When it comes to the traits associated with vampires, what first comes to mind for you? For me, sharp fangs and extreme sensitivity to sunlight are the immediate traits I think of.
However, an important trait that is often overlooked by many is their ability to age.
Have you ever asked yourself “do vampires age?’ The short answer is yes, but there is a lot more that goes into it than one might think. To truly understand if vampires age, you must dive a little deeper into what truly makes a vampire, a vampire.
Do Vampires Age?
Vampires are complex creatures, and their aging process can be complex too. The way a vampire ages depends entirely on the type of vampire, and the age that they were converted into one.
From what we know, if you were converted to a vampire in your mid-twenties or older, you will most likely live out the rest of your time on earth at that same age.
Even if you spend a million years existing on earth, you will always stay that age and never show any physical signs of getting older.
However, if you were born a vampire or were converted before your twenties, it is commonly said that you will age ten human years every 30-100 years on earth. You will only stop aging once you have reached a human age between the mid-twenties and mid-thirties.
Twenty-five to thirty-five might be the prime age range that birthed vampires and younger converted vampires stop aging in human years.
Nevertheless, it is incredibly important to remember that many older vampires do exist. There might not be much information to be found on them, but there are vampires who were converted at older ages such as in their forties or even sixties.
It might seem like a pretty simple answer to a very complicated question. However, there are many ways to look at age, and numbers are just one of them.
Vampires are simply dead humans that have found a way to exist on earth, and in a lot of ways resemble a human being.
One of the main ways we define a human’s age is by their appearance. Unfortunately, that’s a lot harder to do with a vampire.
Physical Signs of Aging
Another angle to approach the question of age when discussing vampires is the physical signs of aging. When we see an older person with wrinkly skin and uneven skin tones, it is quite easy to guess their age.
It can sometimes be hard to remember that vampires are in fact dead and no longer have any warmblood circulating throughout their body. Naturally, this would immediately make you think cold, smooth, and hard…just like ice.
Furthermore, vampires are said to be perfect beings. They are almost always described as having smooth and pale skin that is refined like a handcrafted statue. When it comes to a vampire, there is no such thing as sagging skin, wrinkles, uneven skin tones or aging spots that will give away their age.
A twenty-five-year-old vampire might look twenty-five but has probably already lived for hundreds of years on earth.
Additionally, when we look at the health and age of somebody, we often can get answers based on the length and color of their hair. However, a vampire’s hair will never grow, never change color, and never change in general (it’s unclear if they’re able to dye their hair or not).
The state it is in when the person is converted is how the hair will remain forever. Let’s hope they were happy with their latest haircut.
This rule also applies to fingernails. Fingernails can also be a major indicator of whether a person is younger or older and just like the hair, their nails will never grow or change color.
As we have discovered, vampires can in fact age, but they only show the physical signs of aging if they were born a vampire or converted at a very young age.
Once they reach their prime age between twenty-five and thirty-five, the signs of aging will come to a halt, and their youthful appearance will be frozen in time.
The Stages of a Vampire’s Lifetime
When it comes to vampires, age might in fact just be a number. Many vampires can live for millions of years due to their immortality.
In a vampires lifetime, he or she will experience different stages that will determine their maturity and somewhat define their age.
Newborns
We should probably start with newborns. A newborn vampire is either a newly birthed vampire or a human that has just been converted.
These vampires are known to be incredibly unstable and should be watched at all times. Newborns have heightened senses and lack of control, making them incredibly dangerous and impulsive.
Over time, the risky aspects of a newborn will start to fade. They will finally gain some control over their impulses. This is what we would call a Fledgling. A fledgling is a junior vampire that is a bit more mature.
They finally know how to control their thirst, as well as choose their feeding times and feeding subjects more carefully. A vampire will stay a fledgling until they have spent around fifty years, give or take, on earth.
Ascendants
The next stage is an ascendant vampire. These vampires are the most common to learn about. They stay an ascendant around fifty to three hundred years and are defined by their calm and collected nature.
Elders
After that stage, there is an Elder. An elder vampire has been on earth for two hundred to seven hundred years. Elders are incredibly wise, powerful, quick, strong, and nearly impossible to kill. While all vampires have their weaknesses, an elder isn’t as vulnerable to them.
Ancients
Becoming an ancient vampire is the final stage of aging. However, this doesn’t mean the vampire is going to die or has any extra weaknesses. An ancient vampire is defined by their time on earth which is anything from seven hundred years and up.
These vampires are considered the strongest type but can be killed like any other vampire. They aren’t exceptionally fast or powerful, but they are quite strong.
The Definition of Age in Human Terms
There is one final way to look at how vampires age and that is to go straight back to the definition of age. The Cambridge English dictionary defines age as ‘the length of time that a person has lived or a thing has existed.’
When we look at this definition, things get a bit more interesting. Should we define a vampire’s age by the age that they lived as a human and ultimately died? Or should we define a vampire’s age by how many years they existed on earth?
Technically when a human dies they stop aging, but by definition, as long as they keep existing as a vampire, they are still aging.
If a human is converted at age twenty-five and lived two hundred years on earth, are they twenty-five years old? Or, are they two hundred and twenty-five years old? It seems kind of odd to label someone with hundreds of years of experience behind them as being in their mid-twenties.
Related Questions
1. Is there an age when a human can’t be converted to a vampire?
A topic that is often overlooked is older vampires. We know that there are vampires that are hundreds and even millions of years old. However, what about older humans that were converted to vampires? Forty- to sixty-year-olds? Do they exist?
There is no reason to believe that these vampires don’t exist. However, they definitely aren’t discussed very often. Most vampires that we learn about fall between the ages of mid-twenties to mid-thirties, or they are newly birthed vampires.
Additionally, if they do exist, do these older vampires keep their wrinkles and aging spots, or do they disappear? This is quite unlikely.
As human changes into a vampire, their skin and appearance are perfected and smoothed out like stone. This process will most likely remove any imperfections, wrinkles, uneven skin tones, or age spots that the human would have had.
2. Will a vampire ever die due to age?
The short answer is no, a vampire can never die to age alone. There is no illness or failure of certain organs that can kill a vampire over time because they are already technically dead.
However, while most vampires do get stronger, faster, and more powerful as they age, some will become more vulnerable.
The ancient stage is the time when a vampire will not necessarily become weaker than other vampires but will lose a lot of the aspects that make him or her so powerful.
For example, they might lose some of their speed and they might lose some of the powers that make them so dangerous.