Character
Jean-Claude is extraordinarily seductive, both in regard to his mental abilities and conventional seduction. He is superb at playing "vampire politics" and can be extremely manipulative and ruthless when necessary. Jean-Claude typically thinks several steps ahead of his triumvirate partners Anita and Richard. He is also considered more "human" than most vampires, though other masters see this a weakness.
Throughout the early novels, Jean-Claude pursues Anita both as a lover and a human servant, eventually winning her as both. He frequently withholds the truth of matters from Anita, partly from a well-learned and practiced sense of manipulativeness and desire to use Anita's power to protect himself, his own interests, and those under his protection, but also from an, apparently, surprisingly strong sense of real love and concern for Anita's physical and emotional well-being.
Jean-Claude's personality combines hedonism with immense self-control. During his pursuit of Anita he is able, for years, to control his own ardeur in her presence, and be unfailingly pleasant and courteous, even as she holds him at arms length.
Jean-Claude is bisexual; he has had many male and female lovers over the centuries, and enjoyed a 20-year long ménage à trois with fellow vampire Asher and Asher's human servant, Julianna.
Emotionally, Jean-Claude holds himself apart from even those he considers valued friends, having learned from Asher's mutilation and Julianna's murder that, if his affection becomes common knowledge, his friends will become targets for his enemies. Only among those with a power level high enough to defend themselves, such as Anita and Richard, against strong attackers will he let his affection become obvious.
Read more about this topic: Jean-Claude
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)