#there's another ramble to be had about some theories surrounding Countess Dolingen

[see-arcane]

i'd love to hear your thoughts on or analysis of the "weird sisters"/wives/brides

Bride 1:

The first victim taken to keep Dracula company. I imagine Dracula being in something of a more maddened/not-quite-whole state following his turn to vampirism paired with his time in [SPOILERS]. Maybe closer to Nosferatu's stilted mindset when it came to behaving like a man. That, coupled with an unknown amount of time pacing alone in his dead castle, only finding contact in screaming meals and fleeing chattel, likely prompted him to go seeking permanent company.

I picture the girl he chose as one with a habit of inspiring laughter. Perhaps a jovial eldest sister who cheered her sisters, her family, her friends and suitors. He's always loved stealing away what others might love. So he picked her and stole her and she spent her final months of humanity trying desperately to amuse and cajole him into not doing the inevitable.

Bride 2:

Centuries pass. Dracula wants a new flavor. He takes it in the form of one of his own men's girls. A wife? A sister? A daughter? It doesn't matter. What matters is she has known of Dracula all her life. Known what it is the people she loves, she shares blood with, do for this thing pretending to be a man. It's a deal with the devil. She knows that too. To disobey is to bring death and worse.

Dracula takes the girl the way all predators take caregivers who forget the former are not now or ever tamed to safety. Worse, perhaps it is her own kin who offer her up or turn blind eyes. It's for the good of the whole, dear, you understand. Her last hours are spent at a familiar window, alternately calling for and cursing those she'd loved.

Bride 3:

A newcomer. Perhaps a last straggling escapee of witch hunt fever, seeking with distance and a final pocketful of funds a safety from the pointing fingers of monstrous men. She doesn't know of any demons in the mountains and wouldn't care if she did. Men have proven to be greater monsters than any local legend. She even takes a home, startlingly cheap, near the edge of Borgo Pass despite all warnings.

She meets her one and only neighbor there. He is a magician of sorts, he tells her from the other side of the dilapidated fence--he would not set foot on her land without invitation, young lady! In truth, he is far more a witch than any poor powerless soul deemed unholy enough to slaughter. Such barbaric times, these. It is a comfort to see one such as her rightly escape such cruelty...

Perhaps he cajoles her into inviting him in. Perhaps he beckons her up to the castle, the caleche driving her on. Perhaps it doesn't matter either way. She is the last Bride for a long while. In time, she blends into the cadre of the others, these Weird Sisters, these bloodstained cats he keeps even as they scratch and laugh at as much as with him, because he cannot stand to be a tyrant alone with only himself to menace.

They are his. He can never part with what's his, even when it so rarely brings him joy. But time passes and the joy fades and if he is not a mad monster now, he is a steadily more sullen one when not faced with company to perform for. He is Master. He is the Devil. He is the owner of all that lives and dies in his land, his castle.

And yet he lets the castle rot. Lets himself wilt. He goes without succor even as he fetches meals for his 'loves.'

(He too can love. So he calls it, so it must be.)

They are no longer here for his pleasure, but to give him an excuse not to bite at himself like a rabid old wolf tearing at himself in confinement. England will be a respite. The start of something new. Conquest! New blood! New thralls! New subjects and victims! He will return to himself and his rightful mode with that renewal.

Groom:

And with the preparation comes a delightful surprise. If the Brides are his ungrateful cats, Jonathan Harker is a charming young pup. Primed to be groomed into a new addition.

Just the right word, that.

Groomed.

And is it not fitting that his first Groom is the one to bring him so much joy? So much vigor and play and giddy prelude to supple England? Yes, yes. This one has made him happiest of them all. Thank you, my good friend. I cannot wait to see more of you.

#there's another ramble to be had about some theories surrounding Countess Dolingen #but I'll leave this as-is #dracula #brides of dracula #re: dracula #dracula daily