Gandrell de Lioncourt

Gandrell here. Behold: your hero for the duration, a perfect imitation of a blond, blue-eyed, six-foot Anglo-Saxon male. My eyes are gray, but they appear a piercingly striking blue. If you see them turn violet, well…run. I am vampire, and one of the strongest you'll ever encounter. I earned my strength, not through time or trials. I seduced my way into the world of more ancient vampires and took from them what I desired – power, knowledge, abilities, and strength. My mouth is well shaped and can look very mean or extremely generous. It always looks sensual. My emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I have a continuously animated face. My fangs are too small to be noticed unless I want them to be, they're very sharp and I cannot go for more than a few hours without wanting blood. Of course, I don't need it that often. Just how often do I need it? I don't know, I haven’t put it to the test in over a century. If I am staved for blood I look a perfect horror - skin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of my bones. I don't let that happen now. I'm immortal. I've been virtually ageless since 1589 when humanity was stolen from me, and I was gifted with eternity. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire – I know for a fact these things can no longer destroy me. Am I unique? By no means. I myself combine the best of vampiric youth and old age. I have a modern sensibility and a dead aristocrat's impeccable taste. I learned to speak English from a flatboat man who came down the Mississippi to New Orleans about three hundred years ago. I learned more after that from the English language writers - everybody from Shakespeare through Jane Austin to J.D. Robb and more recently Mitch Album, whom I read as the decades passed. When I speak, I drift into a vocabulary that would have been natural to me in the eighteenth century, into phrases shaped by the authors I've read. But, in spite of my French ascent, I talk like a cross between a debonair southern gentleman and a coon ass from the swamp. I know exactly who I am. I am rich. I am beautiful. I can see my reflection in mirrors and in shop windows. I love to sing and to dance. What do I do? Anything that I please. Call me arrogant, please. If you think me arrogant it means my mask is in place. What lies beneath the mask? Only a very small selection of chosen people will ever get to find out. Does that offend? Good. It means I have made an impression.Think about it. Is it enough to make you want to read my story?

Gandrell de Lioncourt was born on December 15, 1568, in a small hamlet in southeastern France to his mother, Symonne, and father, Gieffroy, who was the nobility of the town of Chambéry. Gandrell grew up the apple of his mother's eye and the spitting imagine of his father, strapping, strong and beautiful to the opposite sex.

He was much like every young man in his part of the world, a young country lord running the surrounding hillsides and bullying each other. But as he grew from the boy into an adolescent, he began to separate himself from the rest of the children his age, while the other boys were playing war games in the fields and dreaming of becoming a hero Gandrell passed his time observing the women of the town and trying his hand at seducing the young girls. One summer night he was successful in his seduction, and he bedded a girl five years his senior.
Two months after the night of ecstasy, and several more nights with different companions, he was greeted in the parlor of his parents' house by the girl who had been his first successful seduction and her parents meeting with his parents. Apparently, our little country lord had planted his seed in this girl and her parents were demanding a wedding immediately. Like any sixteen-year-old boy, Gandrell was terrified of the thought of marriage and was certainly not ready for such a thing and did what any rational child would do when faced with this situation. He ran.
That night he gathered every belonging of value that he could carry and vanished from the village. A few settlements down the road Gandrell came upon a caravan of gypsies who had a stage performance that traveled about the country. Instantaneously he was smitten with the idea of the stage and became an overnight success with entire band of gypsies. Off into the world our hero vanished.

Being of noble decent and upbringing, Gandrell poised himself as the groups' manager and lead actor and was able to hob-knob with the highest of society. He had impeccable manners, was devastatingly handsome, and was very keen on seducing lonely women of high society, who would always ensure he was introduced to the most powerful people. After establishing himself as very high ranking with the local aristocrats of France he decided to make a play for Paris, where else better to take the show then the heart of modernism. It was in Paris, as Gandrell worked tirelessly to solidify his players' future, was when his flamboyant nature caught the eye of another kind of creature all together.
He had been walking home from one of their shows, some young, supple girl on his arm when he was attacked from behind and the world went black.

He awoke in a clean room, beautifully decorated, and was on pristine white sheets. The windows were all open, but he felt no chill in the air, though it had been snowing when he had been walking home. He got to his feet and noticed he had not a stitch of clothing on. Fear was the first emotion that gripped him but soon after curiosity had over-shadowed the dread. There had been a full-length mirror placed strategically so he would spot himself the moment he began to walk towards the windows. He ogled at himself.
His skin was ashen and his eyes, though he could see better than he ever could, were a sharper, brighter blue. His eyebrows and sideburns had been sculpted, his beard and all body hair had been removed by something other than a razor for he was as smooth as marble.
He remains now exactly how he was on that day. There is a more details account of the transformation in his Journal entitled, The Brat Prince.

I want to save souls by the millions. I want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil!
I am still the Vampire Gandrell de Lioncourt, the most potent and lovable vampire ever created, a supernatural knockout, four hundred and fifty-seven years old but fixed forever in the form of a twenty-one-year-old male with features and figure you'd die for - and just might. I'm endlessly resourceful, and undeniably charming. Death, disease, time, gravity, and even sunlight, they mean nothing to me.
I know damned well how to be a full-fledged, post-Renaissance, post-nineteenth century, post-modern, post-popular vampire.
Doesn't that make me sound irresistible?


- Prospects for the future

- How I feel about myself most days

Gand yearns for a long-term relationship. The problem is, he goes for humans mostly. Where the difficulties lie: he is frozen in time at twenty-one. His knowledge and skills grow but his maturity is frozen.

This has to do with the development of the prefrontal cortex not fully developing until the age of twenty-five, which is something he will never achieve. So, his rational mind - that part of the brain that tends to slow down or stop impulsive behaviors will never develop. Therefore, he will never grow up. He is a perpetual Peter Pan.

He's fun for a few years. But, as the women age and he doesn't mature with them, they leave him. They get tired of all the things that attracted them in the first place. His whimsical nature, his impulsive surprises, his bratty tantrums that happen on rare occasion.

This is why, Gandrell will be forever alone. Try to tame him, if you please. But in the end, it will only be him you hurt.