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On the recommendation of multiple people I checked out S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood, a novel about the brides of Dracula from the point of view of the oldest of the three brides, Constanta.
Dracula is, unsurprisingly, a highly controlling husband; the brides have curfews and shit and are kept ignorant of fairly important basic life things like the polycule’s finances. When Magdalena and Alexi are added to the family, he’s the one who finds them and picks them and presents them to Constanta; her buy-in is obtained, but it’s clear that each addition was a done deal before she even meets them. As their sire, he gets to decide how much about their new form of life he’s going to tell them; it is not very much. He forbids them from having human friends and, over time, discourages hobbies that involve interacting with other people. When they get depressed, he rages at them that they don’t have any right to be miserable because of all that he’s given them. It is unambiguously the kind of stuff that terms like “emotionally and psychologically abusive” were in fact coined to describe (curfews!! for your spouses!!) but I’m still on my kick that that those words need to go up on the high shelf where the internet can’t reach them and we’d all be better off using literally any other terminology for a while, so I’m just going to say: this Dracula is unambiguously cruel and tyrannical and if you want to find out how specifically, you can read the book, but it involves shit like “forcibly moving people out into the middle of nowhere and locking them inside the house because he’s jealous that they can make friends too easily in the city.” Also, murder!
The format is interesting; it’s written as a confessional from Constanta to the unnamed Dracula after he’s dead (properly deaded, not undead) so it’s one of those written-in-the-second-person type deals. It’s got all the necessary indulgences of vampire fantasy, with lots of hanging out in Paris going to the opera and witnessing important historical events and that sort of thing. Our dysfunctional polycule of horny bi vampires may all be emotional wrecks but they are certainly seduced into it with a lot of luxuries (which are then slowly taken away from them).
Anyway, it is all very gothic, and you sort of know where it’s going the whole time but it is nonetheless very satisfying when you get there.
Dracula is, unsurprisingly, a highly controlling husband; the brides have curfews and shit and are kept ignorant of fairly important basic life things like the polycule’s finances. When Magdalena and Alexi are added to the family, he’s the one who finds them and picks them and presents them to Constanta; her buy-in is obtained, but it’s clear that each addition was a done deal before she even meets them. As their sire, he gets to decide how much about their new form of life he’s going to tell them; it is not very much. He forbids them from having human friends and, over time, discourages hobbies that involve interacting with other people. When they get depressed, he rages at them that they don’t have any right to be miserable because of all that he’s given them. It is unambiguously the kind of stuff that terms like “emotionally and psychologically abusive” were in fact coined to describe (curfews!! for your spouses!!) but I’m still on my kick that that those words need to go up on the high shelf where the internet can’t reach them and we’d all be better off using literally any other terminology for a while, so I’m just going to say: this Dracula is unambiguously cruel and tyrannical and if you want to find out how specifically, you can read the book, but it involves shit like “forcibly moving people out into the middle of nowhere and locking them inside the house because he’s jealous that they can make friends too easily in the city.” Also, murder!
The format is interesting; it’s written as a confessional from Constanta to the unnamed Dracula after he’s dead (properly deaded, not undead) so it’s one of those written-in-the-second-person type deals. It’s got all the necessary indulgences of vampire fantasy, with lots of hanging out in Paris going to the opera and witnessing important historical events and that sort of thing. Our dysfunctional polycule of horny bi vampires may all be emotional wrecks but they are certainly seduced into it with a lot of luxuries (which are then slowly taken away from them).
Anyway, it is all very gothic, and you sort of know where it’s going the whole time but it is nonetheless very satisfying when you get there.