Romantic Vampire Boy

"Creatures of the Night, begone in the name of the Light! Unless you're one of the hot ones I can save, of course!"

— Princess of Mirrors, Princess: The Hopeful

Because all girls want bad boys, and you don't get much badder than a blood-sucking monster. Putting it simply, a romantic vampire boy is a male love interest who is a vampire. He may not be the best love interest, as he'll most likely hunger for your blood or for others around you, and it's most likely going to be a Mayfly–December Romance, but on the other hand he's a rich and charming sex god.

Whether the relationship between a Romantic Vampire Boy and the heroine succeeds or fails depends largely on where the work stands on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. However, this also depends on the plausibility of the Romantic Vampire Boy as a love interest: if written poorly, he can be easily turned into a Satellite Love Interest and/or Relationship Sue.

This can overlap with Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, although not necessarily. Vampires who brainwash women into being his "brides" don't count as he has to be seen as a desirable Love Interest without the help of mind control. See also Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle, Boy Meets Ghoul, and Lesbian Vampire; compare Seductive Mummy and Attractive Zombie.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Yuuki Anzai of Devils' Line is this. He's the half-vampire Love Interest to Tsukasa.
• Night Walker started out as a very obscure H-themed Visual Novel, and then it was rather... loosely adapted as a TV series. In any way the protagonist of the anime, Tatsuhiko Shido, fits in here: he's a rather kind and VERY handsome Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who works as a detective and solves cases based in the supernatural.
• Vampire Knight's Kaname Kuran and Zero Kiryuu. Later subverted: The Heroine Yuuki Cross turns out to be a vampire herself, though her powers were sealed by her mother to save her life. Said powers are unsealed later by Kaname.

Comic Books

• Notably inverted by Vampirella who seems like she would be the romantic interest of the book but as the star is actually in love with Vampire Hunter Adam Van Helsing. Later, she would hook up with Tristan the Werewolf whose condition allows him all the reluctant monster tragedy of the trope.
• XMen: the early-2010s storyline Curse of the Mutants puts a cynical and dark spin in a short story named Rue Blood when Damen, a handsome vampire from India falls in love with Rogue believing her to be the reincarnation of his beloved Rue, who died 200 years before. Turns out he is incorrect as his beloved actually reincarnated as No-Girl, a female telepath reduced to nothing more than a Brain in a Jar who also reveals that Damen is an Empty Shell and not really capable of love ever since he became a vampire. This revelation breaks him so much he lets Rogue to put him out of his misery. Ouch.

Eastern Animation

• The Haunted House: The Secret of the Ghost Ball plays the trope straight with Ian, a young vampire boy who develops feeling for Gauen and declares himself her protector after she reciprocates.

Films — Animation

• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Balthazar is a self-described "attractive, non-threatening" variety of vampire. When he introduces himself to the Apocalypseburgers, he expresses an earnest interest in talking about feelings and ruminating on the concept of Star-Crossed Lovers.
  Balthazar: Isn't that beautiful? I'll answer that — it's very beautiful.

Films — Live-Action

• Gender-flipped in Freaks of Nature with Petra, who serves as the love interest for the main hero Dag and has all the reluctant monster baggage associated with this trope. Milan, Petra's sire, is a subverted parody, an expy of Edward Cullen who's instead portrayed as a Handsome Lech who simply used Petra to drink her blood (analogous to sex, complete with Petra getting slut-shamed afterwards).

