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“What Fools These Mortals Be”: Darla’s Changing Views on Relationships and the Reality of Love

By Meltha (aka bookishwench)

Darla is perhaps one of the most overlooked female characters present in the fictional universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and yet she is the first one we are ever introduced to. It is through her that the series’ mission of forever keeping the audience on their toes while doing precisely the opposite of conforming to traditional horror genre clichés is first glimpsed. In “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” the first scene of the series, the viewer sees a young couple, one a bad boy oozing too much adolescent sexuality, the other a delicate-looking blonde girl in a prim private school uniform, breaking into an empty school building (B1.1.1[see note A]). It’s a classic, nearly after-school-special moment when everyone knows that the girl is about to become the victim of some sort of heinous crime. Except that it’s not. Darla is the one who turns out to have the power here, and she kills the boy without so much as mussing a hair. This is how Darla prefers her relationships with others: brief, fun for her, and with herself in the usually violent driver’s seat. However, it’s not always so easy.

Humanity

The key to understanding Darla’s view of relationships is her human life. We are told very little about her, but it’s what we are not told that is every bit as crucial. For example, we have no idea what her name was as a mortal. Angel [see note B] discovers in the episode “Darla” that the name Darla didn’t come into common usage until 100 years after she had died. He assumes the Master must have given her the name: “Darla, Anglo-Saxon deriviation meaning dear one. It didn’t come into common usage until more than one hundred years after she was born. He must have given it to her. I didn’t even know her real name” (A2.7.6). Darla herself does not remember her human name, and she appears to have forgotten parts of her past when she is resurrected by Wolfram & Hart:

LINDSEY. Darla—
DARLA. Say that again?
LINDSEY. I just, uh, I said your name. Darla.
DARLA. It sounds so odd, doesn’t it.
LINDSEY. I don’t know what you mean.
DARLA. It wasn’t my name when I was human. First time I was human, I mean.
LINDSEY. What was your name?
DARLA. I don’t remember. I’m not her, whoever she was. I was Darla for so long; then I wasn’t. I-I wasn’t anything any more. I just stopped. He killed me, and I was done. But then you brought me back.
LINDSEY. Yes.
DARLA. What did you bring back, Lindsey? What am I? Did you bring back that girl whose name I can’t remember? Or did you bring back something else, the other thing?
LINDSEY. Both. Neither. You’re just you, whatever that is. (“Darla” A2.7.8)

Regardless of how clearly she recalls her past, it still molds her character, filling her with the same drives, emotions, and ideas that over four hundred years of existence have branded onto her psyche.

The facts we do know about Darla’s past are simple. As a human, she was a prostitute. She contracted syphilis from one of her clients. She was living in the Virginia Colony in 1609 and was in the process of dying of natural causes when the Master sired her. Finally, we are told she has “some property” (“Darla” A2.7.3) Each of these individual factors relates directly to Darla’s overall character as a vampire.

First, it is important to realize what it meant to be a prostitute in the 1590’s and early 1600’s. If we can put her age at the time of her first death at roughly 25, she more than likely had been a prostitute for perhaps 10 years if not more. As it was not terribly uncommon for girls in their early teens to marry during the Elizabethan age, it would not have been considered unusual to see a 13 or 14-year-old prostitute working in the “leaping houses,” or brothels, at that time. Women did not choose prostitution as a profession. They were thrown into it, and no one in her right mind would have wanted to be a prostitute in that era. While, as usual, legal officials often turned a blind eye on the human trade run in the shadier areas of larger cities, when they wished to make an example of a prostitute (or if she happened to be engaged by the wrong person), the penalties were usually very severe and being “led through the streets tied to the back of a cart and whipped,” along with possibly having her nose slit, her ears cut off, or being nailed through her ear to a pillory were possible sentences for a convicted prostitute (Harrison 1639). I have found no punishments listed for a man who hired a prostitute in the Elizabethan era.

Added on to these possible negative outcomes was the dreaded “French disease,” which today we know as syphilis. The level of fear surrounding syphilis at that time could easily be likened to the panic that occurred at the dawning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s prior to a full understanding of how the virus was contracted and how to test for it. While some people with syphilis can be recognized by visible skin lesions and other physical problems, this is usually quite late in the disease, and the person will have been contagious to sexual partners for some time before this (NIAID). There was no known successful treatment of syphilis at that time and no way to be utterly certain that a prostitute’s clients didn’t have the disease. Every prostitute would have known another who had died of the disease, most likely insane, blind, covered in sores, and in agonizing pain (NIAID). None of them knew if they might be next.

Added on to this, there was no method of birth control in this era that was even vaguely effective. Granted, there were many girls and women who contracted illnesses at a young age which rendered them unable to conceive, and this was occasionally the case with men as well, but there were no scientific means of testing for sterility. Although a few forms of birth control were known in the era (Schnucker), most were only sporadically helpful at best and utterly useless or even dangerous at worst. With coitus interuptus as the primary way of blocking conception and the typical married woman bearing a child about once every two years (Thomas), pregnancy would have been all too common among prostitutes. If a pregnant prostitute was lucky enough to work in a leaping house where she wouldn’t be turned out on the streets to starve for being unable to work while pregnant, and being kicked out was a likelier scenario, childbirth had a high death rate, and the poorer the conditions, the higher climbed the possibility of death for both mother and child. In rare cases of abortion, which was illegal, the woman would almost certainly have died of infection or blood loss as a result.

