Drusilla is a major antagonist in the Buffyverse, serving as the secondary antagonist in the second season of both Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel.
She is of the few vampires to have battle both Buffy and Angel along with their respective crews over a prolonged period of time yet has survived time and again to menace them another day. She owes some of her survival to her tendency towards staying in the shadows rather than engage in outright assaults. Drusilla is psychotic, even by the standards of vampires. This is due to her tragic origins of Angelus murdering her family and brutally torturing her, destroying her psychologically before finally converting her into a vampire. Angelus regards her as his "masterpiece". Despite her mental state and childlike demeanour, she is a highly intelligent, ruthless, and more than capable of formulating intricate plans.
History[]
Drusilla was born in the mid-19th century in London, to a devoutly Christian family. She grew up to be innocent, chaste and devout, but was plagued by a precognitive ability to see the future. Her mother had her suppress these powers, claiming that the visions were from the devil.
One night in 1860, she caught the attention of the vampire Darla, who recognized her prophetic abilities. She brought her to the attention of her lover, the ruthless vampire Angelus. Angelus became obsessed with her, and began mentally torturing her in an effort to create a "masterpiece" of torture. Angelus visited countless atrocities upon her, the worst of which were massacring her entire family before her eyes, only to allow her to escape and join a coven. He then proceeded to massacre her new sisters in the same way, on the day she was to take her vows. Drusilla's sanity was lost that day, rendering her insane. Angelus, in order to preserve his "masterpiece" for all eternity, turned Drusilla into a vampire.
For the next twenty years, Drusilla joined her new family; Angelus and Darla, in wreaking havoc across Europe. Feeling lonely due to having to share Angelus with Darla, she sired a young poet named William, who would later take the nom de guerre Spike, she made a new addition to the "family." Spike was completely and utterly devoted to and in love with Drusilla, yet she continued to maintain a sexual relationship with Angelus, much to Spike's displeasure, leading to a rivalry between Spike and Angelus.
After Angelus' soul was forcibly restored by a gypsy spell, leading him to be excluded from their company, Drusilla and Spike took their leave of Darla, journeying on their own for the next 100 years. In the late 1990s, Drusilla was kidnapped and tortured by a human inquisitor in Prague, which left her severely weakened. Spike took her to Sunnydale, the location of a Hellmouth, hoping that its demonic energies would help heal her. Unbeknownst to them, Sunnydale was home to the latest Slayer: Buffy Summers, as well as the now redeemed Angelus, using the name Angel, who fought by her side. Drusilla and Spike would frequently clash with them.
Spike eventually found a way to restore Drusilla to health, in a ritual sapping Angel's life-force to restore hers. The ritual was successful in curing Drusilla, but the intervention of Buffy left Spike crippled, an allowed Angel to escape with his life. Shortly thereafter, Angel's soul was once again lost, restoring him to his former evil self. He rejoined Spike and Drusilla, much to their pleasure, though Spike would quickly grow to resent Angel once again, especially when he resumed his sexual relationship with Drusilla.
Angel concocted a plan to send the entire Earth into a Hell-Dimension, and Drusilla gladly aided him. Spike however, betrayed the two, siding with Buffy in exchange for his and Drusilla's free passage. Spike wanted things to go back to the way they were, and enjoyed Earth too much to have it be destroyed. Angel was defeated and sent to Hell (though he would eventually return, with his soul restored) and Spike took Drusilla and left the country.
Drusilla became sickened and disillusioned with Spike however, and broke up with him, starting a relationship with a Chaos Demon.
When the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart brought her grandsire Darla back to life to torture the once again heroic Angel, Drusilla was called in to make Darla a vampire once again. Drusilla and Darla resumed their acquaintance and hunting. They targeted Wolfram and Hart, slaughtering the higher brass of the company with Angel's blessing. They began recruiting demons to turn Los Angeles into their own "playground". but Angel, driven to depression and violence by his failure to save them, set them both on fire.
Drusilla returned to Sunnydale to lick her wounds and convince Spike to return with her to attempt to restore their old "family". By this time however, Spike had fallen in love with Buffy and tried to kill Drusilla in order to prove his love. Heartbroken by Spike betraying her once again, Drusilla left, and thus remained at large.
Personality[]
Before becoming a vampire, Drusilla was chaste, innocent, kindhearted, and devoutly Christian. After being driven to insanity and turned into a vampire by Angelus, her personality changed drastically. She became extremely unstable, capricious, and unpredictable, with a love for victimizing the weak and innocent, especially children.