Literature

• At the time of its publication (1897), Dracula does not fit as an example, because Bram Stoker didn't find vampires romantic at all. However, nearly every adaptation or sequel seems to have Drac Promoted to Love Interest and reinterprets him as a tragic, romantic figure.
• A more recent incarnation of the archetype is Edward Cullen of The Twilight Saga fame: he was 17/18 when he was turned into a vampire in the early 20th century, and spends years re-enrolling in high school. After he meets Bella Swan, he takes an interest in her, even protecting her during the first book (from a hit and run, some assailants and a murderous vampire) and takes her to prom at the end of the first book.
• Before Edward, we had The Silver Kiss's Simon.
• Vampire Kisses has Alexander Sterling.
• The Skulduggery Pleasant series deconstructs this beautifully with Caelen, who is probably best described as "Edward Cullen, only in a world where everyone else knows that stalking people is bad."
• Bill from The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries.
• Aubrey is this to Jessica in Demon in my View. From the same series, Christopher is also this to Sarah.
• Golden Dawn has Herald.
• Zig-Zagged in Anita Blake. Jean-Claude sees himself as this at the beginning of the series, and Anita eventually agrees, though their relationship has many ups and downs (and sides, for that matter.)
• Becomes the case in The Supervillainy Saga with Gary and his wife Mandy. Mandy becomes a vampire rather than Gary, much to the supervillain's simultaneous pleasure and annoyance. On one hand, it's amazingly cool, but on the other there's a lot more trouble to being a vampire than Hollywood typically proposes.
• The concept is mocked mercilessly in Straight Outta Fangton where Peter Stone points out being a vampire doesn't make you inherently more sexy and actually sexy vampires tend to have been that way in life. Also, any romance from a dark brooding predator with mind-control powers should be inherently suspect. The subversion is somewhat zig-zagged when we meet Peter's creator, Thoth, who is an example of Vampires Are Sex Gods.
• The Laundry Files (by Charles Stross): In The Nightmare Stacks, Alex Schwartz is a rather nervous and socially inept example, who treats his vampirism as the career and social-life impeding classified-under-the-Official-Secrets-Act disease it is in the series. Thankfully, mind-controlling glamours are off the table, mostly because Cassie is secretly an elf princess (and as such much better at them than Alex), although moral and ethical constraints, plus a desire not to be stuck with the paperwork at the inevitable subsequent inquiry also play a part.
• In The Dresden Files one of the species of vampires, the White Court, feed on the emotions, and their main bloodline of the Raith family feed of lust and act accordingly. Thomas Raith, Harry's occasional investigative partner and on-again, off-again deuteragonist, is one of the few ethical members of his family and has a genuine and surprisingly wholesome relationship with his human girlfriend Justine, as opposed to treating her like a plaything or a food source. His family members alternatingly see Thomas and Justine's relationship as a curiosity or just can't understand it.
• Inverted with Akatsuki Kojou from Strike the Blood. He's a handsome, fit, and clueless Vegetarian Vampire, but he's the main character in a Harem Genre series so the various female characters serve as his love interests.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Both Spike and Angel are romantic vampire boys for Buffy. However, while the series plays it straight for romantic fanservice, it also deconstructs it for Aesops involving abusive relationships.
• An important plot point in Forever Knight is Nick (a vampire) and Natalie (a human) having a romantic relationship, even though the show zigzagged with it a lot. A similar plot line was introduced in the third and last season between Nick's new partner Tracy and another good vampire Vachón.
• In Night and Day, elements of Josh Alexander's Demonic Possession story play out like a bananas, prophetic parody of The Twilight Saga — invoking vampiric behaviour as an extended metaphor for sex and in particular the loss of innocence, whilst continuing to advance Josh's ongoing romance with Della Wells. Given the show's ambiguous presentation, it's not clear how much of the apparently supernatural content in these scenes is literally happening, or should simply be regarded as symbolic.
• Supernatural:
  • Deconstructed in "Live Free or Twi Hard" with vampires playing into this trope to lure in easy victims.
  • And there's Benny. In addition to his Tragic Bromance with Dean, his backstory includes falling in love with a human woman (which is what convinced him to become a Vegetarian Vampire). Unfortunately, by the time he gets out of Purgatory she's become a vampire herself.
• Stefan and Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. Both are romantic vampire boys or love interests for the heroine of the series, Elena.
• Juliet van Heusen from Wizards of Waverly Place is a romantic vampire girl.

Music

• The Captain Beefheart song "Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee" from Doc at the Radar Station.

Sports

• Canadian figure skater Roman Sadovsky embodies this trope with his short program from the 2017-2018 competitive season which is set to Peter Gundry's "The Vampire Masquerade". The vampire he portrays is an impeccably-dressed, tall, graceful Pretty Boy who wishes to attract his female companion with his good looks and his masterful waltzing skills.

Tabletop Games

• Parodied in Princess: The Hopeful, where Princesses of Mirrors stereotypically divide vampires in two categories: the ugly creatures of the night they need to banish and "the hot ones they can redeem". Ironically, this is exactly the opposite of the truth: the sexy Daeva tend to be morally corrupt vice-addicts, while the hideous Nosferatu and the shadowy Mekhet have a tendency to be the least evil vampires.

Theatre

• Graf von Krolock in Tanz Der Vampire, for a given value of "romantic" and "boy". The heroine falls hard for him, he doesn't use mind control to get her to that point, but he's also far from young, physically speaking (let's not even get into his real age) and is torn between loving her back and seeing her as a Happy Meal.

