Stefan Salvatore

Stefan Salvatore
Biographical information
Born	Between 1496 and 1499
Turned	Between 1515 and 1518 (aged 18)
Marital status	Single
Physical description
Species	Vampire Human (formerly)
Gender	Male
Hair colour	Dark
Eye colour	Green
Skin colour	Pale
Family information
Family members	Giuseppe Salvatore (father) † Mother † Damon Salvatore (brother)
Supernatural information
Animal transformation	Falcon or hawk
Affiliation
Turned by	Katarina von Swartzschild †
Sires	Elena Gilbert (with Damon Salvatore)
Loyalty	Elena Gilbert Salvatore family
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"When I was drinking animal blood I wasn't strong enough unless I really worked at it. By the way, it may please my friends to know that I'm going back to hunting animals by tomorrow or the next day, depending on what Mrs Flowers says. But that doesn't mean I'll forget who saved my life when I was dying. For that I honor and thank them - and, well, we'll have a party sometime."

—Stefan

Stefan Salvatore (b. 1490s) was the second son of Giuseppe, Conte di Salvatore and his wife, and younger brother to Damon. The contessa died a couple of years after Stefan's birth, which he would later cite as a reason for Damon's hatred of him, believing that Damon blamed him for it. He and Katarina von Swartzschild (whom he later learned to be a vampire) fell in love during her stay at the estate, and their fathers spoke of marriage plans before Damon's return from the University. Damon and Katarina also fell in love, leading to a rift between the two brothers. In an attempt to reconcile them, Katarina faked her death. However, Stefan and Damon instead killed one another with Katarina's blood in their systems, Changing them into vampires.

After awaking in his tomb, Stefan attempted to return to the estate, but ran after the servants screamed and asked for a priest. On a dark side street of Florence, Stefan decided not to feed on human blood. He decided to live beyond the gates of the city, feeding on animals, until his life was threatened by Damon and he departed. The two crossed paths a handful of times in the following centuries, when Damon would again threaten him. In 2013, Katarina lured Stefan to Fell's Church, where he fell in love with Elena Gilbert, whom he and Damon, who had followed him, unwittingly turned into a vampire. The brothers were forced to reconcile and work alongside each other to defeat her and defend the town. After Elena's death, the two moved to Florence, returning to combat Klaus, which resulted in Elena's resurrection.

Stefan helped Elena adapt to being alive again, and was imprisoned in the Shi no Shi by Shinichi and Misao after being enticed with the chance to become human again. While being rescued, a fellow kitsune prisoner gave him a bouquet with the power to strip vampirism. Later, Damon accidentally used the bouquet, leading to conflict between the two. After Stefan recovered from his ordeal, he assisted in defeating Inari Saitou and the kitsune twins. In the new world, Stefan erased himself from the memories of those around him after blaming himself for Elena's need for a blood transfusion.

Biography

Childhood

"Maybe it was because my mother never really recovered from my birth. She died a few years later. Damon loved her very much, and I always had the feeling that he blamed me."

—Stefan on Damon's hatred for him

Stefan was born to Giuseppe, Conte di Salvatore and his wife between 1496 and 1499, as their second son. The contessa did not fully recover from Stefan's birth, dying when Stefan was aged three. Stefan speculated that this was the cause of his older brother Damon's hatred of him, and that he blamed him for his mother's death. After the contessa's death, Giuseppe would get drunk and threaten to beat Stefan. However, Damon would take have him direct his anger at himself instead, taking the beatings for him.

Stefan was given a proper education, learning etiquette and dancing from Marino. He was taught to embrace his place in the nobility of Italy and as a member of the Salvatore family, which he did to please his father. Despite Giuseppe's insistence that Stefan and Damon be respectable, he regularly took mistresses younger even than Stefan and made several disastrous investments.

Becoming a vampire

Katarina: "That is the wonder of it, Stefan! I will be young forever, and I will never die! Can you imagine?"

Stefan: "But—you did not find it frightening at first?"

