Kate Vernon as Alexandra Serris

Born in 1830, Julian Luna came to California from New Orleans in 1849 to make his fortune in gold, settling in the mining country in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. He met and married Evelyn in 1856, but their happiness was brief; Evelyn died in childbirth that very same year. Although his infant son John survived, Julian's grief was so great that he could not be consoled in this life, even by his friend Archon Raine. But Archon was more than a friend. He had the power to give Julian a new life -- the life outside humanity. Archon brought Julian into the Kindred, into the Ventrue clan, embracing him, allowing him to live a little longer along his human family, until time would age everything Julian knew, everything except Julian himself.

In 1899, the Julian Luna his family knew had to die. Yet, his grave is empty.

Leaving his family for his Kindred life, Julian detached himself from love, hope, and compassion. He became Archon's Enforcer, demanding obedience of Kindred who walked outside the law, executing when necessary, assassinating when asked. Julian took for himself as well, forcibly embracing a young Alexandra Serris, bringing a gold miner's daughter into the dark world of Kindred. Yet, he cared for her; he ensured that she was safe and that she prospered.

He also met Lillie Langtry who is the one woman most like him in all the world. Lillie moves in and out of his life just as easily as she moves in and out of his bedchamber. They are a pair, and when they love one another, they love selfishly; when they hate one another, they do so with like passion.

Alexandra and Lillie stir something within Julian that he had lost for decades: his compassion. He killed in the Prince's name until one night, he'd had enough. He would kill no more. Seeing this metemorphosis within his Julian, Archon finally stepped aside for his successor, continuing on as the new Prince's advisor.

Under Prince Julian, the Kindred of San Francisco Kindred fall under new laws, the peace remains, although fragile and not entirely without its moments of brutality. Still, Prince Julian holds firm to his laws and enforces them without regard for his own personal interests. His devotion to peace among Kindred and his laws costs him Alexandra; he is forced to order a Blood Hunt against her. Equally capable of compassion and savagery, Julian struggles to maintain the peace between the clans...and to ensure the Masquerade is upheld. He is hampered by the internal conflicts and power struggles between and within the clans, as well as by the actions of Frank Kohanek, a curious police detective who dogs him.

To the few humans who know him, Julian Luna is a reclusive industrialist, but to the Kindred, Julian Luna is the law. He knows what it is like to destroy life with calculated ruthlessness. He knows the love of the most beautiful of women. Passion rules the Kindred, and Julian Luna is as subject to it as anyone. He knows passion for his companions, his Sire, and his long ago human family, a family whose descendants he follows in secret as they live out their lives then die while he continues on, never aging.

Lillie Langtry has been called the greatest international beauty of her day. Oscar Wilde even called her "the new Helen." Born in October 13, 1853 as Emilie Charlotte le Breton, she was the only daughter of the seven children of the Dean of Jersey, Channel Islands, starting out life as a girl on a small island with little chance of making a name for herself. As the young girl who liked to be called "Lillie" blossomed, there was no shortage of callers to her home, but it was a 30-year-old widowed Edward Langtry who finally married her after only six weeks. The marriage was a disappointment. Lillie was willful, demanding, and it became easy for Edward to measure his bride against his late wife.

There is little doubt that she was a most remarkable woman. Famous for her affair with the Prince of Wales Edward VIII, Lillie achieved notoriety primarily for her refusal to accept the strictness imposed upon her by Victorian society. With a clear disregard for convention, she entered establishments intended for "men only," enjoyed the company of many brilliant men who treasured her wit and intelligence. She took to the stage as an accomplished actress and eventually achieved the title of "Lady" by her second marriage to Sir Hugo de Bathe.

On February 12, 1929 Lady Lillie le Breton Langtry de Bathe died. Or so everyone would believe.

Lillie Langtry turns up in California where she conquers hearts as she has everywhere she traveled. Men cannot touch her without wanting her, and one of those men is Julian Luna. Their affair is tumultous. spanning decades. She lives in his house. He has need of her for companionship and advice. There is a bond between them that even moments of aversion and jealousy cannot break. Lillie is the Toreador Primogen. She owns "The Haven," a neutral-ground club where the clans gather, where she can exercise her intelligence and wit to charm all who enter.

Eighteen-year-old Sasha Luna is the last direct descendant of Julian Luna's human family, being his great-great-grandaughter. She is also a rebelious one, defying convention, riding motorcycles, running against family tradition, and her one family relationship was with her grandfather, Julian Luna's grandson. When her grandfather finally dies, she believes she is most alone in the world. But that is not quite so.

