The Dhampir In Fiction
Although the legends of the dhampir are thousands of years old, the entertainment industry has always been fascinated by the half human, half vampire creature. Whether in comic books, films, television, or literature, there have been dhampirs in front of us, seducing our senses from before we can remember. Even in video games, the dhampir character, whether male or female, is the pinnacle of vampire and human strengths combined, defeating all others, and especially hunting other vampires without much remorse. Dhampirs in fiction can be created from vampire and human procreation, a vampire bite to a pregnant woman, scientific crossbreeding, or any other hundreds of ways. The limit to the dhampir’s creation in fiction, is only the writer’s imagination.
Some of the greatest dhampir fiction produced was invented by Marvel, in the Blade comics; at least in the eyes of comic connoisseurs and collectors all over the world. In the Blade comics, as previously mention, Blade was born as a dhampir when his mother was bitten by a vampire when pregnant with him. However, in “Spiderman: The Animated Series”, Blade was instead the offspring of a vampire and human. Blood: The Last Vampire, an animated film, mostly of the anime variety, featured a dhampir that was created through scientific cross-breeding. Rayne, from the popular video game BloodRayne was born as an actual dhampir, after a vampire raped her human mother. Instead, however, the dhampirs in the game are not also vampire hunters; they’re her brothers and sisters, but still evil. In the Castlevania series of video games, Alucard, or Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, is the dhampir offspring of Dracula and a human woman named Lisa. In other videos games, dhampir is popular is well; such as Donovan Baine, in Darkstalkers.
Other comic book dhampir, is Harlan Draka, in the Dampyr comic, where he pretends to be a dhampir for money, until he discovers that he actually is one. The sensational author, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, who authored her first novel and sold it for publication at only thirteen years old, also created a dhampir character in her novel “Demon In My View.” There are hundreds of other dhampir characters as well; whether in films or on paper. The vampire has always held its fans tight in fascination, and his offspring, the dhampir, has been no exception.