— Stefan and Katarina on her being a vampire

One summer between 1515 and 1518, while Damon was at University, Baron von Swartzschild brought his daughter Katarina to the Salvatore estate to recover from her prolonged illness. Stefan and Katarina fell in love, and, one night beside the fountain, she confided in him that she was a vampire and told her story about how she had been Changed by Klaus. He accepted her identity and promised to keep it a secret. Soon, Giuseppe and the baron spoke of marriage plans for the two of them.

When Damon returned to the estate from the University, he told Giuseppe that he was refusing to go back, an argument that Stefan witnessed. Damon also became close to Katarina, spending as much time with him as she had with Stefan, who became jealous, especially upon learning that she had told him that she was a vampire. The brothers forced her to choose between them, and she declared that she would give an answer the following Saturday. On the Friday, Katarina arrived in Stefan's bedroom and exchanged blood with him, leading him to believe that he had been chosen. On the Saturday night, Katarina told them that she had exchanged blood with, and wished to be with, the both of them, and had had her maid make talismans for them. The two almost came to blows before she stood between them, and she ran away in tears.

"Katherine isn't there, so maybe it's all a joke, but her dress is on the ground and it's full of ashes. Like the ashes in the hearth, just like that, only these smell of burned flesh. They stink. The smell is making me sick and faint. Beside the sleeve of the dress is a piece of parchment. And on a rock, on a rock a little way away is a ring. A ring with a blue stone, Katherine's ring. Katherine's ring..."

—Stefan reminiscing

The following day, Stefan found Katarina's newest dress filled with ashes near a tree, and her ring on a rock a short distance away, leading him to believe that she had exposed herself to the Sun. He also found a note explaining that she could not bear to cause strife between the two brothers. Damon appeared behind him, read the note, and attempted to take Katarina's ring from him. The two struggled, insulting and blaming one another, and ran to the house before engaging in a duel as their father shouted from a window. Damon stabbed him, but, as he lay dying, he lifted his own sword and stabbed him in the heart.

Life in the dark

"Both Damon and I had had just enough of Katherine's blood to keep us from truly dying. Instead we changed. We woke together in our tomb, dressed in our best clothing, laid on slabs side by side. We were too weak to hurt each other anymore; the blood had been just barely enough."

—Stefan

As the two still had Katarina's blood in their systems, they began the Change. They awoke in their tomb, where they had been laid down side-by-side. They were too weak to fight given the small amount of Katarina's blood that they had, and Damon ran off into the night. Stefan, who found Katarina's ring in his pocket, went home, where the servants screamed and called for a priest. He ran into the dark, blaming himself for forcing Damon to become a vampire.

In the dark side-streets of Florence, Stefan made several vows regarding how he used his Power and how he treated humans. He decided to feed only on animals as Katarina did, eventually choosing to live beyond the city gates in order to do so. Stefan knew that Damon had joined one of the Free Companies and was feeding on the blood of his victims, but went a stretch of time without hearing anything of him.

One day, Stefan heard Damon's voice in his head, telling him that he had become the condottiero of his own company and was returning to Florence, threatening to kill him if he was there when he arrived. Stefan, fearing for his life, left his home outside of the city. He remained mainly if not solely in Italy for centuries, thinking of it as his hiding place, and crossed paths with Damon a small handful of times, receiving threats from him every time. Each time was a result of Damon tracking him down and attempting to make his existence as miserable as possible as revenge, before Stefan managed to escape.

Stefan met other vampires during his life away from humans. From them he heard of the Old Ones, although nobody that he had met had ever actually seen one. He also heard about werewolves and their weakness to silver.

Katarina's ploy

Starting afresh

"I brought you here, both of you. I put the thought in your mind, Stefan, the way you put thoughts into a human's. I guided you to this place. And then I made sure Damon followed you. Elena was here. I think she must be related to me somehow; she looks like me. I knew you'd see her and feel guilty."

