Katerina Petrova

Katherine Pierce, born Katerina Petrova (Bulgarian: Катерина Петрова) was a witch of the Traveler sub-culture and a former main character of The Inner Circle. She was also the second-known Petrova Doppelgänger of Amara and a former vampire. She was the main antagonist of season one (mostly off-screen through John Gilbert's and Isobel's actions, as both were working for her in order to kill off the tomb vampires), and one of the main antagonists of season two, the second half of season four and the first half of Season Five. She was also the final antagonist of season eight. Katherine can be considered the main antagonist of the series overall due to being a major antagonist in the first, second, fourth, fifth and eight seasons and all the antagonists that were a result of her actions.

In 1490, she was disowned by her father because she brought shame upon her family after giving birth to a baby girl out of wedlock when she was seventeen. She was forced to give the baby up for adoption and then was then exiled to England. She quickly assimilated into English culture and met two nobleman brothers, Niklaus and Elijah Mikaelson. At first, she was attracted to both men, but in time, she eventually learned that she was a Petrova doppelgänger and that Klaus was planning on using her as a sacrifice in order to break the curse that bound his werewolf side. She sabotaged his plan by running away with the moonstone, which bound the curse, and then tricked Rose into feeding her vampire blood so she could turn herself into a vampire. Because Katherine was no longer human, her blood no longer was a viable component of the ritual to undo the curse. Klaus was so infuriated with Katherine's sabotage, that she was forced to live on the run for over 500 years as he hunted her down.

Her activities during her first centuries as a vampire are unknown, but at some point between the 15th and 19th centuries, she took on the alias "Katherine Pierce" (an anglicized version of her birth name) and eventually met and befriended Pearl, Anna, and Emily Bennett. In the late 19th century, she traveled to Mystic Falls, where she met Stefan and Damon Salvatore, whose family hosted her at the Salvatore Estate. She later fell in love with both brothers, and subsequently fed them her blood, resulting in their eventual transitions into vampires after they were killed by their father in early autumn of 1864. When the Founder's Council found out the identities of the vampires in town, she faked her death and escaped being sealed in the tomb with the aid of George Lockwood, who helped her in exchange for the moonstone.

During the twentieth century, she continued to keep tabs on Stefan while still hiding from Klaus, including two separate sightings in Chicago in the 1920s and the 1980s. In 2010, she came back to Mystic Falls with the intention of finally earning her freedom from Klaus by handing over the Petrova doppelgänger who came after her, Elena Gilbert. To sweeten the potential deal with Klaus, she killed Caroline Forbes, who had Damon's blood in her system and later transitioned into a vampire, and tricked Mason and Tyler Lockwood into triggering their werewolf curses, just so they could each also serve as the vampire and werewolf sacrifices necessary in the ritual. She even tracked down the moonstone so that she could give Klaus every component necessary to break his curse. However, when her plans ultimately fell through, she fled Mystic Falls again shortly after Klaus broke his hybrid curse on his own, knowing that he was not done punishing her for her betrayal half a millennium ago.

After failing to induce Klaus' forgiveness by securing the cure and handing it over to Elijah in Season Four, Katherine managed to draw Klaus away from Mystic Falls by revealing to him in a letter that a witch in New Orleans named Jane-Anne Deveraux was plotting against him. Once Klaus and Elijah officially returned to New Orleans, Katherine moved back to Mystic Falls, confident that the Mikaelsons would be too preoccupied with their complications there to pay any attention to her.

In Graduation, Katherine initiated a violent fight with Elena, believing that Elena got the life that Katherine deserved. Just as she was about to rip her descendant's heart out of her chest, Elena forced the cure down Katherine's throat, which resulted in Katherine returning to a human/Traveler for the first time in over 500 years.

Following these events, she went on the run for the summer, but when she realized that her return to humanity made her vulnerable to all of the various supernatural enemies she had made over the centuries, she returned to Mystic Falls, hoping to sweet-talk Stefan and Damon into giving her their protection. However, she was forced to flee again when the immortal Silas came looking for her at the Salvatore Boarding House and tried to kill her. Silas later revealed to Damon that Katherine's blood became the cure after she had ingested it, which is why he wanted Katherine so he could cure himself and die so he could be reunited with his true love in the afterlife. She ran from him for weeks, but eventually, Damon helped Silas lure Katherine to the house and fed him her blood, which turned him back into a witch.

Though Katherine should have died after Silas completely drained her of blood, Katherine's survivor instincts won out, and she managed to live through the attack. Unfortunately for Katherine, she learned shortly afterward that having the cure removed from her bloodstream had caused her body to start rapidly aging in order to compensate for the 500+ years she had been "alive" as an immortal vampire. Not ready to die, her daughter Nadia reminded her that as the daughter of a Traveler, Katherine had the magical powers necessary to become a Passenger in someone else's body. She ultimately cast the Passenger spell on her deathbed to transfer her spirit into Elena's body, with help from Nadia and a Traveler named Mia. After the gang discovered this, Stefan stabbed her with the Traveler Knife, expelling her from Elena's body, but not before Katherine made amends with a dying Nadia. Upon learning she was denied entry to the Other Side, and therefore also denied a reunion with her daughter, she was dragged by unseen forces into what is presumed to be a hell of some kind.

