The Originals

"In the beginning, our family was human, A thousand years ago, now. Although our mother dabbled in the dark arts, we were actually just a family trying to survive in a time when it was quite difficult to do so. And, for better or worse, we were happy. That is, however, until one night, our youngest brother was killed by our village's greatest threat. Men that could transform themselves into wolves during the full moon. Our family was devastated, none more than Niklaus. Desperate to protect the rest of us, our father forced our mother to call upon her black magic in order to make us stronger. Thus, the first vampires were born. But with this speed, this strength, this immortality, came a terrible hunger. No one felt this hunger more than Niklaus." -Elijah to Hayley in "Always and Forever" The first members of this family were a man named Mikael and his wife Esther. Esther longed for a family, though after over a year of marriage, she found herself barren. She went to her sister, Dahlia, and begged her to use her magic to grant Esther the ability to have children. Dahlia granted this request, but made it clear that the magic had a price, and it was a price that Esther was forced to pay years later-- her payment to her sister would be her first-born child, and the first-born of her children's children, and their children's children, for as long as Esther's line shall live. She then ordered Esther to pretend that her first-born, Freya, had died of a plague, so that Mikael would never know what truly had happened to his daughter when he returned from battle. Afterward, Esther and Mikael heard from a witch called Ayana, Esther's best friend and mentor, that there was a land where everyone was healthy and strong, a land that ended up being the New World, specifically what is now modern-day Mystic Falls. Mikael and Esther with Freya's surviving brother, Finn, and their recently born son Elijah traveled to this paradise with Ayana, where they settled into a village full of the healthy people they had learned about, who were revealed to be werewolves, and lived peacefully for years. In the years to follow, Esther bore four more children: Niklaus, Kol, Rebekah, and Henrik. Mikael often clashed with his middle son, Niklaus, with whom he had an antagonistic and abusive relationship which only became worse when Klaus and Henrik snuck out to watch the werewolves transform one night, where Henrik was accidentally mauled and killed. Grief-stricken, Mikael decided to search for a way to protect his family from the werewolves. Though their family friend Ayana refused to help him in fear of upsetting the balance of nature, Mikael soon found another witch who would help him – his wife, Esther. Somehow, they were able to learn of the immortality spell created by Qetsiyah a thousand years previously, and adapted the spell in order to give their children abilities of superhuman strength, speed, agility and healing that would be even stronger than those of the werewolves. Esther drew on mystic symbols in order to fuel her spell; she called upon the Sun for life, and the white oak tree, long known for being one of the earth's eternal objects, for immortality, so that she and Mikael would never again have to suffer the grief of losing a child. In order to complete the ritual, Mikael had his children drink wine laced with the blood of Tatia, a Petrova doppelgänger and distant descendant of the world's first immortal woman, Amara, before he then thrust his sword through their chests. They awoke in transition, and on their father’s orders, drank human blood from a village girl in order to complete their transformation into the Original vampires. Unfortunately for them, there were consequences for this transformation, and Nature sought to try to restore the balance they upset by giving them a weakness for every new strength they had gained. The sun that gave them life burned them, their thirst for human blood was insatiable, and their neighbors could close their homes to them by not inviting them inside. Vervain flowers, which grew at the base of the white oak tree, burned them and protected against compulsion. Finally, the white oak tree, which gave them immortality, was also the one substance on earth that could actually destroy them for good. In the end, they burned the tree down to ensure their own survival, though the ashes were later saved to later be used against them. When Klaus made his first kill after being turned into a vampire, it triggered his werewolf gene, which ultimately revealed the truth of his true parentage to his family-- Klaus was not Mikael's son, but was instead the son of the chief of their village's werewolf clan, with whom Esther had an affair. Once Mikael learned of Esther's infidelity and realized that her lover's pack were the werewolves who had killed Henrik, Mikael hunted down and killed Klaus's father and his entire family, igniting a war between vampires and werewolves that still exists to this day. Soon after the Mikaelsons were turned into vampires and learned of Klaus' werewolf heritage, Esther was obligated to curse Klaus in order to make his werewolf nature dormant so that he would not upset nature further by possessing so much power. However, Klaus felt betrayed by this punishment, and in retaliation, Klaus murdered his mother and framed Mikael for the act. Original vampires can only be neutralized by taking a special silver dagger enchanted by the Witch of the Brotherhood of the Five that is dipped in the ash remains of the original white oak tree