He’s HOW Old?
In Book of Shadows, Sepha is 17 and Alex is 196. That doesn’t bother people at all. What does bother (some of) them is the fact that he appears to be 37. Which gives me new insight, as both a reader and a writer, into why no one cared that Edward of Twilight fame wasn’t actually a teenager but was, in fact, a hundred year old virgin. Looks are everything.
Alex was–spoilers if you haven’t read the book–an officer in British-occupied India who died, or rather, who should have died during the Great Rebellion of 1857. That he’s an actual adult, with an adult’s experiences, is relevant to the story. His life didn’t begin when he was turned. And, as he (rightly) points out to Sepha, at one point, in his time men his age married girls her age. There was nothing strange about it. And because he didn’t repeat high school a zillion times–with apologies to Stephenie Meyer, we all know Twilight is one of my favorite books–he has a little more to offer in terms of adult insight. He’s also, I think, much more keenly aware of what he’s lost. Although in my world, vampires face a great many more limitations than they often modernly do.
Alex’s perceptions are shaped by his time, to a great extent, even though so much time has passed. And by his experiences in the army as well. Interestingly, though, his sometimes hidebound Victorian opinions don’t seem bothersome. That he wants to take care of Sepha is, indeed, romantic! It’s only when he waxes poetic on such subjects as corsets that anyone raises an eyebrow. Mostly because they’re thinking of him as a modern man–or at least expecting him to have evolved. Which, I think, shows our complicated relationship to the past: we want to romanticize it, which we do by tossing out the bad bits.
Richard, Alex’s human servant, somewhat serves as a foil for this idea. Through the lens of his descriptions we see an entirely different world: one where he faced near insurmountable prejudice for being Irish, and where otherwise healthy young women died in childbirth. Richard’s Boston was a place of disease, cruelty, and systemic economic and social disparity. And his family’s history was shaped, not by inheritance like Alex’s but by the Great Famine and the Civil War.
Which is in part what makes it easier for him to modernize: he met Alex after he lost everything.
The fact remains, though, that while there are varying arguments to be made about how well either of them fits into modern society, those arguments are only to be made because neither of them is below fifty. Neither of them is below one hundred. Yes, Richard is a comparatively sprightly 154 to Alex’s 196, but both of them are–great grandfather doesn’t even cut it.
What I’ve discovered, though, is that people ignore what you want them to ignore. In The Demon of Darkling Reach, everyone’s sins are laid bare. Here, especially because I’m writing YA and because, too, too much gore simply wouldn’t fit the story regardless, I let readers mostly use their imagination on the subject of Alex’s feeding habits and instead focus on his character. His humanity. And so they do. Likewise, present people with someone who looks like a high school student, even if he’s a thousand years old instead of a hundred, and ninety-nine percent of them will see a high school student.
Thoughts?