It was revealed that Katherine was sent to Hell where she manipulated Arcadius since the minute she was sent there. She eventually returned became an ally of Kai Parker and after Cade's death and became the queen of Hell. Shortly after, she was killed by the Mystic Falls Gang after Bonnie sent hellfire back to hell while Katherine was there. Hell was destroyed and Katherine's fate remain unknown, either she was destroyed with hell or moved on and found peace.

Katherine's notable ancestors include Amara, who was Silas' true love and presumably the world's first immortal woman, and Tatia, whose blood was involved in the creation of the adapted spell of immortality that was cast on the Mikaelson Family by Esther, as well the curse that bound Klaus' werewolf side. She is also the maternal ancestor of Isobel Flemming and that of Isobel's biological daughter, Elena Gilbert. She was once the romantic interest of Stefan and Damon Salvatore, as well as Mason Lockwood. Since the late 15th century, she has also been the romantic interest of Elijah, with whom she was involved in the 21st century until he effectively ended their relationship by leaving to join his half-brother, Klaus, in New Orleans.

Katerina Petrova was a member of the Petrova Family.

Witch (1st Time)
In her early life, Katherine was a young and beautiful girl who was punished by her family for having a child out of wedlock. Initially named Katerina, she had loved her daughter very much and was heartbroken as she was taken from her and she never even got to held her. After she was banished from Bulgaria, she relocated to England and seemed quite capable of making independent and intelligent choices. Katerina was characterized as a caring and polite person. She was quick to adapt to her relocation and enjoyed socializing and playing games with others. Katerina was also known to fall quick for men and yearned to be in the affections of others, even declaring to Elijah that life was not worth living if they did not believe in love. Despite her banishment from Bulgaria and estrangement with her relatives, Katerina maintained affection for them and was particularly close to her mother.

Despite her innocence and naivety, Katerina had a sense of self-preservation and immediately sought to protect herself against Klaus by stealing the moonstone and escaping the ritual that meant her death in the process. She had sought out vampires, Rose and Trevor for assistance, but betrayed them by consciously deciding to become a vampire herself for survival and igniting Klaus's wrath upon them all.

Present Time (2nd Time)
After Elena forced The Cure down her throat when she had tried to kill her, Katherine was rendered a weak human and had to spent two months on the run from all of the enemies she had acquired in her 500+ year lifespan. She enlisted the help of Damon, but was momentarily sold out when Silas offered Stefan for Katherine. After that failed, Katherine was granted reluctant protection under Jeremy, Matt, and Damon from Silas. Her transition to human left her weak, disheveled, and miserable as she struggled to get used to her vulnerability. Katherine's personality as a human is largely the same as when she was a vampire. She maintains her sassiness, insensitivity, independence, pride, selfishness, and sense of self-preservation. She had initially left Jeremy to die after a car crash while on the run from Silas and immediately accused Elena of being Katherine while held at gunpoint. However, Katherine soon starts to show some signs of shifting away from her "psychotic bitch" demeanor. She willingly goes back to save Jeremy's life from Silas despite risking her own survival and agreed to help rid Matt of the passenger inside him named Gregor.

Katherine also becomes slightly less hostile with certain members in the Mystic Falls gang, creating a strained but not entirely unfriendly alliance with Caroline, Matt, and Jeremy. She seems to have a soft spot for them somewhere, shown in her decision to save Jeremy from Silas and most prominently her interactions with Caroline to get Wes Maxfield unsuspecting of her and Elena being vampires in return for using her college dorm for a few days. Katherine also helped Matt with his passenger and went to him to help her put off her death by exercises, though Matt still sticks to the belief "Katherine cares only for Katherine." She also met her long-lost daughter Nadia Petrova from 500 years ago and has genuine though complicated love for her, even attempting to cut off all ties with her for the sake of protecting her from Katherine's inevitable death since she couldn't be there for her.

Perhaps one of the most marked differences in Katherine's actions is her increased openness with her true emotions and vulnerability, particularly with Stefan. As she was dying of eventual old age after Silas drained The Cure out of her, Katherine falls into a depression with her loneliness and impending death to point she briefly lost the will to survive. Her misery climaxed into a suicide attempt by jumping off a clock tower, but failed when Stefan saved her. However, Katherine's inspired with a will to live through the recent support of Stefan. She becomes emotionally dependent on him in her darkest hours and quickly fell in love with him again, admitting that he was the only reason she wanted to live. Katherine's softer sides are made more obvious than ever before, wondering to Nadia if she could be redeemed for her past misdeeds and is worthy of forgiveness; a sharp contrast from her vampire self who had no remorse over anything and justified it as means to survival.

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 Petrova 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.