Although somewhat amused with Sasha's tough-talking claim of independence, Julian recognizes a lost soul. Acting as a distant uncle, he seeks to form a family bond with her. Initially, Sasha will have nothing of it, until Uncle Julian bails her out of jail and gives her a safe place to live in his house with Lillie. Even then, she claims the arrangement to be temporary until Cash, a Gangrel, moves onto the compound to become Julian's bodyguard; Sasha then finds a reason to stay for a while.

But Julian has to protect Sasha from more than herself and her passionate nature. He must insulate her from his kind, from Kindred. Eventually, Julian cannot keep her from meeting Kindred and forming friendships. As she meets Lillie, Cash, Archon, and others, Sasha senses that there is something different about them. She senses that Julian is important in some way in some society that she can't define.

It is with the violence of a single moment that shatters her innocence of Kindred, plunging her deep into their world. Against the wishes of her uncle, Sasha had taken Cash as her lover, and they met in secret, but one of Julian's enemies knew where, and in an act against the Prince, the Brujah forcibly embraced Sasha, driving a blood wedge between her and her uncle, between her and her lover. It was then that she knew who and what her uncle was, learning of his power and his place in this hidden society.

Her first act was to rebel. If Sasha was fiery and combative when she was human, she became even more so as Kindred. She loves Cash, yet her blood hates him. She loves her uncle yet is angry for his deceit and his unwillingness to bring her into his world. Her one connection to her emotions and the turmoil is Lillie.

Sasha is ripe for chaos.

Cash is the Gangrel Primogen, a role his clan gave him after the Brujah slaughtered the previous Primogen, Stevie Ray. The Gangrels lunge right toward the precipice of crisis with the death of their Primogen. Not only had Stevie Ray been their leader, he had also sired many of the Gangrels in the city. Their anger has the potential to throw San Francisco into another clan war. Nevertheless, they wait. They wait to see what action the Prince will take, for Stevie Ray had been the Prince's bodyguard.

Cash eventually assumes another of his sire's responsibilities -- the Prince's bodyguard -- and moves onto the Prince's compound. The Prince wants Cash because he is loyal, trustworthy, and prepared to fiercely defend the Prince with his life, even as Stevie Ray had. Within a short time, Cash grows to appreciate the tenuous peace that Julian Luna has over the city. He begins to understand that the Prince cares about all the clans, about all Kindred, but will sacrifice any of them to maintain that peace and preserve the law. Cash becomes a part of it, but there is one temptation in the Prince's home: Sasha.

Despite knowing that Julian will disapprove or worse, Cash lets himself fall for the Prince's human descendant. Over time, Julian recognizes that Sasha and Cash cannot be parted, so he grants permission for Cash to embrace Sasha with the promise that Cash protect her and keep her safe. But the Brujah find her and forcibly embrace her.

Cash now must fight centuries of Gangrel hatred for the Brujah if he is to remain in love with the beautiful Sasha. He also must endure her Brujah hatred of Gangrels. They are Romeo and Juliet.

Archon Raine is the Ventrue Primogen and former Prince of San Francisco.

As a wealthy businessman in the wine country, Archon had befriended Julian Luna, and when Julian thought he could no longer live after the death of his wife in 1856, Archon embraced him, bringing him into his Ventrue clan. Archon then began his move to the Princehood of San Francisco. With Julian as his Enforcer, Archon ruled the city with a strong hand during the Clan War, holding his place and establishing a forced peace among the clans during that bloody and violent period. He has now turned over the role of Prince to his protégé, Julian Luna, to whom he continues to act as advisor and mentor.

Educated and erudite, Daedalus is the Nosferatu Primogen and the Prince's Enforcer. When the Prince seeks advice, he seeks Daedalus, for he holds Daedalus as his truest friend. When he has a task to be executed quickly and discreetly, he calls on Daedalus, a creature who can flash vicious and violent in an instant. Daedalus can kill. He can execute, and when the tempation to feed on blood is strong, he will give in. It is in his clan nature.

Daedalus' clan is extremely old, and Daedalus himself may be as well. He is perceptive and compassionate beyond measure. He carries a great burden for humans, especially those who are alone and helpless. It is Daedalus who lurks in the shadows to protect and love such humans, but his compassion carries him into his own personal isolation and pain, the kind that he seeks to alleviate within others. He protects a child from a predatory Kindred. He touches the heart of a singer whose pain haunts her voice. He takes Alexandra to the water where she can go to her final death on her own, saving her from the violence of the Blood Hunt.

