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| “ | When they drank the immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die, so Nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves. | ” |
— Qetsiyah in Original Sin
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Doppelgängers or a doppelgänger (also known as a "Mortal Shadow Self" or a "Shadow Self") is an individual(s) who happens to be a supernatural double of an immortal being. They are Nature's way of balancing itself after the creation of a spell to make truly immortal beings by repeatedly creating mortal counterparts of them to live and eventually die in their place. Basically, doppelgängers are the "scapegoats" of immortals who are exempted from nature's rule that all living things must eventually cease to live. For over two thousand years, Amara's and Silas' shadow selves or doppelgangers have appeared over the centuries to take their places as mortal human beings that are able to die in their place. While the doppelgängers' lives don't always follow the exact same pattern of their progenitors, they have a supernatural tendency to find each other and fall in love with one another over the centuries.
There are two known types of doppelgängers: Petrova doppelgängers - who are descendants of the world's first immortal woman, Amara; and the Salvatore doppelgängers, who are descendants of the world's first immortal man, Silas. Elena is the only remaining Petrova doppelgänger, while Stefan is the only living Salvatore doppelgänger.
Introduction of the Doppelgängers
It was first believed that doppelgängers are related to one another through a bloodline; however, it was later revealed that doppelgängers appear after the creation of a truly immortal being, and are a recurrent and mystical supernatural being. Because they're supernatural, their blood can be used as a binding agent for powerful spells, such as the spell that created the Originals. Because they have no actual supernatural powers, the only way that it has been confirmed that doppelgängers are supernatural was the fact that Elena killed Alaric while wearing a Gilbert Ring and he came back to life a short time later. This also confirmed Elijah's suspicion that the Gilbert Ring wouldn't work on Elena because she was technically a supernatural being. Though doppelgängers are supposed to represent mortality in the place of an otherwise immortal being, they can achieve immortality through vampirism, as was in the case of Katherine, Stefan, and Elena.
Creation
The phenomenon of the shadow-self occurs to counterbalance a disruption to nature's law that all living things must die. Qetsiyah, one of the most powerful witches and member of a very gifted people called the Travelers, created a spell for immortality with the intention that she and Silas would drink it together at their wedding. However, Silas stole the immortality elixir and used it on himself and his lover, Amara, so that the two could be together for eternity. Disrupting the balance of Nature when they became truly immortal, Nature created copies of Silas and Amara that could die to balance itself. With Silas and Amara now both dead, it is unknown if Nature will continue to spawn more doppelgängers.
History
Silas and Amara: The World's First Immortals  Amara, Silas, and Qetsiyah, the "original" (and most tragic) love triangle of the series Over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece, a young witch named Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah, also a fellow witch. Together, they were the most powerful members of a gifted people called the Travelers. Silas told Qetsiyah that he wanted their love to last forever, even beyond death, and he convinced her to create a spell that would make them immortal. On the night that their wedding ceremony was to take place, Silas absconded with the elixir Qetsiyah had created, and as Qetsiyah watched the plant life around her wither before her eyes, she knew that not only had Silas taken the elixir, he had also given her portion to someone else. She sought out Silas and found him in the wilderness with another woman – her handmaiden, Amara - who had taken Qetsiyah's share of the immortality elixir. Silas, having left Amara alone, returned to their hiding place to find Qetsiyah crouching over the chalice that had held the elixir they were to drink at their wedding. He cautiously enquired after Qetsiyah's purpose for being there, so she explained that, to follow up her first gift of the immortality elixir, she had brought a second gift: the cure for immortality. Silas was dumbfounded, hardly believing her, but she insisted that it worked, as she had already used it on another immortal. Filled with dread, Silas ran into the tent he had shared with Amara, only to find blood soaked into every surface, as though someone had been brutally slaughtered there. Qetsiyah followed him into the tent and lifted a bloody human heart out of the chalice, admitting that she had slit Amara's throat before ripping her heart out. After Silas refused to take the cure and live the rest of his mortal life with Qetsiyah, she trapped him on a desolate island in an underground cave, where he desiccated for two thousand years, entombed with the cure. One major consequence of Silas and Amara becoming immortal was the creation of two lines of shadows, or doppelgängers. Their immortality had violated nature's law that all living things must die, and so the doppelgängers came to exist as versions of Silas and Amara that can die. According to Qetsiyah, many identical replicas of Silas and Amara have been born over the centuries, finding each other time and time again as though drawn together by destiny. However, the exact number of doppelgängers that have existed is not certain, as only four doppelgängers have been identified by name: Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery, an Atlanta paramedic, are the only identified doppelgängers of Silas, while Tatia, Katerina Petrova, and Elena Gilbert are the only three women identified as Amara's shadows. Tatia and the Original VampiresTatia was a descendent and a shadow of Amara. She lived in America during the 11th century as a contemporary of the Mikaelson family. Even though she had already had a child by another man, both Elijah and Klaus fell in love with her and fought each other for her affections. Seeking to end their feud, their mother, Esther, took her away. The brothers later learned that it was Tatia's blood that laced the wine they consumed the night their mother turned them into vampires, and it is inferred that it was Tatia that Esther sacrificed to bind the hybrid curse. Katerina, Elena, and the Hybrid Curse
