By any system of law every single vampire is a multiple-murderer. But they are, for all intents and purposes, a different species. They require blood, preferably human blood, in order for their existence to continue.

The only reason to judge them by our own standards is that they were once like us. Their crimes against us are far less than our own against different species.

Vampire society is primitive, it’s still at the level of hunter-gatherer. There? no infrastructure, individuals live with only their strength and their reputation to keep them safe. There is no law amongst vampires except that which is imposed despotically by the strong upon the weak and new-born. Laws which fall away as soon as that power is broken.

Vampires are not our equals, they are our predators. Poetic justice for a species that considered itself the top of the food chain for millennia.

Humanity as predator does and has done far worse things. We have destroyed entire species, we hunt for sport, we imprison cattle and then slaughter them. We take their young as a special delicacy. We torture for our own sake. We don’t even have the excuse of lacking a soul to justify it. We do not need to do that which we do, man can survive without meat, we can survive without eggs on the table, without cosmetics, without medicinal drugs. Do we want to? Of course not.

What sets vampires apart from what we have done as a species is the pleasure they take from their actions. But is the pleasure they receive based on the suffering they cause to others or from the sustenance they are about to receive, in which case how can we judge them any more harshly than a man who enjoys a good steak? In Amends the First haunts Angel with the words that he took more pleasure from killing than any beast, he is an exception in the pleasure he takes from inflicting pain.

My point is not to excuse their actions. They are killers, and ones for whom there is little chance of reconciliation or rehabilitation. I only ask that the war between human and vampiric society be accepted for what it is, a war, a battle for survival on both sides where anything goes, a war we are winning. And if we need to believe that we hold the moral high ground in our fight then we should know that we are deluding ourselves.

The ethics of a vampire can only be judged by their standards. And this is something we, the viewers, do, quite automatically, we make allowances for people? state, for their culture. Spike? love for Drusilla raised him in our eyes from the ranks of the rest of the herd despite the fact that he has committed horrible acts. Wesley's condescending tone and authoritarian attitude condemns him, not logically or rationally but rather in our affection for him, far more in the eyes of some.

Is part of the reason that we have such real consideration over the moral ambiguity of the bad guys a result of the reduction in violence necessary for a family show? Would we be less willing to forgive and forget the bad guys deeds if we saw the full extent of the consequences? The vamps bite, they do not suck, the amount of blood that is produced from a carotid artery is pathetically small. Most victims are bitten and die quietly, there are no death spasms, no looks of terror, no pathetic pleadings for mercy. We have very little knowledge of their victims or of the suffering that their passing will cause to those who loved them. The few times we do, as with the death of Jenny Calender, the act causes such moral debate as to condemn a character on that basis alone, blithely ignoring the fact that this occurs every single day. While we are sustenance to them, we are not to each other.

And of course there? a reason for it. That? not what the show is about. In the same way we do not concern ourselves with the baddie-victims of a trigger-happy hero in an action flick. It is merely a medium to get the point across, the actual specifics of how vampires live day to day is really irrelevant. They could be any monster, it would probably make it less popular, but it wouldn’t change the fundamental principles that the show is trying to transmit. Nor is it really reasonable to claim that the soft-core approach to vampires will provoke similar acts in the real world.

So what can we conclude? I think it is this, when you think about the moral ambiguities of the vamps, throw the body-count out the window. That doesn’t mean don’t consider their violent side, after all violence is one of the primary ways a vampire expresses his personality. But their ‘cattle-feeding’ (for want of a better name) is merely what they are, not who they are, nor who we are supposed to consider them as. They must be judged by the ethical standards of their species and, of course, you can freely condemn individuals for their excesses. Angelus stands out as an example of a vampire that took ‘more kinds of pleasure in killing than any beast’ and he is rightly reviled for it.

But when you do judge them by their own standards, just remember that they judge you by their own standards as well and in their eyes you and everyone you know has no more right to life than walking beef in the slaughterhouse.