Added on to these problems is the simple fact that women had few rights in Elizabethan England, and prostitutes had even fewer. A leaping house’s proprietor would usually discipline his women and girls through beatings, and clients were often allowed to do the same for an extra fee. If a prostitute happened to die from violent causes, no one was going to investigate her death. There was no realistic path for leaving a brothel save death, and even then prostitutes were not allowed burial in consecrated ground but were instead buried at crossroads, along with executed prisoners and suicides, their graves marked with garbage, the isolation from a churchyard symbolic of their damned state (Harrison “Funeral Customs” 1641).

So why would Darla, obviously an intelligent and resourceful character, go down the path of prostitution when there were so many obvious drawbacks to the situation? The answer is very simple. She, like most other prostitutes of her time, most likely had no other choice. The 1590’s and early 1600’s were not good times to be an unmarried woman with no family. Unless she managed to gain employ as a servant (Thomas), the only possible professions a woman had were wife or prostitute unless she happened to inherit money from her father, had a business she inherited from a dead husband or dead unmarried brother or widowed father, or was Queen Elizabeth herself. This suggests that the human Darla was probably without a supportive family for some reason, whether through death or because they were displeased with her and had abandoned her to the streets. Essentially, most prostitutes were women who, for whatever reason, found themselves alone in the world and without a means of supporting themselves. In Elizabethan England, that was not an uncommon situation for a woman to find herself in, and the large number of brothels open during the era testify to this.

What effects would this kind of existence have had on the woman who would one day become the vampire Darla? First, it would have made her intensely distrustful of others. Undoubtedly and obviously abused in life, with apparently no one to help her or for her to depend upon (with the possible exception of other prostitutes, who may have formed some degree of interdependent protective bonds with one another for their own preservation as much as circumstances permitted), she would have been very reticent to form any kind of emotional attachments with anyone. In fact, one of the few ways she could have improved her condition in life would have been to become a client’s “favorite,” making him at least partially fall in love, or at least lust, with her; then she could use his feelings and territoriality to get better treatment, better pay for services, or perhaps even a gift or two. In short, love was swiftly consigned to the realm of fiction or fools. Those fools she could use to her advantage, but she would never have wanted to make the mistake of following in their footsteps because they were, essentially, easy marks, something a woman in Darla’s profession could never allow herself to be.

The human Darla would also most likely have developed a distaste for authority as, again, those who held it over her would most likely have used that power to abuse her. The legal system would have tortured her if given the chance. Most of those who held high positions in religion would have declared her damned and most likely washed their hands of her. The master of the leaping house would almost certainly have been tyrannical towards her and the other prostitutes, at least behind closed doors. Her family, whoever they were, had abandoned her to her fate either through their own choice or death. Of course, she could not afford to be openly rebellious or insulting towards any of these people as they had the power over her life and death—at least until death was knocking on her door on its own. This is perhaps why Darla appears to take so much pleasure in attempting to shock what she believes to be a priest while she is on her deathbed, unabashedly stating, “I’m a whore,” when he tries to use more delicate terminology, and even going so far as to state “God never did anything for me,” refusing to accept possible redemption at the hands of someone she would have considered an oppressor and collaborator in her miserable life, and even her death (“Darla” A2.7.3). At this point, she has nothing left to lose for being direct.

In her final moments, she relishes having power of her own, and this, too, becomes part of her character. Up until then, Darla would have had exactly one power, and that would have been her beauty, which really would have been phenomenal during an era when a large percentage of the population was pock-marked, toothless, prematurely gray, physically handicapped through illness or accidents, or otherwise scarred. In short, Darla was stunning, and she must have known it. However, she was still essentially powerless. As a vampire, her situation was turned upside down, and she became the one to wield power over the life and death of others. One can only imagine the lure this would hold for someone who had been forced to submit to others in every possible way her entire life.

You will notice that up to this point I have spoken of England, not the Virginia Colony, and that is for good reason. Darla could not have been born in the Virginia Colony as it was founded until 1607, only a few years prior to her death in 1609 (Jefferson “Virginia Records Timeline 1600-1609”). Historically, only two European women arrived at the colony in 1608, and there is no record of more women settling there in any numbers again until 1619, a decade after Darla’s death (Jefferson “Virginia Records Timeline 1610-1619”). The settlers of the Virginia Colony were English, and often fairly well to do English at that. In short, they were unpopular people of influential families that others wanted to get rid of, but discreetly and without attaching shame to the family name.

How did Darla wind up half a world away from where she was born, in a colony full of people who were mostly of the upper class while she was a prostitute? We do know that Darla had done fairly well monetarily in her profession. It’s possible she could have booked herself a passage if she were able to pay enough and keep her identity relatively quiet, but why would she have wanted to do so? Perhaps she wanted a new life for herself, but her statement to the priest leaves no doubt that this did not occur: she does not say she was a whore, but rather that she is a whore (“Darla” A2.7.3).