The notion of the doppelgänger as a class of supernatural beings was introduced in the episode Rose by the character of the same name. Until that point, the term was used simply to describe Elena's uncanny resemblance to the vampire Katherine, but Rose explained that Elena is a "Petrova doppelgänger" and that she is one of the necessary components in a ritual to break the Sun and the Moon curse, which allegedly caused vampires to be ruled by the sun and werewolves to be ruled by the moon. Rose had originally tried to hand Elena over to Elijah, in an effort to earn back his and Klaus' favor, but after Elijah killed her friend Trevor, Rose decided to tell Elena and the Salvatores what she knew about Klaus. Rose's story was corroborated by Katherine, who told Elena about how Klaus had wanted to use her in the sacrifice five hundred years before, which involved his intention to "drain every single drop of blood" from her body. In the episode Klaus, Elijah revealed to Elena that the Sun and the Moon curse was actually fake, and that the real curse was one that had been placed on Klaus to suppress his werewolf nature in order to keep him from becoming a true hybrid. He continued to explain that five hundred years ago, Klaus had intended to sacrifice Katerina in the ritual, but she thwarted him by turning herself into a vampire, thus rendering her blood and sacrifice useless – the doppelgänger had to be human for the ritual to break the curse. In The Last Day, Elena surrendered herself to Klaus, and in The Sun Also Rises, after Jules the werewolf and Jenna the vampire had been sacrificed and their blood spilled over the moonstone by the witch Greta, Klaus drained Elena of her blood until she died, and thus successfully broke the Hybrid Curse. Fortunately for Klaus, Elena actually survived the sacrifice, and, in The Reckoning, Klaus discovered from Esther (via Bonnie and Matt, who had contacted Vicki on the Other Side) that the blood of the human doppelgänger is required to create more hybrids like himself. After a werewolf drinks Klaus' blood and is killed, they must drink Elena's blood after they reawaken in order to complete the transition and become a hybrid. Silas' Return and Qetsiyah's ResurrectionIn the twenty-first century, a man named Atticus Shane set in motion a series of events that led to the releasing of the immortal Silas from his desiccated state in his tomb. Once he had regained his strength, Silas manipulated those around him to further his agenda: Bonnie was tasked with the creation of the Expression Triangle and destruction of the veil, while Klaus was forced to find the cure and return it to Silas. These things all occurred according to Silas' plan, to some extent – Bonnie completed the triangle and drops the veil, though only within the borders of Mystic Falls, while Silas gained possession of the cure – but Silas' plan went awry when Bonnie subdued him and turned him to stone, allowing Alaric to steal back the cure and give it to Damon. Later, while trying to resurrect Jeremy, Bonnie died, and with her death, the spell desiccating Silas broke. When Stefan was about to dump Silas' body into the quarry, Silas appeared and revealed to Stefan his true form; Stefan was shocked to see that they look exactly alike, so Silas explained that Stefan is his shadow self, before locking Stefan in a safe and dropping it into the quarry. Sometime during the period of time that the veil was down over Mystic Falls, Qetsiyah managed to resurrect herself from the Other Side in order to take matters into her own hands. After freeing Stefan and telling him her version of the story between her, Silas, and Amara, she used Stefan in a spell to link him to Silas, then fried his brain, which in turn deprived Silas of his mind control abilities. The Doppelgänger ProphecyElena Gilbert and Stefan Salvatore, the last living descendants of Amara and Silas In Season Five, Qetsiyah explained that over the centuries, she witnessed the doppelgängers of Silas and Amara being drawn to one another, whether by fate, the universe, or some other mystical phenomenon. She surmised that she and Damon were merely obstacles in the doppelgängers' destined true love. Whether she had been deliberately giving misdirection or not, it was later revealed that this is not exactly what the prophecy foretold. Markos, the leader of the Travelers, explained to Damon that the prophecy regarding the doppelgängers was not about them being destined to fall in love; rather, there was a prophecy that the blood of the last two remaining doppelgängers could be used to undo spirit magic, and thus could remove the curse that the witches placed upon the Travelers. Markos had cast a spell 1,500 years ago that would draw the doppelgängers together, as the Travelers needed the doppelgängers to be in one place in order to use them to break the curse, so he used the lure of true love to make this happen. The Travelers tested this prophecy by using Stefan and Elena's blood to create a way to undo the spirit magic used to turn a human into a vampire. They turned Sloan into a vampire using Tyler Lockwood's blood, and then used the mixed doppelgänger blood to undo her vampirism. It worked, but Sloan is reverted to her last human state – that is, when she died from a slit throat. Having discovered that the prophecy is true, the Travelers then left to get more blood from Stefan and Elena to undo the witches' curse upon their people, which prevented them from settling in one place and reaching the full potential of their power. |
Powers and Abilities
- Blood - Because they are mystical and recurrent, doppelgängers are a source of massive magical power.
