Louis-Cesare

**Louis-Cesare de Bourbon** — Character, Vampire — First Appearance: Touch the Dark

## Introduction

**Louis-Cesare de Bourbon** is featured in both the Cassie Palmer and Dorina Basarab series, although he spends most of his time in the latter. And half the time, he doesn't know whether he's enjoying that fact or not.

As a four-hundred-year-old master vampire and the former dueling champion of the European Senate, Louis-Cesare thought he'd seen it all and mastered most of it. Until he met his family patriarch's annoying, seductive and completely maddening daughter, Dorina.

Dorina Basarab is a Dhampir, a monster good little vampires are warned to stay well away from. But Louis-Cesare has never been particularly good, and he intends to get to know Dorina a great deal better. He just hopes she doesn't kill him first. ~ Take A Chance: Gallery

## About

**Louis-Cesare** was borrowed from the European Senate as a Duelist after the Consul was challenged to a Duel by Rasputin. The Consul is powerful, but she isn't a duelist and Mei Ling does't have Rasputin's experience.

### Other Names and Titles or Nicknames

* *M'sieur le Tour*: 'the man in the tower' — called that once, although not to his face. He was often imprisoned in one. It had other meanings, too, at times.

### Powers & Abilities

* Swordsmanship
* Four-hundred-year-old Master Vampire
* Strong enough to hold a first level master vampire in thrall—somethng unheard of.

### How made a vampire

* **Original**: He was cursed with Vampirism by Francoise's grandmother, a powerful witch.

*After Cassie changed his history*:

* **Second**: Louis-César was changed by Radu the night Cassie rescued Françoise.

### Occupation

* Dueling champion for the European Vampire Senate.
* On loan to the North American Vampire Senate to be the Consul's Champion—Second—against Rasputin

### Origins / Residence / Nationality

* *French*
* Paris
* European Vampire Senate

### Masks During Long Imprisonment

* **Velvet Mask**: forced to wear so no one would notice his strong resemblance to Duke of Buckingham.
* **Iron Mask**: forced to wear after he was turned, and even then only when he was transported from one prison to the other—precaution so that he didn't eat anyone en route

### Character / Personality

* Has an open, honest face that is automatically trusted.

### Physical Description

* Bright blue eyes, calm
* Big dimples
* Auburn curls cascading halfway down his back
* Wears seventeenth-century court clothes—embroidered frock coat, frothy shirt, knee britches, silk hose.
* Handsome

### Family

* Parents: Duke of Buckingham, and Anne of Austria
* Half-Brother: King Louis XIV
* Master-to: Tomas
* Other:

### Enemies

* Rasputin
* Tomas
* King Louis XIV

### Other Details

* He was often imprisoned in in a tower.
* Cassie had an instinctive reaction of alarm and fear when close to him.
* Tomas let it slip that he had been changed by a curse.
* Alejandro has some sort of hold over him—he has something Louis-César wants and has promised it to him if he keeps Tomas under control.
* Records on records on Louis-César's early life are scant.
* All Rasputin would have to do to eliminate our Louis-César is to stake him before the third bite.
* His brother burned Francoise to death to force him into submission—he di dfar worse over the years.

## Cassie's Visions of Louis-Cesare

* Cassie has a vision from inside **Louis-Cesare**'s body. He wears a black velvet mask, is having sex with a young woman named Marie. A middle-aged woman with four guards enters, they drag him to the dungeon torture room where a young woman—Francoise—who has been tortured on a rack with too much blood having flowed from her body. The torturer set her in fire—Cassie witnesses it inside Louis-Cesare—inside his memory. — Touch the Dark
* Tomas goes with Cassie on the second vision. They find a horde of ghosts and rescue Francoise, leaving her at the cabin with Louis-Cesare.

## About Tomas

Tomas challenged his master, Alejandro, to a duel a century ago, but he wouldn’t face Tomas. Alejandro brought in a champion, a French duelling master named **Louis-Cesare**, instead. But rather than kill Tomas as Alejandro had wanted, after Louis-Cesar defeated him, Louis claimed Tomas as his slave.