and driving it through their hearts. However, Klaus is a hybrid, and since silver daggers do not affect him (because werewolves heal when wounded by silver), the only way to kill Klaus is with a stake carved from the white oak tree. Mikael had carved one before the tree was burned down, which caused Klaus to fear him during the centuries that he was active. A new one was created by Damon Salvatore, from parts of the Wickery Bridge which came from the saplings of the original tree. This stake was then stolen by the recently-resurrected Esther and Alaric Saltzman's dark alter-ego in 2010, the former of whom melted down Alaric's Gilbert ring to make the stake indestructible and prevent it from being burned up after an Original was staked with it. After Esther's death at Klaus' hands in the 11th century, Elijah and Rebekah swore to stick with Niklaus "always and forever." However, over the centuries, Klaus started using the silver daggers he stole from the Five to neutralize his siblings whenever they interfered with his life or plans. Finn was the first to be daggered in the 1100s, and was left neutralized for nine hundred years, while Kol was daggered on multiple occasions and for various lengths of time, including in 1701, in 1821, and again in 1914. Rebekah also had a similar fate to Kol, and was also daggered on various occasions, including in 1835, 1922, and 2010. When his siblings were daggered, he dragged them around in coffins, which he never kept far from wherever he was living. However, for many centuries, Elijah was the only sibling to escape his wrath, and Klaus led Elijah to believe that he had dropped their incapacitated siblings deep in the ocean where they could never be found. For this betrayal, Elijah swore revenge on his brother. Over the years, legend began to surround the Original vampires as their story became lost to history: all vampires knew that they were descended from a first generation of vampires, but they knew next to nothing about them. Only one was actually known at all: Klaus. He was believed, mistakenly, to be the oldest vampire in the world to the few vampires who knew of him, and while many vampires knew of Elijah, he was mistakenly assumed to be a "foot-soldier" or minion of Klaus' and wasn't revealed to be an Original vampire to most, nor was he known to be Klaus' half-brother. Elijah was however serving his own interests: namely, Klaus' destruction in recompense for his lost family. Mikael was also not anonymous in history, but no one knew he was an Original vampire, either, nor did they know his true goal was to slay his step-son Klaus-- he was instead infamously known as Mikael the Destroyer, the ancient vampire who hunted vampires. It is unknown if the other Mikaelsons had a famous/infamous history, but vampires did know there were other Original vampires besides Klaus. However, it was Elijah who revealed to the Mystic Falls Gang that the other Original vampires were his siblings. "Oh Klaus is not my only brother, I had siblings, I had a family, once. Klaus hunted them down, one by one and he took them from me." Between mid-late 2010 and early 2011, three of the Mikaelson family members were killed in Mystic Falls; first, Mikael was killed by Klaus in Homecoming, while Finn was killed by Matt Donovan in The Murder of One. It was the latter's death that revealed to many that when an Original vampire is killed, every vampire in their bloodline (ie: any vampire they have ever sired) dies along with them, as evidenced by Sage and Troy dying just an hour or so after Finn was killed. Months later, Kol was killed by Jeremy Gilbert in order to finish his Hunter's Mark, as his death would result in the deaths of thousands of vampires who were sired by him. As of 2011, the Mikaelson family resides in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, where Klaus inadvertently started his own family when it was revealed that his Original hybrid nature (being born a werewolf and turned into a vampire by magic) allowed him to father a child with the werewolf Hayley Marshall during a one-night stand. The Klaus and Hayley reunited in the city after he and Elijah returned there for the first time in over a century to investigate a claim of a potential threat from a witch named Jane-Anne Deveraux. They were soon joined by Rebekah and began to regain control over the city they had worked to build in the 18th century, with Klaus eventually taking leadership from his surrogate son Marcel Gerard. After an intense war between the five supernatural factions of the city, the Guerrera werewolves, who had been living undercover as humans for decades and who had allied with the New Orleans Coven of witches, staged a coup against the Originals and the vampires and seized control over the city. Part of the Guerrera's alliance with the witches involved handing over the pregnant Hayley so that they could sacrifice Hayley and Klaus' baby daughter to gain more power for the coven. Fortunately, the child was rescued by her parents, uncle, and surrogate brother, but was ultimately sent away to live with Rebekah after they faked her death to ensure that she would no longer be pursued by their enemies. While Klaus, Elijah, and Hayley work together to regain control over the Quarter once again, they are forced to fight against their newly-resurrected father in his fight to kill Klaus, as well as their mother and brothers Kol and Finn, all of whom have returned to life by possessing the bodies of witches and who plan to get the three to rejoin their family in mortal bodies.