His compassion for humans is also an abberation among his kind. Nosferatu care little for the business and squabbles of the other clans. In fact, they care little for the other clans entirely. Most of all, however, they care little for humans. As the clan possessing the least human physical characteristics, the Nosferatu prefer to live away from humans, isolated and in secret. Daedalus compromises, living in secret, underground on the Prince's compound where he expresses himself in his art, dabbles in alchemy, and appreciates a fine wine now and then.

Alexandra Serris is the tragic lover of Julian Luna and of Frank Kohanek, the police detective who seeks to connect Julian to crime in the city.

She was born in a mine in 1876. Her father had come to California for the Gold Rush. As a young woman, she longed to be lost in love, to be consumed by it. She ached for a man who needed her. Then she met Julian Luna. With him, she thought she'd found the love she desired. She thought she'd found the man who needed her. Eventually, she learned his true nature, learned that he was not a man. She learned what he was when he forcibly took her innocence, forciby embraced her, bringing her into his dark world of the Kindred. For years, Julian cared for Alexandra, but he drifted away from her now and then, often going to Lillie.

Eventually, Alexandra leaves Julian, only to meet Frank Kohanek. Although she knows Kohanek has asked her out to ferret out information on Julian Luna, she senses that she has finally found the man she needs, someone to make her feel like a woman, but her confession to Frank that she is Kindred condemns her to death at the hands of Kindred under Julian's law.

Caitlin Byrne is an investigative reporter for the San Francisco Times and determined to discover the real Julian Luna. Thirty-years-old and driven, she seeks to reveal some truth about the wealthy reclusive industrialist and his financial holdings. Instead, she falls victim to Julian's charm.

Caitlin, however, has charm herself, one that Julian finds he can't resist. He buys her newspaper to keep her close, to follow her reporting, to make her the editor, but he feels drawn to her instead. Soon, his position as Prince is in danger of being weakened by his emotional desire for her. Lillie warns Julian, so does Archon, sensing that Caitlin is a threat to them all, that Julian is taking a risk.

Julian is also a threat to Caitlin. He is tearing away her protective cover, layer by layer, threatening the security of her insulated, emotion-free life. She masks an old wound from her past, one that keeps her focused, hard-working, and restrained in her emotional ventures. Julian brings another threat to her -- a Kindred threat. He has enemies; she could become their target.

Sonny Toussaint is a master of the Masquerade. He is a Ventrue, sired by Julian Luna, and he works among humans daily as the partner to Detective Frank Kohanek. His job is to keep Frank in check, to keep him from getting too close to the truth about Julian. His most difficult task, however, is to protect Frank from Kindred. As the series unfolds, Sonny surreptitiously provides Frank with the information and tools he needs to protect himself, all the while steering Frank away from anything that would confirm his partner's rantings about what he calls vampires.

Frank Kohanek is an experienced, tough, and smart detective. He is also obsessed. With ferocious determination, he works to uncover the mob connections of Julian Luna. What he uncovers instead is a dark society that moves undetected all around humanity.

Fully intending to learn more about Julian by romancing Alexandra Serris, Julian's former girfriend, Frank discovers this burning love for her, something he has not known since his wife committed suicide some years earlier, leaving him in a dark and numbing loneliness. Instead of learning more about Julian Luna, Frank learns more than he had ever imagined possible. So deep is his attraction for Alexandra that when she reveals her Kindred nature to him, he begs her to make him like her. Alexandra, however, knows it cannot be. She knows she has condemned both of them to death by her revelation, and the only way she can ensure Frank's safety is to have Julian swear to protect him. Thus, the man who has sworn to protect Frank is the single man Frank wants dead more than anyone in the world. Frank's life is safe only as long as Julian remains alive. And unbeknownst to Frank, his own partner, Sonny Toussaint, is a Ventrue.

Frank's impulse to expose the Kindred, to destroy them, especially Julian, eventually fades as he accepts that Kindred have a right to exist, a right to their own laws, and he has the right to make use of them as much as Julian makes use of him.

Humans know Eddie Fiori as the man who runs the unions and workers around the San Francisco docks. Kindred know him as the Brujah Primogen and he wants to be prince. Embraced by Cyrus, the Prince of Los Angeles, Eddie yearns to be prince himself, so he plots ways to discredit Julian Luna and bring the other clans against him. He also acts directly against the Prince, personally killing the Prince's bodyguard and sending out one of his own to forcibly embrace the Prince's neice Sasha. But when he hired the Assamite assassin to kill Julian Luna, even those Kindred who occasionally plotted with him turned away from him.