Katherine Pierce

Katherine Pierce is a female character on the TV Show and Fanfiction, The Vampire Diaries. She has been a reccuring character in three seasons, and a main character in Season 2 and 5.

Early Life
Katerina Petrova (Cyrillic Катерина Петрова) was born into a wealthy Bulgarian family on June 5th 1473. In 1490, when she was about 16 or 17 years of age, Katerina became pregnant by an unknown man, and her family disowned her for the shameful birth of an illegitimate daughter. She carried the child to term, but seconds after her daughter's birth, Katerina's father took the child away, claiming it would be better for both of them to never see one another. Katerina was devastated by this and was banished to England, where she quickly adjusted by becoming English. In 1492, she met Trevor, who introduced her to Lord Elijah, who in turn introduced her to his younger brother, Lord Niklaus. Katerina was attracted to Klaus, until she found out what he was, and that he was planning on using her as a sacrifice to break the The Hybrid Curse placed on him. She escaped with the help of Trevor, who had fallen in love with her. He led her pursuers astray and told her to go east, to a cottage in the woods where she would be safe. When she arrived at a cottage, Katerina met a vampire named Rose. When Rose found out that Katerina had escaped from Klaus with the moonstone, she locked her in a room and told her that she would take her to Klaus as soon as the opportunity arose. Katerina tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself with a knife, saying she would rather die than go back to Klaus, but Rose force-fed her some of her blood to heal her. When Rose turned her back to confront Trevor, Katerina hung herself with a length of rope. Later, when Katerina woke up in transition, Trevor asked why she did it and claimed he would have helped her live. Katerina responds by saying that he would have been able to help her run and that running was never going to be enough. Rose then explains to Trevor that Katerina used him to escape and, knowing Klaus would find out their role in the escape, Rose attempted to kill Katerina with a stake. Katerina used the owner of the cabin as a shield, which resulted in her death. Katerina then gave in to her instincts and drained the little old lady, completing her transition into a vampire. She then threw the body towards Rose and Trevor and fled into the night. Katerina returned to Bulgaria in the latter months of 1492 to find her entire family brutally slaughtered by Klaus. She knew he had done it as revenge for her escape and subsequent transition. She was last seen weeping over her mother's dead body.

1864
372 years passed when in 1864 Katerina arrived in Mystic Falls, Virginia, by which time she had taken the name Katherine Pierce, presumably to avoid detection by Klaus. At some point she had become friends with Pearl and her daughter, Anna, and she saved the life of the witch Emily Bennett, putting Emily in her debt. Emily forged her a special piece of jewelry with the stone Lapis Lazuli which allowed her to walk in the sun without being burned. She was taken in by one of the town's founders, Giuseppe Salvatore, having spun a story about being orphaned by a fire that killed her family. Katherine met and fell in love with his son Stefan Salvatore, though she quickly began a physical relationship with Stefan's older brother, Damon, as well. Katherine created quite a few vampires while living in Mystic Falls, which inevitably alerted the Founding Families to their existence. Pearl warned Katherine that the town knew about the vampires after discovering an elixir containing vervain, which Honoria Fell had asked to be sold at the apothecary. Pearl tried to convince her to leave, but Katherine refused, claiming she had a plan in motion. Her plan, it turned out, was to turn Stefan and Damon into vampires, having seduced them both during her stay at the Salvatore household. Realizing how quickly the Founder's Council would take action against the vampires, Katherine struck a deal with George Lockwood: she would give him the moonstone if he would help her fake her death. Eventually, Stefan unwittingly suggested to his father that he knew a vampire, and Giuseppe guessed Katherine's true identity. Giuseppe spiked Stefan's drink with vervain and, later that same night, Katherine bit him. She was incapacitated by the vervain in his bloodstream, and, hearing the commotion, Giuseppe burst in to take her away. Damon later went to rescue her, and Stefan, upset that he had hurt his brother and jeopardized Katherine's life, helped him in the effort. They were both killed trying to save her, shot by their own father, Giuseppe, who was ashamed his sons had succumbed to the wiles of a demon. Katherine and the other vampires were taken to Fell's Church to be destroyed, but George helped Katherine escape. She gave George the moonstone, but instead of leaving right away, she turned to see Damon and Stefan's bodies lying in the road. She ran to Stefan, kissed him, and promised they would be together again someday. After transitioning into a vampire, Damon was told by Emily that Katherine was trapped in the tomb beneath the church, and as a result, the older Salvatore never stopped loving Katherine as he awaited the day he would be able to rescue her. In reality, Katherine was still lying low to evade Klaus, and she kept a close eye on the younger Salvatore brother, pointing out that she had seen him in the front row of a concert in the 1980s to prove that she'd always been watching over him.

1920s
In the 1920s, Katherine was in Chicago at the same time as Stefan, but she only observed him from afar. After a police raid cleared out the speakeasy, Katherine spotted Rebekah's necklace on the ground. She moved to pick it up, but ran away before Stefan could see or notice her. She watched him for a few moments before slipping into the shadows.