## Biography

His half-brother had him imprisoned to protect his throne. He was forced to were a velvet mask when other would see him. He would get visits from women. On day he was taken to the dungeons for a tour to scare him. While there, he was forced to witness Francoise burned to death by the Carcassonne jailer who had already tortured her tied to a rack.

Louis-César was cursed with vampirism by the gypsy family whose daughter Francoise died because of him. She was their only daughter. The king ordered her put death to make a lasting impression on his half brother, but her family didn't know that. They blamed the man they thought had seduced her and then had her killed when she ceased to be amusing. Her grandmother was a very powerful woman, and in her grief she cursed him with vampirism."

Cassie returns to that time in a second vision with Tomas. They free Françoise from Carcassonne with the aid of some ghosts leaving her at the nearby cabin where Louis-Cesare is kept locked up. This changed Louis-Cesare's history. His new memories are of being attended to by a gypsy girl, named Françoise, the daughter of one of the guards at the castle. She was saving for her wedding. Louis-Cesare never knew what happened to her, he assumed her father had her sent away. He was fond of her and gave her a necklace. He thinks that might be why someone had wanted her killed.

That same night that Cassie rescued Francoise, Louis-César was changed into a vampire by Radu, Mircea's youngest brother. Radu bit Louis-César for the first time the night after the jailers left them alone together in an attempt to terrorize our Frenchman. Radu called him back the two nights afterwards until he changed. Perhaps he was trying to gain a servant who could release him. Because Radu was imprisoned, Louis-César's birth was not recorded until long after the fact. By the time any other master knew of his existence and might have tried to claim him, he was too powerful. He did not know what it was to have a master—he had to make his own way with little guidance. Louis-César was not free to move about for a long time, and by the time he was, Radu had been moved and he could not find him.

### His Brother, King Louis XIV

His father was George Villiers, the English Duke of Buckingham. He seduced Anne of Austria, Louis XIII's queen, while on a state visit to France. Louis preferred men, you see, a fact that had long left his queen frustrated and childless. Louis was not pleased about the idea of having a bastard on the throne, especially not a half-English one. Anne named her son after the king. The effort failed, and her firstborn was sent into hiding. The queen had another son, whom most said was sired by her adviser, Cardinal Mazarin. the boy came to the throne as Louis XIV. He wasn't happy to have a half-brother who looked a great deal like the Duke of Buckingham. King Louis put Louis-César in prison for the rest of his life, holding the threat of harm to his friends over his head to keep him docile. To make the point even clearer, he had him sent on a tour of France's most infamous house of horrors, the leading castle in the medieval witch hunts, Carcassonne. King Louis used it as a place of incarceration for any who disagreed with him, but the torturers and the troops supporting them were all found dead one morning in 1661, causing the greatest fortress of the Middle Ages to be abandoned.

## Related Characters, Groups, Places, etc

* Dorina Basarab
* Cassandra Palmer
* Mircea Basarab
* The Consul
* Tomas

## Events Throughout the Series

This section may have spoilers. If you want to avoid spoilers, please don't read the summary for a book that you have not read yet. Think of the book title as a "Spoiler Warning".

### 1. Touch the Dark

Louis-Cesare was present in the room when Cassie woke up after Tomas brought her to the Vampire Senate. he ordered Tomas to let Cassie go. In the Suite for Cassie at M.A.G.I.C.. When Louis-Cesare touched Cassie to tend her wounds, Cassie had a vision in which she was inside Louis-Cesare making love to a young woman named Marie. The door opened and a middle-aged woman entered with guards. She said: ""*All your life, you have experienced the rewards that come from silence. Tonight you will learn the punishment for breaking it*. He taken to a torture Dungeon to witness Francoise burned to death chained to a rack. During the stand off with Jimmy the Rat and the Were-Rats Louis-Cesare fought and killed many of them. He grabbed Tomas throat while Cassie was inside him—the both entered a vision in 17th Century France and rescued Francoise from the dungeon torture rack. They brought her to a cabin outside the tunnel where Louis-Cesare was kept. When Cassie awakes from the vision, he was defending her against Dark Mages with Pritkin and Tomas, with dead were-rats all around.