Moments before her death, she took advantage of Elena and possessed her because of her traveler heritage. In Elena's body, she tried to keep it a secret and one of the first things she did was break up with Damon. Her ultimate goal was to assimilate herself in Elena's life and discard Elena's soul/essence and try to have a romantic relationship with Stefan. Katherine first tricked Matt into thinking she was her, and got information from him to know more about Elena's life, compelling him to forget that she is in Elena's body. She pulls it off for a while, hiding from Elena's friends most of the time, but eventually everybody finds out, even though she had the help of her daughter, Nadia, who was also trying to keep it a secret. Stefan called her to the Salvatore house, and Katherine accepted her death in the end, but before she is finally gone revealed that she injected Elena with the ripper compound.

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 who has met any combination of the Petrova doppelgängers has remarked that Katherine looked identical to Elena, Tatia, and/or Amara. As such, Katherine was an extraordinarily beautiful and seductive young woman: she had an oval face with fine bone structure, a wealth of brown curly hair, and almond-shaped, deep brown eyes with thick dark lashes.

Katherine and Elena are remarked to be identical, but once you know what to look for, you can distinguish the two easily. Katherine's hair seemed to be a shade darker than Elena's, and she parted it on the left, while Elena parts hers in a deep part on the right. Elena seems to have naturally wavy hair, while Katherine's hair naturally had loose or tight curls. Katherine wore make-up very differently than Elena; Katherine favored a dark smoky eye with thick winged eyeliner, and her choice in lipstick was a darker, sultry pink appearance, while Elena preferred a bronze smoky eye and thin eyeliner. Katherine, having much curlier hair, seemed to have a much greater volume than Elena's, especially when Elena wore her hair stick-straight.

There are even more subtle differences that only a true fan of Katherine or Elena can detect. Katherine's irises seemed to be a shade darker than Elena's, and Katherine seemed to squint slightly, while Elena's eyes are wide open, reminiscent of doe-eyes. Katherine was also incredibly theatrical in her movement, exaggerating almost everything as though she had rehearsed any given situation over and over again.

Katherine's choice in clothes was drastically different than Elena's. In season 2, 3, and 4, Katherine was seen wearing either leggings or dark super-skinny jeans to show off her fit figure, along with either blue, purple, or black tank tops. She would almost always wear a black leather jacket over her clothes, either cropped, full length, buttoned or with a zipper. An obvious way to distinguish Katherine's style from Elena's is by looking at Katherine's shoes. Katherine was always seen in black high heeled booties, open-toed pumps, or tall, black "500 dollar boots." Katherine was also seen to wear a lot more jewelry than Elena, including her lapis lazuli daylight bracelet, chain bracelets in either silver or gold, and a watch. In Season 5, she was seen to care less about her appearance, but was still seen in cute, fashionable outfits. She was shown in dark grey J-Brand jeans, lower heeled boots than when she was a vampire, and either black camisoles or long-sleeved shirts with lace sleeves. In Fifty Shades of Grayson, she was seen in sports gear, a baseball cap, and, during her final scene, a dark burgundy cardigan.

When deducing where Katherine bought most of her clothes, she was quoted as saying that she bought most of her shoes in Paris. The majority of her jeans are J-Brand, and almost the entirety of her tops, especially those worn in season 5, were from Bebe.

Whenever Katherine pretended to be Elena, she parted her hair in a deep right parting, and styled the front of her hair in loose curls and waves, leaving the back of her hair straight or slightly wavy. However, Katherine would choose clothes that Elena wouldn't wear, and the main distinguishing feature was usually her thick abundance of hair.

Witch
Katherine after being cured possessed all the standard powers and abilities of a mortal Witch. She then possessed little fighting ability and also possessed a weak form of Traveler magic, due to belonging to a cursed culture of witches. However, she was shown using her witchcraft only twice, in order to become a passenger in Elena's body, and to give her daughter a vision of what her life should have been like. It has also been mentioned by Caroline that Katherine was not an easy target as she was able to perceive sneak attacks before they happened as a result of the heightened survival instincts she developed after spending five centuries on the run from the Original Vampires.

Vampire
Katherine had possessed all the standard powers and abilities of a non-Original vampire. She has shown to be a very experienced fighter, able to hold her own against both Stefan and Damon in battle. Being 538 years old made Katherine one of the most powerful vampires to appear in the series, until she was forced to take the cure which turned her back into a witch of the Traveler subculture. Katherine was shown to be known and feared by nearly everyone.

Spirit
Katherine was sent to hell after her death. In hell, she manipulated Arcadius and after his death she became the "queen of hell". As a spirit of hell she was immortal, though unlike Cade, when stabbed with a bone dagger she could only be sent to hell temporary. Her only weakness was the destruction of hell, while she was there. In addition, she could control Hellfire and control over other spirits within Hell.

Weaknesses
Katherine had the typical weaknesses of a non-Original vampire until she was forced to take the cure in 2011, which turned her back into a witch of the Traveler subculture. She then had the typical weaknesses of a witch until her death in the same year. When she escaped from Hell and later became the Ruler of Hell after Arcadius' demise, she could only temporarily be killed and sent back to Hell if stabbed by a weapon made from her own remains and the only way to permanently kill her was to destroy Hell while she was still in there.