Whatever the case as to how she managed to get to the Virginia Colony, there is no doubt that two things would have held absolutely true. First, she was an outsider in a group of outsiders. The isolation would have been enough to drive many people insane. And yet, while isolated, all her life would have been on public display. There is no possible way she could have hidden her prostitution for very long in a community the size of the Virginia Colony, which held roughly sixty-five Europeans in 1608 (Shifflett). The other fact about her life is that it must have been extremely hard physically. The winters of the years 1609-1611 were referred to as the Starving Times by the Colonists (“Historical Timeline 1600-1699”), and for good reason. Utterly unused to the kind of winter found on the eastern shore of the Atlantic, their clothing and food sources were almost completely useless. Huge numbers of people froze, others died of diseases ranging from small pox to pneumonia, and still more starved as crops did not do well during the first several years, in large part because these people had never farmed before. If Darla did indeed have “some property” (“Darla” A2.7.3) at the time of her death, unless it was food, it was probably meaningless. Added on to this is that her syphilis would have struck very hard at this time, and in an age with few effective pain killers or applicable medicines, let alone what would have been available in an outpost as isolated as the Virginia Colony, her physical suffering would have been acute (NIAID). In short, Darla’s life in the New World was certainly a hard one, and even without syphilis there is an exceptionally strong chance she would have died anyway. From this, we can gather she possessed a very strong survival instinct as well.

To put it briefly, Darla’s experience of humanity must have been overwhelmingly negative. It taught her to put no faith in anyone but herself, to value any shred of power she could grasp, to laugh at the concept of romantic love, to hate traditional authority figures, and to lust after the luxury and material goods she had always been denied. In other words, Darla is pretty much the definition of a woman with issues even before she became a vampire. However, life, or unlife as the case may be, is capable of throwing a wrench in the gears of even the most independent, self-reliant person, and that is precisely what happens to Darla.

The Master

Darla’s first meaningful relationship with any other character is with the Master himself. Almost 400 years after he sires her, she is still attached to his court, still loyal to him. This is remarkable and may show the first break in her policy of caring about no one but herself.

The relationship between the Master and Darla appears twistedly parental in nature. He chooses to make her a vampire, thereby gifting her with the power she has hungered after all her life. For probably the first time, Darla is given something without having to beg, borrow, steal, or have sex with someone for it in return. This in and of itself must have been a startling experience for her, and it may very well have left her deeply confused.

Darla’s devotion to the Master is apparent even when she is not present at his court, which is originally in London and later relocates to Sunnydale, California. She does make a point of returning to visit him several times over the centuries. This could, of course, be some sort of vampire rule regarding sires, or even specifically a law instituted by the Master as he is obviously very powerful, but we never hear Darla complain about these visits. Her attitude towards him does not seem completely servile, either, with Darla speaking her mind and making her own decisions even if they go against the Master’s wishes:

DARLA. But you’ve got to let me take care of the Slayer.
MASTER. Oh, you’re giving me orders, now.
DARLA. Okay, we’ll do it your way: do nothing while she takes us out one by one.
MASTER. Do I sense a plan, Darla? Share…
DARLA. Angel kills her and comes back to the fold. (“Angel” B1.7.10)

Additionally, when Angel kills Darla in the episode “Angel,” the Master shows that his own feelings for her run quite deeply as well. He violently mourns her death:

THE ANNOINTED [in reaction to the Master smashing anything within reach in rage]. Forget her.
MASTER: How dare you? She was my favorite for four hundred years. (B1.7.13)

There is obviously an affection present between the two, and it does not appear to be overtly sexual, though the fact it is between two vampires almost automatically means that it is partially vicious in nature.

Still, there are two notable lapses in Darla’s behavior towards the Master. One is quite small, but telling. During “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” Darla bites Jesse even though he has been designated for the trapped Master:

DARLA. He’s a good one. His blood is pure.
MASTER. You’ve tasted it. I’m your faithful dog. You bring me scraps.
DARLA. I-I didn’t mean to… forgive me. (“The Harvest” B1.2.3)

Darla does appear properly abashed by this, but she must have known this was unacceptable behavior on her part before the Master pointed it out, probably even knowing he would sense what she had done. She may have been testing the limits of his patience, or perhaps she was growing weary of acting as essentially his waitress when she had previously lived an independent life in the world above.

The other lapse, and by far the more significant, involves Angelus. In spite of the Master’s protestations that Darla will chose himself over her new paramour, Darla opts to leave the Master’s court and see the world with Angelus:

ANGELUS. Naples. You and me, Darla. What do you say?
DARLA. Angelus…
ANGELUS. This is no place for you, bound to the likes of him.
MASTER: You should show the proper respect. [The Master proceeds to thrash Angelus through the rest of Angelus’s next line.]
ANGELUS. You belong by my side, out in the world, feeding as we like, taking what we need. I’ll give you the view you crave, darlin’. I’ll give you everything. Tell the truth. Whose face do you want to look at for eternity: his or mine?
MASTER. Idiot. I made her… You’re leaving with the stallion, aren’t you? (“Darla” A2.7.5).