- The blood of a doppelgänger can be used to link supernatural beings to kinship with the help of magic conducted by any witch.
- Their blood can also be used to bind a en extremely powerful curse or spell.
- For some spells, the blood must come from a human doppelgänger. For other spells, the blood of a doppelgänger can still be used even if they've been turned into a vampire, as seen in Death and the Maiden when Qetsiyah used Elena's blood to transfer the Anchor from Amara to Bonnie. There are certain spells and uses that require the doppelgänger to be "pure" and human, however, like the undoing of the Hybrid Curse and the siring of hybrids.
- The blood of the last two "living" doppelgängers can be used to reverse spells cast using spirit magic (e.g. turning a vampire back into a [dead] human, undoing the spell that bound the Other Side, reversing the spells cast on daylight rings for vampires, etc).
- Linking - Because dopplegangers are modelled after Immortals and other dopplegangers, they have an inherently strong mystical connection to each other that can be used to invoke Linking Spells.
The Progenitors Of Salvatore and Petrova Doppelgangers
SilasSilas, the world's first immortal man or immortal being and the originator of the Salvatore doppelgängers. Amara  Amara, the world's first immortal woman and the originator of the Petrova doppelgängers |
Known Doppelgängers
Amara's Doppelgängers
Amara's known doppelgängers are Tatia, Katherine and Elena, all three of which have appeared on-screen. Elena is sometimes referred to as the Petrova doppelgänger because of her striking resemblance to Katerina Petrova.
Tatia is assumed to be the 2nd doppelgänger of Amara.
Katherine was assumed to be the 3rd doppelgänger of Amara.
Elena is assumed to be the 4th doppelgänger of Amara. She is the last living Petrova doppelgänger.
Silas' Doppelgängers
Compared to the Petrova Dopplegängers, the Salvatore Dopplegängers do not seem to be as recognized, since Klaus and Rebekah seemed to have failed at recognizing Stefan for what he was during the early 20th Century, other than an emotionless Vampire at the time.
Stefan is assumed to be the 4th doppelgänger of Silas. Stefan is the last living Salvatore doppelgänger.
Doppelgänger Lines
| Immortal Beings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1st century | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Amara † | Silas † | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10th century | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tatia † | Unknown Doppelgänger † | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 15th century | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Katerina Petrova † | Unknown Doppelgänger † | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 19th century | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unknown Doppelgänger † | Stefan Salvatore | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 20th century | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Elena Gilbert | Tom Avery † | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Myths
- In some traditions, when a doppelgänger is seen by a person's friends or relatives, the contact prophesies illness or danger, while a person seeing their own doppelgänger is an omen of death.
- In other traditions or legends, a doppelgänger is connected with the person copied; sometimes causing the feelings of injuries between the original and the doppelgänger. For example, if the doppelgänger is injured, the other person will also be hurt or feel pain.
- "Doppelganger" is a German word or term meaning "double walker" or "double goer"―a shadow self that is thought to accompany every person. Traditionally, it is said that only the owner of the doppelganger can see this phantom self and that it can be a harbinger of death. Occasionally, however, a doppelganger can be seen by a person's friends or family, resulting in quite a bit of confusion.
- The word doppelganger is a loanword from German, written there (as any noun) with an initial capital letter Doppelganger, composed from doppel, meaning "double", and ganger, as "walker." In English, the word is conventionally not capitalized, and it is also common to drop the German diacritic umlaut on the letter "a" and write "doppelganger," although the correct spelling without umlaut would be "doppelgaenger".
- The term has, in the vernacular, come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person, most commonly in reference to a so-called evil twin, or to bilocation. Alternatively, the word is used to describe a phenomenon where you catch your own image out of the corner of your eye. In some traditions, seeing one's own doppelganger is an omen of death. A doppelganger seen by friends or relatives of a person may sometimes bring bad luck, or indicate an approaching illness or health problem.
