I have decided to occasionally explain a character from True Blood. It's been on a while now and if you haven't been watching you may still think the characters are just the characters from the Charlaine Harris series upon which the TV Series was conceived. The series and the TV show are now merely distant cousins. But, the main characters: Sookie, Bill, Eric, Pam, Alcide, Sam, LaFayette and Arlene hang on to their basic personality characteristics if not the stories that Charlaine originally gave them. For example, LaFayette dies in book one of the Southern Vampire Mysteries but is still kicking in Season Five and remains a big favorite.
Do you have anything to say bout King Russell? Are you happy he is back from the undead?
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| Russell Edginton, played by Dennis O'Hare HBO Screenlift |
RUSSELL EDGINGTON: Vampire King of Mississippi
A character I do NOT like but who it seems others did is returning from having been buried alive at the end of Season Three by Eric, Bill and with the cement trucks provided by Alcide's company.
In Episode 49 or Epidoes 1 of Season 5, TURN, TURN, TURN, Eric learns from Alcide that Edginton has escaped. Sookie also learns about it from Alcide. Alcide learned it at the end of Season 4 when a worker at one of his buildings calls to tell him that there's a big hole.
Russell Edginton does appear in Harris' Book Series as the Vampire King of Mississippi in CCLUB DEAD and ALL TOGETHER DEAD.* He does allow Lorena, Bill's maker to torture Bill but makes peace with him later. He marries the King of Indiana, Bartlett Crowe with the marriage performed by Eric. They survive a hotel bombing at a Regional Vampire Summit in Rhodes where Sookie helps locate survivors using her supernatural abilities.
In the series, Russell first shows up in Season Three having kidnapped Bill for the intel he has on Sookie's family tree. He learned about it through a leak in Sophie Anne's administration. Bill was sent back to Bon Temps to find out information about Sookie. Sophie Anne learned about it through her human, Hadley, who was Sookie's first cousin.
According to HBO:
The flamboyant – and deadly – vampire king of Mississippi is one of the oldest and most commanding vampires on the continent. Careful planning over centuries has led him to his current seat of power, and his latest scheme is far more ambitious. www.hbo.com/true-blood/
More deets gleaned from my recollection of episodes.
R.E. is 3,000 years old. That makes him older than Godric was and extremely powerful.
For a very long time he has cultivated werewolf followers, addicting them to V and using them to kill humans. Eric and Godric tried to trace this down in WWII. He maintains a group of followers today giving them ritual shots of V. Alcide 's former (at the time) fiance has decided to marry the Alpha of those followers. While Alcide helps her find Bill at Eric's request, she tries to help him get Debbie back where he and she learn about this.
He killed Eric's human family, saving the crown Eric's father wore which provides the proof ERic needed to fulfill his need to avenge his family's death.
- In retaliation Eric kills Talbot (S3, episode 32), the King's, male vampire consort.
- This makes R.E. a bit wacky, he goes onto a news program and rips out the heart and or spine of the anchor. He reveals his true feelings that humans are not the equals of vampires so why would vampires seek equal rights with them? And he tells them that most vampires want to eat humans and their children.
He brought Bill to Mississippi to get the aforementioned intelligence, probably at the behest of Bill's maker Lorena.
Edgington learns that Sookie has some kind of special power and sees evidence when he attacks her at, I believe Alcide's, and she repels a wolf with her "Fairy Hands of Power." He captures her. She gets away, rescues Bill and kills Lorena True Dead.
Russell marries Queen Sophie Anne to gain control of her kingdom and she
In Season's 3 episode 31 Russell declares that he is going to sublimate humanity himself and that the Vampire Authority is obsolete. He kills the magister, which eventually brings the Vampire Authority in. Eric is charged with making the situation "go away."
In season 3's episode 32 Night on the Sun, Eric stakes Talbot.
He runs around with a large crystal container of Talbot's remains thinking he will use Sookie's blood to reconstitute him.
Russell grants Eric a reprieve when Eric reveals the truth about Sookie and that he'll be able to walk in the sun. After drinking from Sookie he and Eric go out in the sun. Eric has tricked Russell and handcuffs them together to burn to death. Sooker takes him in and feeds Eric again. Russell is unable to persuade SOokie to free him as Bill, Pam and Eric go to ground for the day. She pours Talbot's remains down the bar sink. At sunset, Bill and Eric drag Russell off to one of Alcide's sites where they fail to kill him (stupid, stupid) but instead decide to encase him in cement - He vows revenge once the strength of the concrete fails. (Bill turns around and knocks Eric in to another hole of cement because no one can know about Sookie).
At the end of season four we see the hole from which Russell escaped. And in Season 5's first episode we see a human being dragged in (we assume to Russell) and blood hitting the walls.
* Charlaine Harris: The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, Ace Books, NY, September 2011.