The Master himself allows her to do as she wishes, not letting his minions stop her on the way out or harm either of them. He does, however, seem unhappy that she has chosen Angelus over him, and declares (in comically anachronistic language) “It won’t last. I give it a century. Tops.” It is almost as though Darla has chosen to elope against her father’s wishes, once again underlining the parental nature of the connection between her and the Master.

Her relationship with the Master is most likely Darla’s first taste of any kind of genuine caring. It is the first crack in her armor of self-preservation and anti-sentimentality. Her feelings for him, while never specifically romantic in nature, do suggest a kind of filial love for him. Still, this relationship pales in comparison to the one that defines her through the centuries: her stormy interactions with Angelus.

Angelus

Darla’s relationship with Angelus begins simply enough. She sees him, a highly attractive, rather violent young man with a penchant for lying to the ladies, in a pub in Galway in 1753 (“The Prodigal” A1.15.6) This time, she’s the one choosing who she wants as a sexual partner, and she chooses Liam with a coolness and certainty that suggest she may even have sired desirable partners before. There is no suggestion that she is looking for the relationship with him to be a long one. However, that is precisely what it turns out to be.

Something happens to Darla during her relationship with the newly named Angelus. She becomes a mentor to him in his campaign of violence and debauchery, teaching him to listen to his darkest instincts and act upon them, but she delights in his missteps as well. For example, she practically gloats over his inability to understand that he will never truly be free of his father, even though he has killed him, and that in fact his father holds even more power over him now that he is dead and therefore untouchable: “What we once were informs all that we have become” (“The Prodigal” A1.15.14)

For the most part, however, Darla appears to enjoy playing with Angelus. Perhaps this is why she eventually begins to feel bonded to him. Not only is his sexual appetite as voracious as her own, but his appetite for cruelty keeps merry pace with hers as well. Their deeds become infamous for how utterly depraved they are, obviously goading each other to new levels of evil.

And yet, they are far from a happily devoted romantic couple. Darla and Angelus make fun of Elisabeth and James for their obvious devotion to one another, thinking them foolish (“Heartthrob” A3.1.8), underlining Darla’s idea that love in any form spells some kind of disaster as it means a person is not completely in control of the situation and is a bold target for pain and suffering. Darla and Angelus use one another equally, or so it would seem. But they both betray one another when the occasion warrants it. In Angelus’s case, such as betraying Darla and Elisabeth’s location to a group of vampire hunters, he does so without a moment’s regret or extra thought for another option (“Heartthrob” A3.1.9). Darla, likewise, abandons Angelus to a French mob in a burning barn by leaving with the only available horse (“The Trial” A2.9.4). We know that Angelus had an affair with a vampire named Rosaria in the early 1800s (“Salvage” A4.13.3), most likely one in a crowd of one night stands. Darla is also far from monogamus. She has a brief dalliance with the Immortal in Rome in “The Girl in Question” (A5.20) and it’s not hard to believe Darla would have had additional sexual partners as well. Still, there seems to be a difference between Darla’s attitude and Angelus’s.

For one thing, while Darla willingly betrays Angelus, she also tries to save him at risk to herself on at least two occasions. The first is only a few years after he was sired by her and was captured and tortured in Rome. For whatever reason, and most likely Darla herself would not have wanted to examine why she chose to do as she did, she rides in to the rescue, bringing several minions with her (“Offspring” A3.7.1). Had Darla not cared for Angelus at all, why would she have risked breaking into a heavily armed torture chamber filled with humans who had at the very least the capacity to overwhelm Angelus, and therefore quite likely herself as well. It was, undoubtedly, dangerous for her, yet she did it anyway. It’s possible she was bored or looking for a little violence and mayhem, but it suggests a certain amount of some underlying emotion.

The second instance is even more telling. After Angelus is cursed with a soul by Gypsies, Darla throws him out of their home, cutting all ties with him for all apparent appearances:

DARLA. The spell. They gave you a soul. A filthy soul! No. You’re disgusting.
ANGEL. Darla—
DARLA. Get away from me.
ANGEL. You brought her [the Gypsy responsible for the soul] here. [Darla tries to stake Angel.] I’m like you.
DARLA. You’re not like anything. Get away from me. Get out! I’ll kill you! (“Five by Five” A1.18.6)

Yet, within only a few days and possibly even the same night, she raids the Gypsy camp for the express purpose of getting them to undo the curse, going so far as to make an impassioned plea: “Remove that filthy soul so my boy might return to me” (“Darla” A2.7.9). Again, what the Gypsies had done to Angelus, they could easily have done to her as well, so Darla is risking herself on his behalf.

In addition, while she does utterly refuse to deal with anything other than a fully evil Angelus, she misses him and wants his return, tentatively yet hopefully re-accepting him briefly during the Boxer Rebellion:

ANGEL [referring to Darla holding a knife to his throat]. This should be nothing for you. Go ahead, Darla. Make sure you cut clean through to the bone. Put the blade in the wall.
DARLA [removing the knife]. What do you want?
ANGEL. A second chance.
DARLA. What?
ANGEL. I want things to be the way they were. You and me, together. Darla, I miss the view.
DARLA. Impossible.
ANGEL. Not impossible.
DARLA. You still have a soul.
ANGEL. I’m still a vampire.
DARLA. You’re not. Look at you. I don’y know what you are anymore.
ANGEL. You know what I am. You made me, Darla. I’m Angelus.
DARLA. Not anymore.
ANGEL. I can be again. Just give me the chance to prove it to you.
DARLA. You almost make me believe you.
ANGEL. Believe it. We can have the whirlwind back again.
DARLA. We can do this.
ANGEL. Yes, we can.
DARLA. We can do anything.
ANGEL. Anything we like. (“Darla” A2.7.11).

