Vampires Can Screw With History…So What Is Stopping Them?

I’m writing this post as we travel across South Dakota, North Dakota and into Saskatchewan, on my way home from the Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention 2010.  We’ve just crossed into North Dakota, and are battling the mother of all cross winds.  Yesterday it was thirty-three degrees Celsius in Madison County, Iowa.  Today it’s four degrees and it’s snowing as I type.  The land around us is the flatest I’ve ever seen, and I live on the prairies, so that’s saying something.

I’ve see the landscape and weather change so dramatically just in the two days that we’ve been driving that it has made me very reflective of journeys and travelling.   And that’s just been two days.

What must vampires think, as they move through history, and watch whole cultures and civilizations change right before their eyes?

More specifically, wouldn’t those near-immortal vampires ever want to interfer in some way?  To change things to suit themselves?  To redress wrongs?  To adjust social imbalances, and channel causes to arrange things in beneficial ways?  What’s to stop them?  Nothing really.

Human behaviour patterns keep repeating throughout history.  Wars, social upheavals and political disasters repeat.  Over and over again.  Countries rise and fall.  Civilizations build and collapse with regular monotony.  History teaches us that humans rarely evolve beyond the base needs and wants, despite all the rhetoric.

A vampire moving through all that history could use that knowledge to predict the next movements and outcomes of human societies and use it to their own advantage, or for the betterment of his friends and fellow vampires, if he were less self-centered than that.

Here’s an example of how vampires can manipulate history just by being near immortal:  Because they live so long, they can use the power of compound interest to build the most fantastically large investment accounts known to man.  They can have cash and investments spread around the globe, squirreled away in every financial corner of the world.  That financial clout adds up to financial influence that can bend world markets at the crook of a finger, if they have a mind to.  They could start an economic depression by selling off in a concerted effort.

They have memories that go back centuries, and quite possibly possess books and materials that are rare originals that refute or support facts that have been in dispute since recorded history lost track of those materials, and could give back pride and dignity to races of people and families who have lost their history and cultural roots…or the reverse;  their knowledge could bring to light the truth about war crimes, atrocities, and other historical memories best left forgotten and buried, that could bring further shame on groups of people and families who have finally cast off old hatreds and biases.

Either way, a vampire with such knowledge could use history, and in some cases even manipulate it, and there is very little, perhaps nothing, to stop them from doing it.  Certainly, no short-lifed human could do so.

Only self-regulation amongst vampires would ensure than human history remained untampered…or at least, that’s the theory I used for the subplot in Kiss Across Time.