- The doppelgangers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed his own doppelganger, he is doomed to be haunted by images of his ghostly counter-part.
- Other folklore says that it is considered unlucky to try to communicate with a doppelgänger.
Trivia
- Silas and Amara's doppelgangers may not be limited to a continuous 500 years recurrence as it has been speculated since Season Two: Qetsiyah said in Original Sin that "century after century" she watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other and fall in love-- this could mean that Klaus only presumed the time period between the Petrova doppelgangers because it took him that long to find one after losing Katherine. But Qetsiyah's statement could be interpreted as just being hyperbolic.
- According to Qetsiyah, the shadows of Silas and Amara are destined to find each other and fall in love, based on her observations throughout the centuries. However, evidently, they are also capable of developing romantic feelings for other people. Examples include:
- The term doppelgänger doesn't seem to imply any hierarchy.
- Qetsiyah has, in one instance, mentioned Silas as Stefan's doppelgänger.
- Silas himself referred to Amara as Elena's doppelgänger.
- Silas and Stefan can be called doppelgängers of each other. Similarly, Tatia, Katherine, Elena and Amara are all doppelgängers of each other since they are all lookalikes of each other.
- The term "Shadow" has some implied hierarchy as opposed to doppelgänger.
- Katherine referred to Elena as her shadow self and Silas did the same to Stefan.
- Elena is the shadow of Amara, Tatia and Katherine, while Katherine is that only of Amara and Tatia.
- Doppelgängers are humans for most intents and purposes. However, they are a supernatural occurrence and are therefore, considered to be a supernatural species. The difference between regular humans and doppelgängers is that spells that use a doppelgänger can be broken using another doppelgänger.
- Death by a doppelgänger counts as a supernatural death. A person wearing a Gilbert ring will come back to life if killed by a human doppelgänger.
- The Gilbert rings do not protect supernatural creatures and is, thus, theorized not to work on a doppelgänger. This has never been confirmed.
- They can, however, be compelled by vampires like any regular human.
- It seems that the men who spend a lot of time with doppelgängers of Amara can't help but fall in love with her or fall vulnerable to her charms. Back in the 11th century, it was stated that every man in the village fell in love with Tatia, though Elijah and Klaus more than any others. Trevor, Elijah, Damon, Stefan, and Mason fell in love with Katherine, and Noah was obsessed with her. Matt, Stefan, and Damon fell in love with Elena.
- Similarly, it seems that many women also fall madly for Salvatore doppelgangers, almost to psychotic and crazy proportions. An example is Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Katherine, Qetsiyah and Rebekah all finding Stefan appealing and all of them being attracted to him. It could easily be assumed that Silas was also very attractive to the opposite sex as well, since he had two women who were passionately (and one psychotically) in love with him in Qetsiyah and Amara.
- Katherine and Elena both became vampires, though Katherine was cured of her vampirism and returned back to a human/witch before eventually dying of old age.
- Silas and his doppelgänger, Stefan, have first names beginning with the letter "S".
- All of the known shadows of Amara, like herself, have first names that rhyme with each other. All of the known Petrova doppelgängers, including the progenitor Amara, all have first names which end with an "A" (AmarA, TatiA, KaterinA, ElenA).
- Aside from Tatia, Katherine and Elena, there is presumed to be another doppelgänger of Amara who precedes Tatia, born during c. 5th century A.D. She is presumed to be Amara's very first doppelgänger, although this is not confirmed and is just a theory.
- A person and his or her doppelgänger will look identical in appearance, but the differences stem from their rearing and community standards (such as their expressions, speech, reason, and connections with others).
- According to some myths, doppelgängers tend to undo the lives of each other. Tatia was used to create the Original Vampires but her doppelgängers have influenced the deaths of all three deceased Original Vampires.
- Katherine distracted Mikael, which let Klaus have a shot at his heart.
- Elena shot Finn with a crossbow to disable him for a few moments before Matt killed him.
- Elena held down Kol, after weakening him with vervain, thus allowing Jeremy to kill him.
- Now that Stefan has been revealed to be a doppelgänger of Silas, in retrospect, it seems more than just a mere coincidence that Stefan too influenced the deaths of the three original vampires.
- Stefan intervened when Damon tried to take a shot at Klaus which led to the death of Mikael.
- Stefan took the first shot at Finn and was disarmed immediately by Sage. In his process of recovering the stake, Elena shot Finn with the crossbow.
- Stefan spent an entire evening trying to obtain the dagger from Rebekah which, at the very least kept her at bay, while Elena and Jeremy went about killing Kol.