—Katarina

In 2013, Katarina secretly found Stefan and Influenced him to travel to Fell's Church, Virginia to start a new life. He was tired of his life in the darkness, and no longer wished to be alone. He planned to use his Influence to get a place at Robert E. Lee High School, boarding at Theophilia Flowers' boardinghouse on the edge of town and feeding on animals in the Old Wood.

Stefan was followed by Damon (in the form of a crow) on the first day of term. He was forced to Influence the admissions secretary and the headmaster, which tired him. Sensing so many minds around him disoriented him after such a long time in solitude, particularly one mind, which he found belonged to somebody who looked just like Katarina. This disturbed him, not wanting to think about Katarina, and he deliberately avoided her. He also did not appreciate the way that Mr Tanner treated his students, leading him to humiliate him with his superior knowledge of the Italian Renaissance.

When Tyler Smallwood and Dick Carter blocked Stefan's way to his classroom, Matt Honeycutt stuck up for him. Matt attempted to make conversation, which Stefan reciprocated, though he declined his offer to join the football team until deciding to use it as an excuse to avoid Elena. He watched her and her friends in the cemetery after being pulled there while feeding, feeling an explosion of Power behind him and witnessing them fleeing. He followed them, feeling an intense desire to feed, but instead smelt blood beneath the bridge. There he found a bleeding homeless man, on whom he fed but did not kill. He also picked up Elena's ribbon, putting it with his other relics.

"He talks to me, sometimes, but not about anything personal. He never says anything about his family or what he does outside of school. It's like—like there's a wall around him that I can't get through. I don't think he'll ever let anybody get through that wall. Which is a damn shame, because I think that behind it he's miserable."

—Matt Honeycutt on Stefan

Matt informed Stefan that he had been accepted onto the football team, where he was quite popular. At lunch, Caroline Forbes would drag him to the photography room to spend time with him, and also following him around after school, wanting him to attend the Homecoming Dance with her. As such, he was unable to socialise with fellow members of the football team or eat in the cafeteria. However, he began to talk to Matt, though never about his personal life or his family.

Falling for Elena

Elena: "And what's wrong with me that you can't even look at me, but you can let Caroline Forbes fall all over you? I have a right to know that, at least. I won't ever bother you again, I won't even talk to you at school, but I want to know the truth before I go. Why do you hate me so much, Stefan?"

Stefan: "Yes. I think you do have a right to know. Elena. I've never hated you. But you... remind me of someone."

— Stefan and Elena at the boardinghouse

Stefan attended the Homecoming Dance with Caroline, hiding amongst the other members of the football team. He figured that it was safe to be with Caroline, as she meant nothing to him and he felt no attraction towards her. Elena asked him to dance, which, after a moment, he silently accepted. However, they were interrupted by Caroline. He later heard Elena's friends say that Elena had left for the cemetery with Tyler, Dick and Vickie Bennett, prompting him to go there. He witnessed Tyler assaulting Elena, so he rescued her, throwing Tyler against his grandfather's headstone and hitting him before Elena stopped him. He offered to drive her home, which entailed returning to the boardinghouse where his car was.

At the boardinghouse, Elena confronted Stefan about how he had repeatedly ignored her, and he told her that it was because she reminded him of a dead girlfriend. He was initially angry at her claim to understand how it felt, but then took her hand and kissed her. He later drove her home, where they found police cars. Vickie had been attacked, and Elena was missing. Stefan worried that he might have been the one to attack Vickie, remembering entering the ruined church but nothing between then and saving Elena.

In school the following day, Stefan and Elena spent lunch together in a corner of the field, though Stefan did not bring any food. Caroline went looking for him, and was not happy about seeing him with Elena. That week, he arrived at Elena's house every evening for a walk in the dusk, or just to sit on her porch and talk. He made sure that they were never together in private, as a way of protecting her honour, as was the case with him and Katarina in the 1510s. However, Stefan did not discuss his family or his life before Fell's Church, though he did imply that he missed Italy. He also refused to talk about Katarina's ring, which she felt underneath his shirt. His worrying about being tempted to feed on Elena acted as a wedge between the two, as Elena could feel that there was something getting between them.

