Immortal children

"*What they were thinking, those ancient ones, I can't begin to understand. They created vampires out of humans who were barely more than infants… They were very beautiful. So endearing, so enchanting, you can't imagine. You had but be near them to love them; it was an automatic thing. However, they could not be taught. They were frozen at whatever level of development they'd achieved before being bitten. Adorable two-year-old children with dimples and lisps that could destroy half a village in one of their tantrums. If they hungered, they fed, and no words of warning could restrain them… In the end, the practice was completely eliminated. The immortal children became unmentionable, a taboo.*"―Carlisle, on the immortal children

**Immortal children** are human children who have been turned into vampires at a very early age. Creating immortal children has long been outlawed by the Volturi due to their inability to remain concealed from the human world. There is no absolute age limit set as to what constitutes an immortal child; it was a subjective definition, based on the child's ability to behave themselves in a way consistent with vampire law.

### Physiology

Like all vampires, immortal children are frozen at the mental and physical age at which they were transformed. Post-transformation, these small children continued to exhibit childish behaviors, including impulsive acts, tantrums, irresponsible activities, and a general lack of circumspection. It is said that an immortal child's tantrum can kill people, since restraint is basically impossible for someone so young.

Another aspect was their appeal; they were both so beautiful and endearing that any human or vampire would automatically love them. Carlisle described them as adorable little children with smiles and dimples that would destroy a village in one of their tantrums.

It is presumed that while their mental maturity is frozen at the age they were transformed, they still have the vampiric gifts of enhanced strength and speed as well the supernatural gifts of certain vampires.

### History

The uncontrollable, childish behaviors of immortal children battled the vampire laws of secrecy, and these children often attracted the notice of humans.

The Volturi found themselves punishing individual covens for the behavior of their immortal children with a much greater frequency than other occurrences of lawlessness. Because of the devotion inspired by immortal children, the Volturi were forced to destroy full covens in order to destroy one immortal child. After some study into the matter, the Volturi decreed that immortal children were not capable of following the law, and therefore it was made illegal to create them. Creating one had since become the worst crime in the vampire world, under penalty of death for both the child and its creator, whether the child had broken the law or not.

Even after the law was established ORLA , the Volturi kept two children to experiment on. However, no matter how many centuries they'd spent teaching the children, they still could not be controlled or taught. Carlisle Cullen stumbled across these children during his stay in Volterra and learned of this law. After they determined that immortal children could not be tamed, they had the children destroyed.

In Book 3 of *Breaking Dawn*, Irina misidentified Renesmee for being an immortal child because she witnessed her inhuman capabilities and beauty from a distance, prompting her to report the child to the Volturi.