However, Angel finds that his soul and reawakened conscience will not let him live the same life of murder and violence that he and Darla had once relished. When Darla realizes that the Angelus she knew is gone, she cannot tolerate Angel’s continued presense, and he once again leaves leaves, not seeing her again for almost a hundred years.

From her behavior of trying to save Angelus from his soul, accepting him again against her better judgement, and her inability to kill him on at least two occasions it becomes clear that, in spite of herself, Darla has formed a romantic attachment, and she most likely thinks herself a fool for it. Considering the bond is with Angelus, she would be right.

For Angelus, on the other hand, never showed the slightest interest in helping Darla out of a tight spot, whether danger to himself was present or not. What we do see is Angelus attempting to throw off Darla’s power over him that she gained by being his sire and teacher. Angelus is not one to bow to anyone unless there is absolutely no other alternative but death, and that includes Darla. This is shown in his siring of Drusilla and Darla’s reaction to it:

DARLA. What is she [Drusilla] doing here? I thought you killed her.
ANGELUS. No. Just her family.
DRUSILLA. Eyes like arrows. Like needles.
ANGELUS. This one’s special. I have big plans for her.
DRUSILLA. Snake in the woodshed. Snake in the woodshed. Snake in the woodshed! Snake in the woodshed!
DARLA. So do we kill her during or after?
ANGELUS. Neither. We turn her into one of us. Killing is so merciful in the end, isn’t it? The pain is ended.
DARLA. But to make her one of us? She’s a lunatic.
ANGELUS. Eternal torment. Am I learning? (“Dear Boy” A2.5.9)

Angelus does not let Darla in on his plan to introduce a new vampire into their lives until immediately before killing the girl, and Darla is obviously stunned by it. In this action, he does two things: he shows that he does not take orders or even suggestions from Darla, and he has replaced her as the one capable of the darkest horrors, becoming his teacher’s teacher. Finally, while Angelus has had other sexual partners in this time period, the introduction of Drusilla into the group changes the dynamic, putting him squarely as the rooster with two hens to squabble over him. Darla has lost her place as Angelus’s only permanent sexual partner, and if one looks at her face when she is told Drusilla is to join them, an obvious note of suppressed terror is present.

Drusilla

Darla was a competitive woman as a human when it came to other women. She would have had to be. If she wanted to fetch the best price, keep her position as a prostitute, or cull the most acceptable partner, she had to be the most desirable woman in the room, bar none. Other women were probably competition. For a few centuries, Darla avoided any serious competition for Angelus’s affections. Drusilla ended that.

Darla and Drusilla are essentially opposites. Darla is blonde, curvaceous, intelligent, and practical. Drusilla is brunette, delicate, insane, and so whimsical that she literally sees fairies everywhere she looks. Angelus, being a vampire with enough libido for a small country, wants both. As I suggested earlier, Angelus may have introduced Drusilla into the group for the sole purpose of annoying Darla and making his sire somehow submissive to him. If she wanted him to chose her at the end of the evening rather than Drusilla or a combination of both of them, she would have to go out of her way to please him. He instituted competition for his time and attentions. Needless to say, Darla would not have been pleased by this turn of events.

Added to the problem of Drusilla’s being a draw on Angelus’s time that could have been spent with Darla is the fact Drusilla has been made insane by Angelus. It takes a great deal of work to make any sense at all out of Dru’s speech patterns, filled as they are with fairytales and talking stars, nursery rhymes and Cassandra-like glimpses of the future that make sense to no one but herself except in retrospect. It’s hard to imagine Angelus having any patience with her in one of her moods, and Darla’s practicality and tendency against anything not pragmatic are also a poor fit with the new vampire’s mindset.

In addition, Drusilla in life was everything Darla was not: religious, close to her family, sexually chaste, and generally respectable with the exception of Drusilla’s Catholicism in Victorian Britain, which would have made her an outsider. There is a possibility of a certain amount of jealousy towards her for these reasons. While Drusilla’s life was far from easy with the prejudice against her ability to See, her minority religion, and the eventual the destruction by Angelus of everything she held dear, Darla could easily have seen her as spoiled compared to her own life.

Darla does not appear to like Drusilla. Darla insults her, pays no attention to her words, and is offended by her tendency to call her “grandmother,” (“Darla” A2.7.7) thereby bringing forward her age, a thing most women are quite sensitive about, immortal or not. Much later, after Darla is sired by Drusilla at Lindsey’s behest (“The Trial” A2.9.15), there does appear to be some camaraderie between the two. Darla does owe Drusilla for technically saving her life by taking it. In addition, Darla and Drusilla do traditional female bonding activities: shopping, going out to clubs, and raising an army of cutthroats (“Reunion” A2.10. and “Redefinition” A2.11). For a short time, they seem to develop a friendship, though again, this is in the absence of Angelus.