Tanner's murder and confronting Damon

Matt: "You may not thank me in a minute. Stefan, you've got to get out of here. Can't you hear them. They're after you."

Stefan: "Who's after me? Why?"

Matt: "Everybody. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you've got to get out before they come in here. There's been another attack, this time on Tanner, Mr Tanner. He's dead, Stefan, and they think you did it."

— Stefan learning of Tanner's death

Stefan took Elena to the Haunted House fund-raiser, where he was dressed as Dracula. He was taken aback by Elena's Italian Renaissance dress, which only made her look more like Katarina. He used Influence on Mr Tanner when he displayed resistance to acting as the Bloody Corpse. He chose to serve coffee in the locker-room rather than greeting people with Matt, feeling tired from using Influence. He fell unconscious, and was found by Matt, who informed him that Tyler had accused him of killing Mr Tanner and that everybody was looking for him. Stefan left, asking Matt to look after Elena.

Stefan returned to the boardinghouse, angrily destroying things in his room. He came to believe that he must have been the one to kill Mr Tanner, as well as the one behind the attacks on the homeless man and Vickie Bennett. He proceeded to go hunting, returning to the widow's walk with two doves, which he killed. Elena climbed up to the roof and saw him, falling back onto a rusty railing and falling to the ground. Stefan caught her and lead her back to his room, where he told her that he was a vampire, and the story behind how he became one.

After telling her about Damon, Elena said that she believed he too was in Fell's Church, and that she had seen him three times, one of which was at the fund-raiser. She also suggested that his memory loss and confusion could have been caused by Damon. Stefan exchanged blood with her per her insistence, and promised that they would be together. After Elena left, Stefan drove along Old Creek Road to where he had fed on the first day of school, where he had been watched by a crow, which he had come to rightly believe was Damon. Damon was, indeed, there, and he admitted to what Stefan and Elena had suspected. He also displayed his Powers, and told him that he wanted Elena. Damon then fed on Stefan before leaving. As Stefan made for his car, he was attacked by an unseen assailant and fell unconscious. It was Katarina, who proceeded to trap him in a well on the Francher property.

The police went looking for Stefan, at the boardinghouse and at Robert E. Lee, finding his car abandoned. They believed that Stefan had gone on the run.

Stefan was rescued from the well by Elena, Meredith, Bonnie and Matt, using a rope to pull him up. He was weak and hungry, and Matt wanted to take him to the clinic to be seen by a doctor. However, Stefan made Elena promise him that they would not take him to a doctor. They instead took him to his room at the boardinghouse. While the others fetched Mary McCullough, Elena fed him her blood. He was able to convince Mary that he did not need to visit the clinic, though she recommended that he did so for a check-up.

Recovery

Elena: "Oh, Stefan! Yes! I'm here, we're here, and we're going to get you out. Are you all right? Are you hurt? Stefan, hang on, we've got a rope. Tell me you're all right."

Stefan: "I've— been better. But I'm— alive."

— Stefan being rescued

Stefan was visited by the police. He was weak and unable to use his Powers on them. However, they did not accuse him of anything, acting friendly and only asking some questions. He later returned to school and claimed to be feeling up to football practice (which was cancelled due to recent events), though Elena thought otherwise. He could sense hostility towards Elena in others' minds, and believed that it was a result of their suspecting him. He suggested some time apart, or pretending that they had broken up, but Elena refused to unless he told her that she did not love her. As that was not the case, Stefan would not say it.

Stefan and Elena attended Alaric Saltzman's party at the Ramsey house, though he still had not fully recovered and specifically asked Elena to wear something with a high neck so as to reduce his temptation. At the party, he asked Bonnie about why Alaric had asked her to stay behind after class, as he was mistrustful of him. Stefan saw Damon with Elena and confronted him, but Elena suggested they leave, fearing that Stefan's actions might make him seem more suspicious. Before leaving her at her house, he explained the rules of vampires to her.

Matt: "Am I going to give my car to the guy who stole my girlfriend and now wants to take a jaunt down south to get her some kind of special flowers she's just got to have? Are you crazy?"

