On the subject of vampire incest

[AscentionTheMage]

I can recal instances of vampires being in romantic relationships with their clanmates. Would this be considered vampire incest?

[archderd]

i think the only proper response to this question is: what the shit are you on about?

[Meldok]

I'm having what they had.

And to answer the question: no!

[CTPhipps]

I can recal instances of vampires being in romantic relationships with their clanmates. Would this be considered vampire incest?

No.

Vampires have no taboos about any of their relationships: Clan to Clan, sire to childe, childer to childer.

They often break taboos of their mortal relationships too.

Jamie and Cersei as actual brother and sister being embraced would only be found to be somewhat weird and even then, not in the Giovanni or Tzimisce.

[Theodrim]

Jamie and Cersei as actual brother and sister being embraced would only be found to be somewhat weird and even then, not in the Giovanni or Tzimisce.

I mean it's the Giovanni and Tzimisce, not doing that would be considered weird.

[False Epiphany]

Yeah. There are tons of instances of vampire sires and childer being lovers, within Masquerade and broader vampire lore. Dracula has his brides. Lestat Embraces his mom. Eric and Pam are an item. Etc.

This topic comes up in True Blood when Bill Compton discovers that a woman he's in a sexual relationship with is his many-times great-granddaughter. He wants to break their relationship off. She counters that incest is only taboo for humans because it leads to inbreeding depression, which is a non-issue for vampires. Incest taboos serve to limit rather than expand the species' reproductive options.

Bill still gets hung up enough to dump her. Some vampires may not be interested in romantic relationships with their childer or mortal relatives, and consider such "improper," but they mostly consider it so on a personal level ("My childe just doesn't do it for me") rather than a society-wide level.

[AnubisXy]

Bill still gets hung up enough to dump her. Some vampires may not be interested in romantic relationships with their childer or mortal relatives, and consider such "improper," but they mostly consider it so on a personal level ("My childe just doesn't do it for me") rather than a society-wide level.

Could make for an interesting character backstory. A vampire is in love with a mortal but doesn't feel right about embracing him, so she gets another vampire (perhaps another clan member or one from a different clan entirely) to embrace that mortal. No doubt that would result in all sorts of complications and mixed loyalties on the part of the young neonate.

[False Epiphany]

Could make for an interesting character backstory. A vampire is in love with a mortal but doesn't feel right about embracing him, so she gets another vampire (perhaps another clan member or one from a different clan entirely) to embrace that mortal. No doubt that would result in all sorts of complications and mixed loyalties on the part of the young neonate.

Caine advises not to Embrace true love, but if you have to do it, have your sire do it for you.

I've had a similar plot thread come up in my current game. A PC's mortal boyfriend got Embraced into another clan. Their sires are political enemies and they've struggled to keep their rekindled relationship secret while juggling the conflicting loyalties.

It's felt like a pretty unexplored idea in canon that vampires can know one another before the Embrace. It stretches disbelief if every father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate gets turned into a vampire, but there are some cool hooks to mine from those mortal relationships.

[Thoth]

Off the top of my head, the only incest issue with vampires is from Kindred of the East. Since the Kuei-jin can change their chi balance to a Yang aspect, they can breed with mortals and produce offspring. So on a social level the asian community family values would cause a fair amount of issues, though mechanically the resulting dhampyr would be more or less perfectly healthy because of their inherent luck manipulation. That same luck manipulation according to fluff can allow the dhampyr baby to be cut out of the mother at only 5 months and still survive and grow into a healthy adult apparently.

[CTPhipps]

Canon actually has an early example of this. Lodin is Lorraine's great-great-great (or so) granduncle. The reason he wanted to sex her up was partially because of their relationship in mortal ties.

Ditto, ugh, Dusable and Maldavis who are much closer.

[Konradleijon]

No. I don't think being in a romantic relationship with someone related by vitae is taboo. Except maybe in the case of Childe and Sire which will mostly be based on the stigma rightfully on “embraces of passion”

[CTPhipps]

No. I don't think being in a romantic relationship with someone related by vitae is taboo. Except maybe in the case of Childe and Sire which will mostly be based on the stigma rightfully on “embraces of passion”

A childe is Embraced to fulfill whatever need a sire wants from them. If you're GAUCHE enough to have any sort of romantic needs left, I'm sure that qualifies.

[Konradleijon]

Also even Vampires think blood incest to be gross as the many mocking the Giovanni that don't have to do with them being Swathy Italians are mocking their incestuous practices. Through some were royalty where fucking your cousins okay to keep the poor out of the gene pool

[Thoth]

Also even Vampires think blood incest to be gross as the many mocking the Giovanni that don't have to do with them being Swathy Italians are mocking their incestuous practices. Through some were royalty where fucking your cousins okay to keep the poor out of the gene pool

The sad part is that such royal marriage practices only fell out of favor a couple hundred years ago, which means most vampires would come from a time when that was an acceptable and expected practice.

Talking to the majority of vampires about modern morality is a lot like a modern pc gamer trying to tell a person who beat Battletoads on the NES how Dark Souls games invented difficult gaming.

[CTPhipps]

The sad part is that such royal marriage practices only fell out of favor a couple hundred years ago, which means most vampires would come from a time when that was an acceptable and expected practice.

Talking to the majority of vampires about modern morality is a lot like a modern pc gamer trying to tell a person who beat Battletoads on the NES how Dark Souls games invented difficult gaming.

Eh, I think that's a somewhat 2nd Edition view and even then isn't quite a fair reading of the text. A major part of Vampire: The Masquerade is that the Elders of the setting are stuck in a society where the Ancilla and the Neonates dramatically outnumber the eldest of their kind. Population boons mean that a huge chunk of the population has no experience with feudalism or the autocracy that vampires practice save as a form of tyranny (because it was always a form of tyranny but the accepted branch).

Its only gotten worse over each new Edition.

Neonate: You can't expect me to literally kiss his ring.

Sire: Yeah, I do.

Neonate: What's the worst he can do? Kill me?

Sire: Yes.