- On more than one occasion, Katherine has actively harmed her doppelgänger Elena. Silas made his doppelgänger, Stefan, suffer for a whole summer by stabbing him, locking him in a safe and throwing the safe off a cliff into the water under a quarry, where Stefan would drown repeatedly and die over and over for three months.
- The very danger, of being prematurely undone by his doppelgänger, is probably why Silas locked Stefan in the safe and left him to drown repeatedly - he might have wanted to keep Stefan out of the way for as long as he remains immortal. As it turns out, Stefan's release from the safe allowed Qetsiyah to neutralise Silas' mental powers.
- The term "Petrova Doppelgänger" comes from the last name of Katherine Petrova, the second doppelgänger of Amara. It is a term used by those who strived to find Katherine's doppelgänger and once discovered, directly referred only to Elena.
- Qetsiyah has said that the Silas' and Amara's doppelgängers have been finding each other and falling in love century after century. This could possibly imply that before the 10th century, when Tatia, the second doppelgänger of Amara, was used by Esther to make the Mikaelson family vampires and was also used to suppress Klaus' werewolf side, there were possibly Petrova doppelgängers being born every century or every few centuries, since Qetsiyah said that they fall in love century after century, not every 500 years. However, it's also possible that Qetsiyah was just being hyperbolic to emphasize her annoyance at watching Silas and Amara's shadows constantly falling in love over the last 2,000 years.
- It is uncertain whether or not the doppelgängers of Silas are born every 500 years like the last three doppelgängers of Amara have. It is also uncertain if Petrova doppelgängers being born every 500 years theory is actually true.
- It is possible that the doppelgängers were finding each other and falling in love on The Other Side. Doppelgängers are known to be supernatural beings and hence, would go to The Other Side when they die. This could possibly be what Qetsiyah meant when she said she has watched versions of Silas and Amara find each other and fall in love century after century; she could have been watching them find each other and fall in love on the Other Side. However, with the destruction of the Other Side, this is presumably no longer possible.
- Doppelgängers can be born or the doppelgänger "gene" can be passed down the bloodline without the doppelgänger himself/herself having children or a direct bloodline due to having children. For example, Silas and Amara, the progenitors of the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgänger bloodlines respectively, were assumed to not have had any children before they became truly immortal. Therefore, it is very likely that they had a sibling(s) which would have passed down the doppelgänger "gene" through Silas and Amara's respective bloodlines. So, doppelgängers would not need to have children in order for the doppelgänger "gene" to be passed down the bloodline. It should be noted that all of the known Petrova doppelgängers (i.e. Tatia and Katherine), with the exception of Elena due to becoming a vampire, have had children. It could be assumed that Silas' doppelgängers all had children as well, with the exception of Stefan, since he became a vampire and therefore, could not reproduce.
- The two known doppelgänger lines are, both, the result of the Immortality Spell being cast. It is possible that other spells (such as the Hybrid Curse while it was active) may also produce doppelgängers depending on their nature.
- As of fifth season of The Vampire Diaries, both Amara and Silas had become mortal and died. Theoretically, being cured of immortality and their deaths means the end of their doppelgänger lines, as nature would no longer require their shadow selves to die in their places.
- Since Tom Avery was born in the 20th century chances are is that he was meant for Elena, had she not met Stefan. If the prophecy held truth, then that means that Stefan may have never been meant to meet neither Katherine or Elena, nor fall in love with them. Katherine may have had another Salvatore doppelgänger that was meant for her, and Stefan could have had a different Petrova Doppelganger that was meant for himself, IF, of course, the prophecy meant that two doppelgangers were born in the same century and were meant fall in love with each other.
- It was revealed that the reason why the Travelers want the blood of the doppelgängers was because they wanted to break the curse that was placed on them by Luke and Liv's coven 2,000 years ago.
- Qetsiyah's belief that the shadows of Silas and Amara were destined to find each other and fall in love was proven to be incorrect; it was revealed that the reason why the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers find each other and fall in love is because of the spell that was placed on them by Markos 1,500 years earlier.
- It was coincidental how Amara was the handmaiden of Qestiyah in 100 BC, while in the 19th century, Qestiyah's descendant Emily Bennett was the handmaiden of Amara's doppelganger and descendant, Katherine. Another one of Qetsiyah's descendants, Bonnie Bennett, was best friends with Petrova doppelgänger Elena Gilbert, showing a pattern of Qetsiyah's descendants being involved in some way with Amara's doppelgängers.
- According to this interview Tatia was Amara's first doppelganger.
See also
Template:VD Characters
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References