On time, power, control and immortality: Lenore and Hector in "Castlevania, season 4"

Recently I finished the animated series of “Castlevania” in Netflix. This popular series, inspired on the videogame of the 90’s, tells the story of three vampire hunters that battle the demonic dark forces of supernatural creatures that threat the existence of humans. I don’t want to provide a review of the entire series and will not focus on the three main protagonists and antagonists, but rather I want to concentrate on a specific dialogue that took place in chapter 10 of the last season between two of my favorite characters: Lenore and Hector.

The dialogue starts with the vampire Lenore been captured after her sister was killed by the forgemaster Issac after her attempt to erase human beings from Earth’s surface. Hector, been always intellectually and romantically attached to her and been forgiven by Isaac for betraying Dracula, visits her in captivity. They start talking about the nature of conquest and how their existences have changed since everything around Castlevania’s universe started.  

“Oh it is over, Hector” starts Lenore.

“Things just change” says Hector.

“Vampires are not big on change” replies Lenore. “The root is the vampire’s virtue: we want everything to remain the same. To remain stable… You people spend 60 years bumping into things and call that a life. We have to take a longer view. We [vampires] want stability… My sisters and I had strength to enforce a stable environment. Strength can fight a war, but it can also build a shelter.”  

“but strength and power are different. And your sister wanted power” answers Hector

“At the end, yes. That is what turned into. Which is what ruined my life” continues Lenore. “Power. Big, international, non-diplomatic, projected power is something else. It lends you more might, but it does not have the utilities of strength. It legs eggs in you, it becomes a parasite you have to feed. Power is nothing but eat”

“Like a vampire” adds Hector.

“Like a vampire” says Lenore.

Let’s start with the first part. A “vampire”, the famous mythological creature, the immortal Nosferatu that reached immortality by drinking the blood and the life of other human beings, is shown humanized as a being reticent to change. But how this is possible? Supposedly immortality is what we human beings aim: an unfinished existence to do as much as possible as our minds wish to do.

One would think immortality is a synonym of constant change, of re-inventions. But on the other hand, only the souls, the dead, are the only ones that are immortal. And I cannot think of a more static concept that Death itself.

The association of vampires and living death is nothing new. But here I want to point out that Lenore is emphasizing that immortality is not only a living death, but that it is actually a burden and a constant conflict due to the continuous interaction with time. Time is seen as change, and vampires fight against this burden by trying to maintain everything as stable and static as possible. Incredibly, the remedy against the sickness of immortality is remaining as fix in time as possible, as it there was no distinction between, past, present, and future. As time is nothing but a construct that can be defeated with stability. Incredibly, but the remedy to immortality is simulating a living death. Because for the dead, time has also no meaning.

This completely differs from Hector (the human perspective). He starts arguing that change has reached. That “change” is something that can be felt, experienced, that arises from a comparison between two states. That change is at the end a product of the natural flow of time, not properly of circumstances itself.

Lenore starts arguing that human beings concentrate on events and simply let themselves be absorbed and transported by the flow of time. That the nature of constant change is the final essence of human life and of existence. She even ironically argues that we, humans, call this “living”. Human beings need time and change as a motor of existence, because if not their existence would be nothing but am empty concept. And that this existence can be summarized into nothing but focusing on how time produces change and this process is based on constant instability.

The contradiction of living/change/instability with immortality/stability/death is simply fascinating. But this is not the only remarkable question that is addressed in the dialogue. If we continue further, we can find that the biggest threat to stability, and therefore the most inherent human “condition”, is none other than Power.

But what exactly is “Power”? I am not going to pretend to be Foucault and write an extensive definition on Power and the constant power relationships we are all immerse into. Lenore avoids mentioning to which type of power she’s addressing, but from a first overview it can be deduced that is the ambition and political power. I do think it is by far more complex. I do not only see power as a relationship of control and submission, but as the capacity of controlling events, of foreshadowing.

The opposite to stability is power, not chaos. So, this power, is nothing but the catalyst that can destroy Carmilla, Lenore’s sister. It is none other than the weapon against immortality.

Let’s start first with the characteristics of power that Lenore describes: Big, international, non-diplomatic, projected power. The adjective “big” should only not be taken literally as enormous, but as colossal that exceeds by far any opposition. “International” not only in a political context, but something that is generated and related to an external factor or agent. “Non-diplomatic” emphasizing its violent, turbulent, and fugacious nature. And “projected”, meaning on the aim power has to as a mean to generate an effect on this external factor or agent previously mentioned.

This power is control, dominance. The aim that we all human beings have in controlling events that happen around us. We can even call it anxiety, which is the projection of the fear of losing control over something/someone.  Again, paradoxically, the opposite to stability is displayed as control. Immortality is therefore a concept that is opposite to any sort of control, of dominance.

The flow of time is also associated with the idea of control, on how we use time as a mean to achieve this goal of controlling specific situations, been the ultimate goal, as Lenore previously said, having the complete “control” of our lives and our mortality through performing a set of actions that we, most of the times, are in control of doing.

But for me, the most remarkable part is the end when Lenore explains the effect of power and control: It lends you more might, but it does not have the utilities of strength. It legs eggs in you, it becomes a parasite you have to feed. Power is nothing but eat. The ability is control is none other that a disease, something that devours from inside. Control does not only exterminate immortality, but it also devours life and leads to death. Absolute control is none other but a suicide recipe for any human being.

The dialogue concludes in a remarkable way, by Hector emphasizing that Power is similar in nature to a vampire. Vampires, this synonym of immortality, are in nature non as different as power. It is referred here as if stability/non-stability and immortality/mortality were non opposites but complements that in some circumstances can display the same nature.

Probably the illusion of having control, mostly of time, is what gives meaning to our existence.  At the end, the mortality not only of our bodies, but of all things that we experience in our lifetime, is probably the best way in which we can experience immortality and stability, not only when we die, but also when we try to give meaning to our thoughts, memories and actions through a lifetime.