1970s
During the 1970s, Katherine employed the talents of the vampire Will, who owned the music club and bar, Billy's, and ran an identity theft ring that secured new identities for vampires. Damon, who was friends with Will and helped him by killing people to steal their ID cards, unwittingly helped Katherine in her mission to remain undetected

Seasons 1-4
For more information about Katherine Pierce's life during Seasons 1 - 4, go here to The Vampire Diaries Wiki.

Human
In her early life, Katherine was a young and beautiful girl who was punished by her family for having a child out of wedlock. After she was banished from Bulgaria, she relocated to England and seemed quite capable of making independent and intelligent choices. After she met Klaus, discovered that he and Elijah were vampires and that Klaus planned to sacrifice her in a ritual, she escaped them and ran for her life. On her way she even conned Rose into turning her into a vampire, securing at once the means to outrun Klaus as well as his eternal ire for thwarting his plans.

Vampire
After she had turned, she immediately fled the only vampires she knew and apparently learned to survive as one on her own. The large gap of time from her transition to her arrival in Mystic Falls is a mystery, but she likely befriended Pearl during this time. In 1864, she seduced both Damon and Stefan Salvatore, revealing to a compelled Stefan that she had big plans for the three of them to be together. Although she did develop genuine affection for both brothers, and even love for Stefan, she was also calculating and selfish, selling out the other vampires in town in order to fake her own death. Her actions both in 1492 and 1864 demonstrate an extremely well-developed sense of self-preservation, almost always at the expense of any human compassion or remorse.

In present day, Katherine remains very much the same in this respect. She returns to Mystic Falls with the goal of securing the moonstone as well as a vampire, a werewolf, and the second doppelgänger, solely for the purpose of handing them over to Klaus in exchange for amnesty. In the process, she manipulates and seduces Mason Lockwood to have him do her bidding, orchestrates the activation of both Mason's and Tyler's werewolf gene, turns Caroline into a vampire, compels Jenna to stab herself, lures Jenna out of her house to be sacrificed in Klaus' ritual, and leaves behind her a trail of other casualties, all in the name of securing her freedom. However, she redeems herself to the Salvatores, if only slightly, first by delivering the antidote to Damon's werewolf bite and later by helping in the plan to kill Mikael.

Despite her ruthlessness, it is clear that Katherine has deep, genuine feelings for Stefan. Unable to reveal herself to him without ruining the usefulness of being dead, she still observed him from afar over the years, admitting as much to Stefan in the present day. In fact, Katherine is usually at her most honest about her true feelings when she believes she is unobserved, as when she kissed an unconscious Stefan before leaving Mystic Falls, and when she looked on at him in the 1920s speakeasy.

Her relationships with other characters also sometimes reveal a crack in the "psychotic bitch" facade. Although she claims to his face that she never loved him, Damon still holds some of her affection, and she has offered him genuine help more than once. With regard to her doppelgänger, although she was willing to trade Elena's life for her freedom from Klaus, she never demonstrated any real animosity toward her. In fact she freely admitted an admiration for her descendant's tenacity, a quality she values in herself. And despite fearing Elijah nearly as much as Klaus because of her escape centuries earlier, she has since become his ally, and even seems to genuinely care about and possibly love him.

Katherine's extremely heightened sense of self-preservation has helped her develop a knack for creating elaborate plans and deceptions. Even when she takes a risk, which must be well worth it, she proceeds with caution and a means of escape in place. Thus, despite whatever feelings she has for Stefan, Damon, and now Elijah, it cannot be certain whether she would save their lives over her own, though the evidence so far suggests Katherine could not help but choose her own survival above all else.

Throughout her centuries-long life, Katherine has always been tough, feisty, independent and smart. If a task needs doing, she'll find a way to accomplish it, usually through a combination of uncompromising will and skilled manipulation of people and circumstances. Her personal motto - "Better you die than I" - does well to encapsulate her instinct for self-preservation as well as the detached cruelty which many vampires choose to adopt. But in her private moments, there is yet a glimpse of the human girl who once said that life is too cruel to live without love.

Physical Appearance
Almost every character that has met both of them have remarked that Katherine looks identical to Elena; indeed, they are both dopplegagers their common ancestor Tatia. As such, Katherine is an extraordinarily beautiful and seductive young woman: she has an oval face with fine bone structure, a wealth of brown curly hair, and almond-shaped, deep brown eyes with thick dark lashes. The simplest way of distinguishing Katherine from Elena is in observing basic cosmetic differences: Katherine favors a curly hair style, while Elena typically wears hers straight; Katherine often pairs a sensually cut outfit with heels, while Elena is usually seen wearing comfortable, practical options like jeans, T-shirts and sneakers; and Katherine tends to wear more makeup than Elena.

However, there are subtler differences between the two that only a keener eye can detect. Katherine's eyes seem to be a shade darker than Elena's, having a smoky, shadowy appearance; where Elena's eyes are guileless, Katherine usually seems to be hiding something behind hers. Her mannerisms are more deliberate, almost as though she is performing for her audience - a skill that comes in handy when she wants to borrow the identity of the younger doppelgänger. Even her speaking voice seems harsher, more cutting than Elena's.