Stefan: "No, I'm not crazy."

Matt: "Neither am I. And I'd have to be crazy to turn my car over to you. Hell, no. I'm going with you. After all, you might scratch the paint or something."

— Stefan and Matt

Worried that Damon might go after Elena, Stefan phoned Meredith and asked her and Bonnie to walk with her to school. He visited Matt and asked him if he could borrow his car (since the police still had his) in order to collect some vervain. Matt instead offered to drive him. The trip was successful, and Stefan felt with Matt a feeling of acceptance that, aside from with Elena, he had not felt since he was alive.

Stefan gave the vervain to Elena, and told her that he would attempt to extract vervain oil for future use. In school, he saw Vickie Bennett attacking Tyler Smallwood and helped to restrain her, using Influence to put her to sleep before his Power was suddenly broken. He instead helped to hold her down until the police arrived to take her away. Stefan told Elena that he believed that Damon (who had attacked Vickie at the ruined church) was still using her, and that her will was now his. He also admitted that he had still not fully recovered from the attack, and that his Powers were failing him.

Proposal and Elena's drowning

"I kept the ring because it was a symbol of her. So I could keep her in my heart. But now I'd like it to be a symbol of something else. Considering the way things are, I don't really have any right to ask this. But, Elena—"

—Stefan proposing

Elena eventually told Stefan that Caroline Forbes had stolen her diary and was, with Tyler Smallwood, planning to use its contents to ruin Founders' Day, humiliate Elena, and to provide evidence that Stefan was in the cemetery when the homeless man was attacked. Stefan did not like that she had kept it from him, but finally told her that he loved her and proposed using Katarina's ring.

Stefan pointed out that Caroline would have to hide Elena's diary in Mrs Grimesby's house (where she was to get dressed), as anything that was not part of her costume would be forbidden during the Founders' Day parade. He planned to, with Meredith, break into the house to find it. However, the plan was a failure, as Caroline carried the diary with her in a reticule. Stefan had a brief conversation with Caroline during the Founders' Day dinner, but Caroline was curt and Tyler made an angry gesture to send him away. Stefan stood at the back of the cafeteria while Caroline was on stage, and refused Elena's wordless commands to go. After Caroline threw the diary at Elena and left the stage, Stefan was bewildered, and learnt that Damon had replaced Elena's diary with Caroline's.

Stefan was cornered by Tyler and his friends in a Quonset hut on the school grounds, with Caroline insisting that he must have switched the diaries. Bonnie and Meredith arrived, and Bonnie had a psychic feeling that Elena was drowning at Wickery Bridge. Stefan immediately left with them in Meredith's car. The road was blocked by a fallen oak tree, and they ran out of the car to the bridge, which they found had collapsed. They saw the headlights of Matt's car, which Elena had been driving, in Drowning Creek. Stefan dove into the water despite Meredith's protests, and he recovered Elena's drowned body. He attempted to revive her, without success, and cried before laying her body beneath the willow trees.

Believing that Damon had killed her, Stefan returned to the Quonset hut to feed in order to increase his strength to make him a match for Damon. He attempted to kill Tyler, but was attacked by one of his friends before he could. He attacked each member of Tyler's gang, only leaving Caroline after she fainted. He then transformed into bird-form and flew to Damon, fighting him. They were interrupted by Elena, who was Changing into a vampire. She had exchanged blood with both Stefan and Damon, and had died with enough vampire blood in her system to begin the Change.

Elena's Change

Stefan: "I went underwater and got her, but by then..."

Damon: "And you gave up on her? You, of all people, should have suspected what might happen. Or was the idea so repugnant to you that you couldn't even consider it? Would you rather she were really dead?"

Stefan: "She had no pulse, no respiration! And she'd never had enough blood to change her! Not from me anyway."