Rasputin is attempting to prevent Louis-Césare from being turned a vampire with the help of his Sybil (Myra) who has been aiding Rasputin and the Dark Circle trying to kill off Senate members. If he can remove Louis, he'll then duel Mei Ling who is not much of a challenge to him. He will win the Senate. All Rasputin would have to do to eliminate our Louis-César is to stake him before the third bite; kill him when he is yet human and helpless and he will never have to fight him. The records on Louis-César's early life are scant. The first time Rasputin can be sure where to find him is when he changed. It is on record, along with the peculiar circumstances of his masterlessness.

Cassie and Mircea return of 1661 Carcassonne where they inhabit Louis-Césare and the woman he was with in previous vision and possess their bodies. They deduce that Rasputin is likely to go kill Radu to prevent Louis from becoming a vampire instead of attacking him directly. Mircea head to the cell, while Cassie collects a ghost army. She finds Mircea (inside Louis) bloody and keeled over, needing to recover before moving Radu. But Rasputin and Myra come too soon. She commands her ghost army to attack them and her Dagger Bracelet joins the action—two knives make holes in Myra. But just as Myra's blow with her dagger nearly hit Cassie, everything freezes—Agnes appears.

### 2. Claimed by Shadow

Tomas stopped hearing Louis-Cesare's constant call while in Faerie, it helped him heal. His call drew Tomas to turn himself into the Senate to be tortured without knowing what he was doing—he just woke in a cell and didn't know how he got there.

## From the Author

**QUESTION 3: Speaking of last names, what is Louis-Caesar’s?**

That was actually a difficult question for him. His father was the **Duke of Buckingham**, whose family name was Villiers. But Buckingham was a playboy who never even realized he’d sired a son in that little fling with **Anne of Austria**, and probably wouldn’t have cared if he had. And for her part, Anne found it politically expedient to hide the child born on the wrong side of the blanket and to forget about him as soon as possible. So taking either of their names was distasteful.

But **de Bourbon**, the last name of the then royal line of France, wasn’t much better. Louis-Cesare wasn’t actually related to them, since he’d been the queen’s bastard. And his half-brother had had him imprisoned for having the bad taste to exist, which doesn’t give a person warm fuzzy feelings.

But there was more to consider than hurt feelings when choosing a name, because vampire society is not immune to celebrity-worship. Mircea, for example, isn’t the senate’s chief diplomat simply because of his ability. It’s a factor, but just as important is the glittering allure of his name, which sometimes gets him concessions no one else would have been offered. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that Louis-Cesare goes by de Bourbon. ~ Louis-Cesare 2013 | Karen Chance's Ramblings

## See Also

* Vampire Senate
* European Vampire Senate
* M.A.G.I.C.

## Book References

1. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 5
2. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
3. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
4. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
5. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
6. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 5
7. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 14
8. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 14
9. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 3
10. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 4
11. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 3
12. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
13. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 4
14. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
15. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
16. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
17. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
18. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 10
19. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
20. ↑ *"The Day of the Dead"*
21. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
22. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 4
23. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11 & 13
24. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 7
25. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 10 & 11
26. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
27. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 14
28. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 3
29. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 4
30. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 7
31. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 8
32. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 11
33. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 13
34. ↑ *Touch the Dark*, ch. 14
35. ↑ *Claimed by Shadow*, ch. 12

## Note

* Source for Images and Into: Author's site. The Artist is not credited I would name the artist.

## External Links

**Specific Links**

* Louis-Cesare 2013 | Karen Chance's Ramblings
* Louis-Cesare 2014 | Karen Chance's Ramblings

**Refence Links**:

* César, Duke of Vendôme - Wikipedia

**General Links**:

* Take A Chance: Gallery
* Cassandra Palmer series - Urban Fantasy Wiki
* Cassandra Palmer Series ~ Shelfari
* The Cassandra Palmer series - Wikipedia