A more modern trope, many modern vampire stories feature some form of vampire royalty dedicated to ruling vampires and creating laws to help keep the existance of vampires a secret from mortals.
TV Tropes description[]
When you’ve got a large group of intelligent predators, there’s usually someone they have to answer to. With vampires, this is usually a queen or a king. Often, all the vampires in the world are descended from them. They sometimes come with spouse, though it's becoming more rare in recent years.
They’re almost always the most powerful of their kind, because they have to have kept their throne somehow. If not, he or she almost certainly has the loyalty of those who are, or can control the minds of their progeny. Dracula is a popular choice, as are Judeo-Christian baddies like Lilith and Cain. Often in fiction, when a vampire turns a person into one of them, the new vampire is subservient to the creator, resulting in a sort of hierarchical family tree of vampires owing their allegiance back to the originator, who rules them all. A common variant has it that destroying a given vampire reverts all those turned by him back to human (or just kills them). You will do what they say, or face dire consequences. Because after all, doesn’t a parent know what's best for their children? Sometimes crosses over into Cute Monster Girl for the queens.
A Sub-Trope of Our Vampires Are Different, Hive Queen, Evil Matriarch and God Save Us from the Queen!. Compare Vampires Are Rich, Monster Lord, Monster Progenitor, The Necrocracy, and Supernatural Elite.
Notable Examples[]
- The Vampire Princes from Cirque Du Freak
- The Volturi from Twilight
- The Vampires Monarchs from Trueblood
- Dracula (Marvel Comics)
- Dracula in Van Helsing
- Camarilla Inner Circle in Vampire: The Masquerade