now has a show on Passionflix, is The Black Dagger Brotherhood by JR Ward. I personally tried to read this series after I was having some withdrawals from finishing The Midnight Breed Series and I just… I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I DNFed after the first two chapters of book one. I think it was a bit too on the outrageous side? The main vampire was something out of a 90s comic book with sunglasses and everything. I couldn’t get over the insanely cheesy names. Rhage. Phury. Rhevenge. Vishous? I’m sorry… I can’t. But to each their own. Absolutely no judgement from me if you love that series, I just gushed over alien vampires with mood tattoos.
To conclude, i think it was somewhat inevitable that vampires would eventually make their way into the romance genre. Actually… scratch that. I think after SOMEONE rearranged the view of vampires from disgusting, malicious, undead monsters or straight up demons and made them into something alluring and resembling humans, it was inevitable that the rest of the romance world would pick up on it.
Vampires became this sort of forbidden fruit. A dangerous and yet beautiful thing that appeals to readers like me. There is something about a once human being who is either tormented by their immortality and ashamed of their blood thirsty nature or an immortal being who thrives off of it. Add in the danger of said vampire finding someone to love and i think it’s natural for readers to be intrigued. Not to mention that the way blood drinking has evolved throughout the years to be this deeply intimate act between two creatures and you have a very effective formula for a good, intriguing story. Today, we have vampires who are thousands of years old, new vampires, vampires who are aliens. Vampires who are undead. Super vampires slaying other vampires. Half-vampires. Fated mates. The genre has evolved so wildly and honestly, for a while there, it got a little too repetitive for me, but lately, I feel like people are starting to put new spins on an old concept again and I’m here for it.
And before I go, here’s a story time! A very short story time… kind of like my novella, Feeder! I wrote this book in the early days of my author journey as a joke thinking that because vampire romance is so popular that I should just write one and see how it goes. This book quickly became my most popular book at the time...
Feeder is set in a parallel dystopian world where vampires have taken over and humans are good for only two things, working for vampires or feeding them. Ophelia ends up being one of these personal “Feeders” to a vampire Lord named Kieryn who has a hard time letting go of the old days when humans and vampires coexisted harmoniously. It’s a short romantic story and it’s available on Amazon or on my website. Check it out… or don’t. That's ok, too❤️
Thank you all for reading. I hope you all had a good time. Want to help support me? Check out my books! You can get special signed paperbacks wit hsprayed edges by visiting my shop❤️