She also became a very infantile person, often behaving like a little girl and had a penchant for playing with dolls. She was unusually loving and sympathetic for a vampire, making her fellow vampires into a surrogate family, with Angelus as her "father", Darla as her "grandmother", and Spike as her lover, though these roles often overlapped (she maintained a romantic and sexual relationship with Angelus, and had at least one sexual encounter with Darla).
Because of her insanity, she often spoke in riddles and babbled nonsense, though she was capable of carrying on normal conversations, particularly with Spike. She is also very fond of animals and plants, although she is terrible at caring for them. In Sunnydale, Angelus gave her a garden to tend to, to her immense delight.
Powers and abilities[]
- Vampire abilities: Drusilla had the standard powers of a vampire, being immortal, possessing superhuman strength, and capable of regenerating from physical damages.[citation needed]
- Combat skills: Though Drusilla's combat techniques were awkward-looking, she was still able to hold her own in a fight against Angel, Spike, Kendra, and Marianne. As a vampire's nails were much sharper than those of human beings, she had a tendency to use her nails in combat as a weapon of sorts, as demonstrated by how she used them to slit Kendra's throat, and to scratch Spike and Angel. Drusilla was also an adept at fencing — she defeated Faith in a sword fight, though she admitted that the Slayer might have been slowed down from fighting her minions.
- Hypnosis: As a vampire, Drusilla had the inherent vampire power of hypnotizing people, which enabled her to mesmerise her prey and render them helpless — all she had to do was to catch her victim's gaze, point her fingers towards their eyes, and whisper to them, eventually putting them in a trance. This was one of Drusilla's most dangerous abilities, for the Master himself used a similar version of it to paralyze Buffy, and Angel (a far older vampire than Drusilla was) was never able to master this ability, but she appeared to be a true mistress of it — she used it to murder Kendra, taunt and threaten Dalton, and project false imagery into her victims (she once convinced Giles that she was really Jenny Calendar). This power also allowed her to control other entities like Betta George, Beck, and a Lorophage demon.[citation needed]
- Extrasensory perception: Even before Drusilla became a vampire, she had the power to acquire information by means independent on any known senses or previous experience, which Darla termed as "the sight." This not only enabled her to foresee and thwart attacks on her and hers, but also allowed her to accurately detect the subconscious desires of those who surround her, and exploit those desires to her best advantage.
Examples of other abilities she derived from this power were:
- Precognition: Drusilla had the power to perceive future events before they happened, which manifested in the form of vivid visions. For instance, when she was still human, she foresaw a mine crash that led to the deaths of two men. She might also have foreseen some of the upcoming events of Buffy's eleventh year in high school, given how she said to Angel during their reunion: "Poor little thing. She has no idea what's in store," and she knew that what was going to happen was "just the beginning." This power was also partially responsible for Jenny's death, as Drusilla received a vision of her attempt to re-ensoul Angel, leading him to kill her.
- Empathy: Drusilla had the power of empathy, which allowed her to sense, feel, and understand the emotions of others, and even learn concealed information from those emotions. For instance, when she was still human, she was able to sense Angelus' and Darla's presences at a distance, and perceive their nefarious intentions for her, which led her to herd her family away. Just before siring Spike, she sensed the passionate killer that lurked beneath his timid exterior. Drusilla could also sense Angel's presence out from a crowd of demons, and realized Giles' love for Jenny by merely touching his head. The most potent application of this power was allowing Drusilla to sense past and future emotions — she sensed Spike's subconscious love for Buffy, as well as the fear of those who took refuge in Holland Manners' wine cellar when it was a nuclear fallout shelter during wartime.[citation needed]
- Power detection: Drusilla had the power to sense the presence of supernatural powers within others. For instance, upon seeing the Anointed One, she sensed his power, claiming that she felt it from the outside. Later on, when she was presented with the sleeping body of Acathla, she claimed that that the amount of potential it had "fills my head, I can't hear anything else."
- Cartomancy: Drusilla had the power to gain insight into a question or situation using cards — she once used a set of Tarot cards to inform Spike that the Du Lac Cross was needed to translate the Du Lac Manuscript, and the cards she pointed to not only consisted of the image of where the cross was located, but also predicted the order in which the three Tarakan assassins would attack Buffy (first, the cyclops for Octarus, then the insect for Norman Pfister, and finally, the jaguar for Patrice). Last but not least, the cards revealed to Spike and Drusilla whom the key to her cure was (Angel, her own sire).