Drusilla, however, never seems to show anything but adoration for Darla, despite Darla’s often obvious dislike of her. In part, this is linked to Drusilla’s intense need for family. She sees Darla as a kind of replacement for her deceased family in much the same way she sees Angelus in the role of “Daddy.” When she sires Darla, she regards the whole process with a tremendous amount of tenderness, referring to Darla repeatedly as her baby (“Reunion” A2.10). When Darla’s initial reaction to being sired is anger, Drusilla allows her to throw her about at will, not fighting back at all even when she is thrown repeatedly into on-coming traffic, and crying pathetically:

DRUSILLA. For you. All for you. I thought it was what you wanted: to be saved. All alone. All alone in the dirt. We’ve lost our way, and the little worm won’t dance if he’s told to. No. No. (“Reunion” A2.10.8)

The very fact that Drusilla shows love for Darla is probably what makes Darla not want to return it. Love, to Darla, is foolishness, something to be snuffed out, turned to one’s advantage, or mocked. From this, it is not hard to imagine her dislike of Drusilla’s chosen lover, and there is no other term to call him but her lover, William the Bloody.

Spike

If ever a character embodied Darla’s belief that love and all its trappings were the stuff of dreamers and wimpy morons doomed to a bad end, William the human would be he. Granted, Darla sees William as a mortal only once, a sobbing young man with a broken heart, tearing his poetry into shreds and literally bumping into the three vampires, but once was probably enough to get what she believed to be the measure of the man, the so-called “first drooling idiot that comes along” (“Darla” A2.7.7) except, of course, that she was quite wrong.

Once William becomes Spike, he embraces what Angel refers to as the “whirlwind” (“Darla” A2.7.11) with a nearly childlike glee and utter abandon. More than that, he becomes exactly what Drusilla predicted he would be: her knight in shining armor. He adores Drusilla openly, and while not fond of Angelus and his ties to Drusilla, he wants her happy, and Angelus does make her happy.

This situation must have amused, puzzled, and disturbed Darla. On one hand, William came to them as what she would have thought a ridiculous, overly romantic idealist. However, he is not play-acting with Drusilla. His feelings for her appear in every instance to be genuine, and the attention he lavishes on her is something Darla would never have received from Angelus even in the days before Drusilla was turned. What she believed was impossible appears to be possible. What she thought was nothing more than a fairytale for the gullible turns into a reality before her eyes: a man who actually loves a woman.

When Spike proves himself as a vampire by killing a Slayer (“Fool for Love” B5.7.9) while Angelus, now with a soul, hangs back in horror at what he recognizes as depravity (“Darla” A2.7.12), Darla’s world turns upside-down. She is no longer able to snap at Spike’s inexperience: he’s done what Angelus would never have dared do. She can no longer call him a beginner or a child: he’s on the same level as the rest of them, if not technically higher because of what he has accomplished in battle and they have not. And as he stands there, drenched in the Slayer’s blood, he is still playing kissy-face with his princess, a warrior and a lover simultaneously (“Darla” A2.7.12).

It’s no wonder Darla loathes Spike. According to her view of reality, his existence shouldn’t even be possible. Perhaps he makes things interesting, too much so at times if the group’s having to hide in a mine shaft due to his actions is any indication (“Fool for Love” B5.7.8), and he may have taken some of Drusilla’s time with Angelus away so that Darla might be able to be with him more, but the cost is enormous. To Darla, things like this simply aren’t supposed to happen. Love does not exist: not in Angelus, not (if she can help it) in herself, and, therefore, not in anyone else either. To be confronted with the reality of Spike’s depth of emotion for a woman is a slap in Darla’s face. Granted, she can use his emotions for Drusilla the same way she used her a smitten clients’ emotions in her favor: she can cause him pain at will in a way far more acute than physical anguish, and more than likely both Darla and Angelus did so for their own pleasure. But essentially, Spike bothers her for the basic fact that he loves Drusilla unconditionally, and to Darla that is completely outside the bounds of reality. Had Darla been in Drusilla’s position, she would have used Spike’s love to control him, and Darla gains this opportunity over one hundred years later with her own love-struck swain, Lindsey MacDonald.

Lindsey

Darla’s relationship with Lindsey, a Wolfram & Hart lawyer who becomes utterly smitten with her after she is resurrected in “To Shanshu in L.A.” (A1.22.14), typifies Darla’s view of love. Once she becomes aware of Lindsey’s feelings for her, she uses him to get anything out of him that she can. She eventually shares an appartment with him after the law firm pulls her expense account, and she returns to him after Angel sets her and Drusilla on fire in “Redefinition” (A2.11.13).

Lindsey, for his part, does seem to treat her with genuine affection, though the path it takes is often on the dark side of morality. He searches for a cure for her syphillis, and when he realizes she will inevitably die of the disease, he contacts Drusilla, subdues Angel, and has Darla sired as was her original wish before Angel’s intervention (“The Trial” A2.9.15). However, he makes a serious mistake in assuming Darla returns, or even can return, the same emotion towards him.

