Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings.   This week’s Femme Fatale Friday is going to be focused on Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel!   I found this to be the ideal topic for the very first Femme Fatale Friday of October.   Kicking off October Femme Fatale Fridays with a Vampire just seems perfectly spooky.

Drusilla was a very pious and religious young woman who was born with a lot of psychic abilities at a time when it was not accepted, as she lived in the Victorian era.   She believed that she was evil due to her visions, and Angelus drove her insane before turning her into a Vampire.   Interestingly, becoming a Vampire did not stop her psychic abilities.   Instead, she ended up being a psychic who was also a Vampire.   She is shown to be truly insane in very interesting ways, which makes her a standout character in the Buffyverse!   When the audience first meets her in the second season of the series, Drusilla is very weak.   That is what puts the plot into motion for Dru as a character.   Her long-time lover Spike is set on performing a ceremony that will make her strong once again.

That ceremony needs Drusilla’s sire to take part in it, which is why Spike and Drusilla came to Sunnydale in the first place.   It is this story arc that provides great flashbacks to Angel’s history, as well as leads Angel down the road to becoming Angelus once more when he loses his soul (after sleeping with Buffy, of course).   Once Angelus is back and Drusilla is at full strength once more, Angelus begins to dote on Dru.   Angelus actions are those of a loving father, and he sometimes seems to be vying for Drusilla in a romantic way to annoy Spike, which can be almost comical.   It is very interesting to see the dynamics between Drusilla, Spike, Angel, and, in flashbacks, Darla.   It gives great context to how they functioned as a unit, with much of Spike’s crazy antics being done to make Dru happy!

Of course, Drusilla and Spike do end up breaking up, which leads to an emotional spiral for Spike.   Not much is known about what Dru does after the breakup while Spike is in season three of the series, but the audience does get to see Drusilla again in the spin-off series Angel.   That is when Drusilla is set on resurrecting her ‘grandmother’ Darla and even succeeds in doing so.   It is actually a favorite plot point in Angel for me, as I adore seeing Drusilla and Darla wreaking havoc and causing Angel issues.   The plot is so fun and highly entertaining!   I think this plotline also shows that although Drusilla is always seen as insane, and she definitely was driven mad before being turned, there is much more to her than just psychic visions and strange warnings.   Drusilla can truly cause some chaos when she puts her mind to it!  

At the end of the day, I think that Drusilla shows a unique energy for female Vampires in pop culture.   She is viewed as weak and even insane as we first see her.   Dru seems to need to be taken care of, yet she is also the one who inspired much of the chaos that happened.   Spike would never have done many of the heinous things he did if it were not to impress Drusilla!   In fact, that is something she has in common with Darla; both turned men into Vampires to have lovers for centuries, and both reveled in those lovers doing evil deeds.   It seems that in the Buffyverse, the female Vampires tend to have a greater bloodlust, getting off on their male consorts performing atrocities to impress them!   I really do find Drusilla to be a fascinating character for how quietly powerful she is, as she seems weak but has a lot going on that people do not see.   As I already mentioned, she can truly plan out and cause chaotic events, like resurrecting Darla.   Drusilla has a level of complexity that is often overlooked because there are louder characters around her who show their strength in ways she does not!

I want to finish this post off with a bit of an odd topic: Drusilla’s style.   I know that it does not have much to do with her storyline, but it does show some of her personality.   Drusilla, interestingly, most often dresses like a heroine of a Gothic novel instead of the villain look that would be expected.   The softer way of dressing denotes her nature as being seen as weaker, with her clothing choices being a bit stronger after the ceremony to revive her strength is performed!   I just love it when clothing is used to signal a character’s personality.   I also adore that Drusilla dresses in a way inspired by the Victorian era, but not in a way that seems stuck in time, she is evolving with the years but staying true to herself (which differs from Darla taking on a schoolgirl look in the ‘90s, for instance)!   Finally, I just have to state that I always adored Drusilla’s manicures.   She always had a French Tip manicure but in very vampy colors of red, black, and white, often with black tips (instead of traditional white tips)!   Even if the manicure has white tips, the rest of the nail is a dark color.   It is a simple thing, but it shows how much care she takes with her appearance and how well she knows what she likes.   She is not one for trends, instead preferring to have a signature look!   In my opinion, all of the style choices really helped to convey just how intriguing of a character Drusilla was.  

I hope you have enjoyed this discussion about Drusilla.   What is your favorite Drusilla storyline?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a lovely one of Drusilla.  I found the picture on https://www.pinterest.com/pin/262756959494188125/.           

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: https://patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Further Watching/Reading

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997)
• Angel (1999)
• https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Drusilla (This has a lot of information about Drusilla, including appearances in the graphic novels that followed the shows, as I have not read them. I did not discuss them in this post.)