Video Games

• Astarion in Baldur's Gate III
• Parodied in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten's Fuka and Desco Show, where the Episode Previews derail from the actual story in favor of narrating a melodramatic Twilight-esque Paranormal Romance with Valvatorez as the Edward stand-in.
  Just then, a beautiful man appears like the wind. He is a vampire who only drinks sardine blood due to a mysterious incurable disease!
  Valvatorez: Here! This sardine will help you through your pain...
  Fuka: Oh, Sir Valvatorez...!
• Essentially the premise of Cafe Rouge, a romantic visual novel about vampires. And cafes.
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang: Playable hero Cecilion is a Blood Demon, who's described to be off-shoots of vampires in general (bat imageries, using Blood Magic, and Cecilion has a massive cape to look like bat wings). His story involves about his passionate love with the human Carmilla whom he met when he's disguising as an opera singer, until they're separated, she commits suicide and he saves her via blood-infusion, turning her into a Blood Demon as well and they can resume being lovers forever. He gains special exclusive skills in case he's on the same team with Carmilla, showing how far his romance goes.
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Parodied in "The Tomb of Sammun-Mak". Sam and Max's identical ancestors Sameth and Maximus run into Jurgen from Sam and Max Beyond Time and Space: Night of the Raving Dead around the time he becomes a vampire. Sameth can remark that becoming a vampire should get rid of Jurgen's Abhorrent Admirer Nefertiti the mole-girl, and Jurgen complains that vampirism just makes him "even more tragically sexy than before."

Visual Novels

• All of the love interests in Diabolik Lovers are vampire boys, and although the Fetishized Abuser theme makes it difficult to spot in the first two VNs, they do get romantic over time. The heroine morality chains all of them eventually, and her love interest most of all.
• Havenfall Is for Lovers has Diego and Antonio, two of the possible love interests and both vampires.

Webcomics

• There are a couple of characters who consider themselves to be as such in Charby the Vampirate. They are really not, though, with one being a delusional stalker and the other a mind-controlling creep.
• Storm of Total Undead Drama doesn't really consider himself to be this, granted he is a Nice Guy (and if anything somewhat annoyed how Twilight and books like it made vampires into a laughingstock with other monsters) but partakes in hunting. To which he admits does make it easy to feed, so he more or less obliges...least till he turns his victim. Then said girls (largely the die hard fans of said books) learn the hard way that they've essentially died, became walking corpses, have an ongoing nightly hunger and must follow his commands no matter what. That said, the girls don't mind though: they get powers, eternal youth and free room and board out of it within his manor, so serving him is a fair exchange. Helps that Storm isn't a Bad Boss either and actually quite protective of his girls.
  Anne-Maria: [after she turns, forced into dressing in a nightgown and joining his "brides"] Tch, I thought you be like that boy from those books. All lovey and mysterious.
  Storm: Hey I am, but now you know the true mystery behind it: We're still monsters and that those books are bunk. You wanted romance with a vampire, well you got it and all the undead goodness it comes with it. Now go join the other girls for servitude.
  Anne-Maria: [grumbles] Yes master.
• Hilariously Deconstructed by Susan in one El Goonish Shive: NewsPaper strip.
• More in the hiliarious type in Vampire Husband. Charles deeply love Cheryl.
• Parodied in Sam & Fuzzy, where one of the many mental afflictions that can affect vampires is "Chronic Tragic Gothic Romanticism": This causes the vampire to get romantically obsessed with anyone and anything that crosses their path and also makes them believe Stalking is Love. Edward, the first vampire seen in the comic, suffers from this, which means NMS tends to get called in on him whenever he's caught harassing local convenience store employees with Purple Prose love confessions and extremely inept stalking. Edward eventually gets therapy and ends up in a stable happy relationship, though it is with another vampire (who suffers from another strain of vampiric mental illness).

Western Animation

• Marshall Lee is this to Fionna from Adventure Time.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Subverted in the first episode, "Tourist Trapped"; after Dipper points out that Mabel's new boyfriend Norman is more than a bit strange, Mabel hopes that he might be a vampire. When Normal takes her out to the woods and says he has to tell her something, Mabel is secretly excited that he'll reveal he's a vampire... only to turn out that "Norman" is really just several gnomes in a Totem Pole Trench.
  • A Noodle Incident in "The Deep End" reveals that Mabel actually got to meet "some cute vampires" when her brother wasn't around.
    Dipper: I don't remember the vampires.
    Mabel: I don't tell you everything.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The Show Within a Show that Pony Head is watching in "Bam Ui Pati!" has a vampire as the romantic male lead.
• Maya and the Three has Zatz, the teenage half-human son of the god of bats, Camazotz. While not technically a vampire, being a pale White-Haired Pretty Boy with fangs and red eyes who can turn into a bat, he's one in all but name (Picchu actually mockingly calls him "el vampiro guapo" at one point). He also happens to end up as the Love Interest of the main character.

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