Random but this phrase makes me think of the Boondocks... They just keep saying that over and over in one episode and I've honestly never heard it anywhere else although I'm sure it's a common phrase lol


But yes, since Bethesda won't just step in to make an official statement neither side can be proved 100% right or 100% wrong.

I've been following this thread for sometime now. Overall some really great discussion. Figured it was about time I chimed in with my thoughts.


Insulting people rather than countering their claims with evidence is fun isn't it? Straw men arguments are also great.

For the record, I am among those who do not believe Harkon and his clan are actually Volkihar. Here are the things that led me to that conclusion:

1) Harkon and his clan never refer to themselves as such.
2) Neither does anyone else.
3) Serana mentions they are not the first residents of the castle, implying it could have been the home of the original Volkihar line who at some point were run out of the castle.
4) Harkon and his clan don't exhibit any of the powers recorded in "Immortal Blood,"* nor are they in the correct location. Castle Volkihar is in the western half of Skyrim, while "Immortal Blood" states that the Volkihar are situated in the eastern part of the province, to say nothing of the fact that they live in a big old castle instead of beneath frozen lakes.
5) No new texts have emerged to indicate that "Immortal Blood" is inaccurate/fiction/non-canon, etc. No new dialogue that I've been made aware of questions its validity either.
6) Harkon's claim of his clan being "among the oldest and most powerful vampires in Skyrim" does not necessarily conflict with "Immortal Blood." The book clearly states that the Volkihar are the most powerful clan in the east. Harkon's clan could be the most powerful clan in the west.

Those are the pieces of evidence I use to support my stance that the vampires encountered in Skyrim are not Volkihar, but a separate strain entirely. As someone pointed out earlier, no side can be proven correct until the devs decide to release a statement clarifying this issue. In the meantime, I will continue to use these pieces of evidence as the basis of my beliefs, either until Bethesda says I'm wrong, or someone provides convincing evidence to make me think otherwise. I acknowledge that I don't have a stranglehold on the lore of this particular field (or of the lore in general for that matter), and there may be very valid arguments against what I'm using as evidence.


And to (briefly) counter this:

Some look at the fact that Harkon and his clan live in Castle Volkihar as evidence enough of their bloodline, but I don't think that's the case at all. After all, Ulfric Stormcloak lives in the Palace of Kings, but that does not make him High-King by default (and he never will be in my game), and he never renames it Stormcloak Palace or anything like that either. There's just as much precedent for people keeping the name of a castle/palace the same as there is of changing it. The name of a building doesn't necessarily reflect the residents inside. After all, Buckingham Palace isn't called Windsor Palace today, and it wasn't named Hanover Castle or anything like that when Queen Victoria moved into it in the 1830's. Not saying it's an impossibility, but it doesn't convince me either.

*I'm well aware that gameplay does not equal lore, and that this is not the strongest thing to stand on especially considering how screwed up vampirism became in Skyrim/Dawnguard. Vampires that should have been members of the Cyrodiilic strain are identical to those that are presumably Volkihar, which are identical to Harkon sans transformations, etc. It's a jumbled confused mess. However, the fact that they don't exhibit any ice-based abilities whatsoever other than a resistance makes me look at it as a point against the argument. After all, the complete lack of these abilities is much different than other gameplay does not equal lore points, such as the small population of Skyrim or the cooldowns with the Thu'um.

Dova vampires in skyrim were meant to get a free frost cloak power called dread cloak but it was removed from the game like many other things in skyrim. Plus skyrim vampires have vampiric drain and vampire servant powers which the cyrodil vampires don't have.

Honestly to me the reason why I believe they are volkihar is because of the way the npcs talk about the other vampires during sidequests and from a writing stand point. To me this whole thing is making something simple more complicated.

At the end of the day I think skyrim vampires just got retconned for gameplay reasons. Since people were complaining about sun damage and stage 4 attacks (personally i think removing these two makes vampires less fun thank god for vampire mods) Plus the ice phasing ability you would barely get any use out of since npcs pretty much go nowhere near the icy shoreline of skyrim so you would not get much use out of it.

Plus knowing the bugs and gameplay issues bethesda causes think about how buggy the ice phasing would be heck they haven't released dawnguard on the ps3 yet. As I said skyrim vampires were meant to get a free frost power but it was removed it can be easilly added back in if you are on the PC oh and you are also meant to get extra unarmed damage since vampires are also meant to have an ability called vampiric touch.

So as you said right now vampiric lore is a jumbled mess don't be suprised when we see cyrodil vampires again they will have glowing eyes. (I hope I am wrong).

Not to the extent like the Volkihar. The ones in vanilla Skyrim worked just fine. Only stage 3 and 4, though. Stage 1 we should look exactly human. Stage 2 we should look like we have a cold. Stage 3, red eyes begin to show and cheeks start to lose color, and character grows more pale. Stage 4; blazing red/orange eyes, sharp fangs, pronounced cheekbones.

I agree.

I pray that we get good treatment of vampires if/when we get to Valenwood. I keep thinking about the ones you can only tell are vampires by candlelight, and how creepy it would be to have a quest where you work with one or more of these people to reach a certain point where it's revealed that they're vampires when you see how their eyes glow by candlelight. It'd be really creepy if it turned out an entire community that was otherwise acting very nice and normal is actually preying on travelers. Kinda like that one town in Fallout 3.

Come to think of it, the people in Fallout 3 all had scary as hell glowing eyes when you talked to them in the dark.

Just wait werewolf because of people's QQ about vampire mechanics the other clans will be changed.

I hope that's not the case. I complained about the vampire mechanics in Vanilla Skyrim and got very happy when I heard about the "vampire overhaul" in Dawnguard.

Then I found out what the vampire overhaul actually was. And I complained more because they somehow decided to make the vampire mechanics worse than they were before.

I hope they keep to their lore more when it comes to vampirism in future titles.

I frankly don't give a damn about any other vampire clan. If the next games takes place in Elsweyr, just bring on playable mummies.

But then the Khajiit will get their little paws tangled up when they try to play with the bandages... something that would be adorable if not for the corpse they'd uncover in the process.

The castle is called Castle Volkihar and it seems it has been called that for thousands of years. You would think if Harkon was not Volkihar, he would of changed the name of the castle by now.

As has been pointed out numerous times already, names of castles and surnames of the people living there do not always coincide.
Not even after a hostile takeover from the people who did have the same name as the castle.
History is full of these examples. A name of castle, as the one and only reference to the Volkihar in the entire DLC, is not enough to claim these vampires are Volkihar.

Daggerfall had more vampire clans than most today are familiar with.
As some parts of that map were in SKyrim or Hammerfell, one had the option to be part of any specific clan if they had planted a recall point there so they could "die" there from the Sanguinaris.

Each clan had its own strengths as well.

Morrowind reduced the number of clans to 3, Oblivion had one clan type and no clan presence.