— Stefan and Damon after Elena's return

Stefan was attacked by Elena, who was suffering memory loss and confusion, and believed that Damon was her beloved. Damon pulled her away from him, and Stefan accused him of Changing her, though he insisted he had not. Stefan agreed that Elena needed human blood to complete the Change, but told Damon that there had been enough attacks in the town and that she should feed on someone willing instead. They returned to the cafeteria, where they found Matt. Stefan told Matt Elena's situation, and Matt allowed Elena to feed on him. Damon left with Elena, leaving Stefan to give further explanations to Matt.

Remembering when he attacked Tyler and his five friends, Stefan returned to the Quonset hut, where Mr Shelby had found the injured. Stefan used his Influence to make them forget their whole afternoon, including the identity of their attacker. Matt realised that Stefan had been the one to attack them, and decided to keep his distance, disgusted with his behavior.

Physical description

"The dark curly hair framed features so fine that they might have been taken from an old Roman coin or medallion. High cheekbones, classical straight nose... and a mouth to keep you awake at night, Elena thought. The upper lip was beautifully sculpted, a little sensitive, a whole lot sensual."

—Description

Stefan had dark and curly hair, pale skin, eyes as green as oak leaves, and a lean, flat-muscled body and long legs. While he was considered tall during his life, he was just average in comparison to those of the 21st century. He had high cheekbones, a straight nose, and a sensitive and sensual upper lip, looking like an Emperor from a Roman coin.

In the 16th century, Stefan wore high-necked shirts, and was taught by Signore Marino to dress as befit his position. He also wore Katarina's ring on a chain under his clothes until giving it to Elena. In the 21st century, he often wore tight, white T-shirts, faded jeans, and black leather jackets of a cut considered unusual in America, usually with his collar up. Most of the time, he would wear rough woollen sweaters under his jacket. He also wore boots.

At formal occasions, Stefan would wear something such as a white cashmere sweater underneath a black blazer of a subtly different and more elegant cut to those worn by his classmates.

Personality and traits

"But he was tired of living in shadows. He was tired of the darkness, and of the things that lived in it. Most of all, he was tired of being alone."

—Narrative

Stefan was protective of his friends, going so far as to manipulate them in order to keep them safe, as he did when pretending not to care about Matt Honeycutt, Meredith Sulez and Bonnie McCullough and saying that they only got in his way to protect them from Klaus.

He had a strong sense of duty to Florence during his life, unlike Damon, but he was willing to give it up for Katarina. He had strong morals that he lived by, such as his policies on how to use Power and how to treat humans, though he was not above breaking his own rules when roused to great anger. After Elena's supposed death at Wickery Bridge, he attacked Tyler Smallwood, Caroline Forbes and their friends in order to equal or exceed Damon in terms of Power.

Stefan felt guilty about killing Damon and condemning him to live as a vampire, but was most affected by Katarina's supposed suicide, blaming himself for having caused it. He carried Katarina's ring with him always. Because of this guilt, Stefan could not, initially, bear to be around Elena, who was similar to her in appearance.

Stefan had a strong connection to his friends and family during his life, and became incredibly lonely after becoming a vampire and leaving Florence. He hoped to find a place to belong in Fell's Church, though he did not believe that he would ever truly be accepted there. Despite this longing, he avoided people while at Robert E. Lee.

Behind the scenes

• Although Stefan transforms into a falcon in The Struggle, it is a hawk that he can transform into in The Return: Nightfall. However, given L.J. Smith's confusion between falcons and hawks (Talon is referred to as both multiple times) it is uncertain which is correct.
• In The Awakening, Stefan tells Elena that he crossed paths with Damon "once or twice" between becoming vampires and meeting at Fell's Church, with Damon threatening to kill him. However, in The Return: Nightfall, it is said that Damon had spent those five centuries repeatedly tracking him down and making his life miserable, with Stefan escaping each time.

Appearances

• The Awakening (First appearance)
• After Hours (Mentioned only)
• The Struggle
• The Fury
• Dark Reunion
• Blood Will Tell
• The Return: Nightfall
• The Return: Shadow Souls
• The Return: Midnight
• Evensong: Paradise Lost
• Evensong: The War of Roses