While the series never specifically shows scenes that say Darla and Lindsey have had a consummated sexual relationship, it is implied heavily enough so that it can be safely assumed. In effect, Darla treats Lindsey in the same way we can expect she treated her human clients nearly 400 years ago. Lindsey wants her, and she knows that if she lets him have her, physically though not emotionally, she can get things she wants in exchange: “That’s how humans get what they want. I remember that much” (“Darla” A2.7.8)

For Darla, the relationship should not be personal, and yet there are moments when, although Darla certainly does not love Lindsey or truly return his affection on any level, she seems to feel something for him, at least a sense of dependency. As a newly resurrected reluctant human, she turned back to her murderous ways even with a soul (see “Dear Boy” A2.5.8) in an effort to regain the companionship of Angelus. When it became clear that Angel was not interested in renewing his sexual relationship with Darla, she becomes utterly alone. The Master is dust, Spike and Drusilla are nowhere to be found, and Angelus is essentially dead to her. As the grief of her soul begins to overwhelm her and the realization that she is dying again sets in, apparently half-crazed and deeply in need of companionship, she reaches towards Lindsey. He fulfills that need.

Lindsey seems to care about her unconditionally, regardless of whether she is guilty or innocent, murderess or victim, human or demon, sane or insane, something Angel is not prepared to do. Still, there’s a sense that Lindsey isn’t so much in love with Darla as with what she represents. He goes so far as to say he isn’t even sure who she is:

DARLA. Who am I?
LINDSEY. I don’t know, and I don’t care. (“Darla” A2.7.8).

Darla may have hit the mark when she stated, “But it’s not me you want to screw. It’s him [Angel]” (“Darla” A2.7.8). She may actually be nothing but a shell that Lindsey puts around his feelings of competitiveness and perhaps even, given practically volumes of subtext, lust regarding Angel.

Eventually, Darla ends the relationship. Lindsey finds out that she has succeeded in having sex with Angel, and Darla is unapologetic:

LINDSEY: What happened?
DARLA: Nothing. Nothing happened. My God, nothing at all.
LINDSEY: Darla, tell me. I have to know.
DARLA: You want details, Lindsey? Is that what you want?
LINDSEY: Yes, I want details. I need to know everything, all of it. What did he do to you? (“Epiphany” A2.16.3)

Surprising, Darla does not give him the “details” that he wants to torture himself with. She remains silent, not denying what has occurred, but not not glorying in Lindsey’s obvious pain, something Darla would normally have enjoyed. Even more telling, Lindsey actually survives his relationship with Darla, his humanity even intact. It’s unclear why Darla would have granted Lindsey this level of mercy rather than taking out on him her failed attempt to return Angelus to her, but there is a sense of sympathy that surrounds her, or at the very least a noticable lack of using his nearly tearful accusations and anger against him. Darla simply leaves, emptying her half of the closet, and so far as we know never encounters him again. However, the consequences of her night with Angel turn out to be far more complicated than the dissolution of her relationship with Lindsey.

Connor

Darla’s attempt at returning Angel to his soulless state of Angelus by having sex with him failed miserably (“Epiphany” A2.16.2). Angel did have feelings of at least friendship, if not outright love for Darla when she returned as a terminally ill human, but the love was not unconditional. When Darla became a vampire again, even against her will, Angel’s goal changed from comforting her to destroying her (“Redefinition” A2.11). Her one last weapon, the same one she had employed as a human long ago, her sexuality, was her remaining hope, and it failed. Angel would never become her Angelus again through anything she could do. His feelings for Buffy had allowed him to achieve pure happiness, but his feelings for Darla were actually tied to self-loathing and wish to end his own life from guilt, not love. Rejected, Darla leaves.

We are not told when or exactly how Darla realizes she has become pregnant from her encounter with Angel, but she does. It goes against every law of nature for a vampire to bear a human child, or any child at all for that matter. Darla is outwardly disgusted and shows no concern for her offspring, as seen by her continuing to drink alcohol (“Heartthrob” A3.1.14) and her repeated attempts at abortion (“That Vision Thing” A3.2.14), but all her attempts fail as there is a something guarding the child. Eventually, she comes back to Angel to tell him what happened (“Offspring” A3.7.7).

Angel isn’t quite certain what to make of Darla and her enormously expanded belly at first, but when he realizes that the child has a heartbeat and, he assumes, is therefore human with a soul, he becomes immediately attached to his child’s fate, taking Darla in and offering her protection (“Offspring” A3.7.14). At this point, Darla starts to have a variety of reactions to the impending birth of her baby. She also becomes protective, and eventually begins to show signs of possibly sharing a soul with the child for the period of time until the birth (“Lullaby”A3.9.8). She realizes the enormity of the murders she has committed, is appalled with herself, and also comes to the conclusion that she cannot trust herself with her own child, believing her ability to love him will disappear once he is no longer physically part of her:

DARLA. No, I haven't been nourishing it. I haven't given this baby a thing. I'm dead. It's been nourishing me. These feelings that I'm having, they're not mine. They're coming from it.
ANGEL. You don't know that.
DARLA. Of course I do! We both do. Angel, I don't have a soul. It does. And right now that soul is inside of me, but soon, it won't be and then...
ANGEL. Darla—
DARLA. I won't be able to love it. I won't even be able to remember that I loved it. I want to remember. (“Lullaby” A3.9.8)

