Drusilla (Buffyverse)

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Character
Name: Drusilla
Occupation: vampire, seer
Relationships: Angelus (sire); Darla (grandsire & childe); Spike (childe & lover)
Fandom: Buffyverse
Other:
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Drusilla or Dru is a recurring vampire character in the Buffyverse. One half of the Little Bad in Buffy the Vampire Slayer S2, she also appears in later BtVS seasons, as well as in Angel S2 and the Buffyverse comics. She is played by Juliet Landau.

Canon

Drusilla is a Roman Catholic Victorian Londoner with the Sight. Angelus drives her mad before he turns her in 1860, and she subsequently sires Spike/William the Bloody to complete the Fanged Four. Spike & Dru remain together for over a century, before she realises Spike loves Buffy before anyone else does, and leaves him for a chaos &/or fungus demon. On Angel, she is brought in by Lindsey McDonald to re-sire human Darla, who is both her grandsire & her childe.

She has thrall, which she uses to hypnotise Giles & to kill the vampire slayer Kendra, and she loves china dolls (Miss Edith) & caged birds.

Fannish Opinion

...it is telling that her insanity is continued as a vampire. It’s not too hard to see Drusilla’s mental illness as a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Simply put, she saw too much and her brain shut down or created fantasy worlds in order for her to protect herself. The question is why she would retain this need for buffering herself from the outside world if she no longer found violence to be unbearable. There are three possible answers. The first is that her mind was so badly damaged that there was no going back. The second is that she is actually faking her mental illness and has in fact been perfectly sane since her turning. The third is that some vestige of her remembers her human family with love and still cannot bear what happened to them. It’s the last option that seems to ring the truest, though the first two are also viable choices. (Meltha)[1]

Fandom

Drusilla is a moderately popular character in fanworks. She appears in Fanged Four stories and in backstories charting her century-long partnership with Spike. Her madness and idiosyncratic mode of speech make her hard to write; Valkyrn comments I'm not a big Drusilla fan where stories are concerned as most of them are written so poorly.[2]

Her most-written het pairings are Spike/Drusilla & Angelus/Drusilla, which are both canonical; after the introduction of the couple, Spike/Dru was very popular but by 2004 its popularity had waned, with the rise of other pairings for Spike.[3] Drusilla is sometimes paired with Xander and Connor, among other characters. She's also fairly popular in femslash, with Darla/Drusilla being the most common pairing; other female partners include Buffy and Willow.

Enormous amounts of fanon & discussion have focused on the retcon of Spike's siring (his sire was stated to be Angelus many seasons before Drusilla was shown turning him). Popular scenarios are that Drusilla is too insane to complete the turning properly so that Angelus has to intervene, or that Dru is too insane to teach fledgeling Spike anything, so that Angelus takes on the sire's role after Spike rises. Fanon also suggests she was a virgin when she was turned, so remains physically a virgin throughout her unlife. Meta also sometimes addresses her insanity, and in particular Joss's penchant for madwomen, comparing her with Fred or River Tam from Firefly. It's sometimes suggested that her psychic powers might be the same as Cordelia's visions from the Powers That Be.[4] Another common topic is her attitude towards family, both human and vampire, which is often considered one of her defining characteristics.

Example Fanworks

Fanfiction

Fanart

Vids

Meta

Archives, Recs & Resources

Communities & Lists

References

  1. ^ Thicker Than Water: Drusilla's View of Family (accessed 18 September 2015)
  2. ^ Better Buffy Fiction Archive: All stories (accessed 18 September 2015)
  3. ^ ship-manifesto: Bad Poetry, Angsty Teen Archetypes, and the Great Rock & Roll Romance (accessed 18 September 2015)
  4. ^ idol-reflection: All Tomorrow’s Parties (accessed 18 September 2015)
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