When Darla begins labor, Wesley realizes it is unclear whether she will be able to actually deliver the child because, as a vampire, this is not what her body is designed to be able to do, “I'm not sure there is anything we can do. Darla's body - it's not a life-giving vessel. I don't know that it's equipped to do what it needs to do in order to bring a baby to term.” (“Lullaby” A3.9.12). For this reason, along with her certainty that her first act after her child’s birth will be its murder, she commits her first entirely unselfish act by staking herself in order to let her child live (“Lullaby” A3.9.13). Her ability not merely to believe in love but to experience it fully enough willingly to give up her life at her own hand in exchange for her child’s is startling, to say the least, yet it also simply fulfills the view she has always held: love leads to pain and self-destruction. Darla’s one moment of pure love destroys her.

This is not the last we see of Darla, though. She returns one last time, in the form of a ghost, to counsel Connor against the path he has chosen at the false-Cordelia’s side. Apparently, Darla’s ability to love Connor has transcended death:

DARLA. I'll always be a part of you. You shared your soul with me once, when you were growing inside of me, when I'd lost my own. You brought light to my shadow, filled my heart with joy and love. I'd never felt so close to any living thing as I did to my beautiful boy. (“Inside Out” A4.17.8)

What is particularly remarkable is that Darla appears to have been granted some degree of heaven, apparently from her sacrifice on behalf of Connor. Her intervention on his behalf and attempts to guide him to do what is right are things that she once would have scorned.

Eventually, in one last attempt to make him realize the enormity of the act he is about to commit, Darla symbolically takes the place of the girl Connor is about to sacrifice. Her effort does not change the outcome. It’s Darla’s face Connor sees as he kills the girl, and she has once again laid down her life in an attempt to save her son (“Inside Out” A4.17.12-13).

The desire to love and be loved is a normal human drive, but Darla is correct in her assessment of it: love can also lead to rejection, abuse, loneliness, disappointment, pain and disillusionment. Darla’s human past put her in a position to view love as both dangerous and foolhardy, but her character goes through a journey from victim to killer to mother. Her views of relationships and the reality of the human (or vampire) experience slowly change over time, first through her tentative father-daughter relationship with the Master, then in the reluctant introduction of her twisted and unrequieted love for Angelus, the example of Drusilla and Spike’s relationship, the renewal of the power of her sexual appeal with Lindsey, and eventually in her own love for her son Connor. After the more than 400 years, three deaths, and three rebirths of a woman whose real name we are never told, it takes the impossible reality of a child to allow Darla to experience and accept that the world is not just a playground where the biggest bully takes all, but a world where love, in spite of all its thorns, does exist, even within herself.

Notes

A: For the purposes of this essay, the parenthetical citations for episodes are handled thus: (“Title of Episode [unless already mentioned], A for Angel: The Series or B for Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed by season number, episode number, and [if available] DVD scene/chapter number). Hence, (“Angel” B1.7.5) refers to the episode entitled “Angel” in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 1, episode 7, DVD scene 5. Other citations refer to works mentioned below.

B: For clarity’s sake, I refer to David Boreanaz’s character as Liam when he is human, Angelus when he is a vampire lacking a soul, and Angel when he is a vampire with a soul, regardless of what his morality is at any given time.

Thank you to zandra_x for providing the chapter numbers of scenes set in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 and Angel: The Series season 4.

Works Cited

Harrison, G. B. ed. “Funeral Customs.” Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1980. 1640-1641.

---.“Tortures and Punishments” Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1980.1638-1639.

“Historical Timeline 1600-1699.” Bridging the Watershed. National Parks Labs. 24 November 2004 http://www.bridgingthewatershed.org/timeline_1600.html

Jefferson, Thomas. “Virginia Records Timeline 1600-1609” The Library of Congress: American Memory 24 November 2004 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjvatm2.html

---.“Virginia Records Timeline 1610-1619” The Library of Congress: American Memory 24 November 2004 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjvatm3.html

Schnucker, R. V. “Elizabethan Birth Control and Puritan Attitudes” PubMed: National Library of Medicine. National Center for Biotechnology Information (1975) 24 November 2004 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=Display&DB=pubmed

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 3.2.115.

Shifflett, Crandall. “Second Supply (September 1608) List of Settlers by Occupation” Virtual Jamestown 23 November 2004 http://www.virtualjamestown.org/census4a.html 2000.

“Syphillis: NIAID Factsheet” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Nov. 2002) 24 November 2004 http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/stdsyph.htm

Thomas, Heather. “Elizabethan Women” The Life and Times of Queen Elizabeth I. (1998-2003) 24 November 2004 http://www.elizabethi.org/us/women/

Works Consulted

“Angel Central” SeaQuest DSV Vault 24 November 2004 http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/seaQuestDSV2032/AngelCentral.html

Darla: New, Improved, Revamped (1998-2003) 24 November 2004 http://darla.deadtime.net/

Much Ado About Buffy (1998-2003) 24 November 2004
http://www.chosentwo.com/buffy/main.php

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