Doppelgängers

"When they drank the immortality elixir, they violated the natural law that all living things must die, so nature found a balance by creating mortal shadow selves" — Qetsiyah in

Doppelgängers, also known as Shadow-Selves or Mortal Shadow Selves, are a supernatural occurrence that were created by Nature as a result of Silas and Amara becoming true immortals after consuming Qetsiyah's immortality elixir. The purpose of this supernatural species is to maintain the natural balance by dying in place of their immortal progenitors. For this reason, doppelgängers have existed for at least 1,000 years during which time they have been born and died in the place of Silas and Amara, who, as true immortals, were invulnerable to any conventional weapon.

There are two known doppelgänger lines which stem from Silas and Amara, respectively. Known doppelgängers of Silas are Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery, and known doppelgängers of Amara are Tatia, Katherine Pierce and Elena Gilbert.

As of Season Seven, Stefan Salvatore and Elena Gilbert are the last remaining doppelgängers.

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Creation

The phenomenon of the shadow-self occurs to counterbalance a disruption to Nature's law that all living things must die. Qetsiyah, one of the most powerful witches and member of a very gifted people called the Travelers, created a spell for immortality with the intention that she and Silas would drink it together at their wedding. However, Silas stole the immortality elixir and used it on himself and his lover, Amara, who was Qetsiyah's handmaiden, so that the two could be together for eternity. Disrupting the balance of Nature when they became truly immortal, Nature eventually began to create copies of Silas and Amara that could die to counter the balance that was disrupted by these new immortals. With Silas and Amara now both dead, it is unknown if Nature will continue to spawn more doppelgängers.

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Introduction of the Doppelgänger

The first doppelgängers introduced in this universe were Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce (also known as Katerina Petrova), but they were initially believed to exist due to Elena being one of Katherine's descendants. However, it was later revealed that, while doppelgängers do have a bloodline connection, they are not simply a supernatural species like werewolves—they are actually mystically occurring beings who are loopholes to the creation of the Immortality Spell by Qetsiyah in the 1st century BCE. Because Nature decreed that all living things must die, the Immortality Spell disrupted the balance Nature had created, which forced Nature to counter it by creating living "shadow-selves" of the immortal Silas and Amara who could die in their place. These doppelgängers are believed to either be direct descendants of Silas and Amara's respective bloodlines, or descendants of one of their siblings, who would be the closest genetic match to continue their lineage.

Because their creation was a consequence of the use of magic, doppelgängers are supernatural, and as such, their blood can be used as a binding agent for powerful spells, such as the spell that created the Originals, and therefore the creation of the vampire race. However, they have no actual supernatural powers of their own aside from the mystical properties of their blood, and the only reason it is known that they are truly supernatural is because Elena mercy-killed Alaric Saltzman while he was wearing a Gilbert ring in hopes that it would cause him to come back, as the ring can only resurrect the wearer if they die at the hands of a supernatural being, and they were unsure of who had originally seriously wounded Alaric before Elena got there. Since the ring brought Alaric back from the dead, it was confirmed that Elena, despite being otherwise human, was a supernatural being. This also confirmed Elijah Mikaelson's suspicion that the Gilbert ring wouldn't work on Elena because she was technically a supernatural being. Though doppelgängers are supposed to represent mortality in the place of an otherwise truly immortal being, they can achieve immortality through vampirism, as was in the case of Katherine, Stefan, and Elena, as a result of their being technically human as well. This could also be because vampires aren't fully invulnerable creatures like immortals are—they can be killed through various means such as staking, heart extraction, decapitation, etc.

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History

1st Century B.C.: Silas and Amara

Over two thousand years ago in Ancient Greece, a young witch named Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah, also a fellow witch. Together, they were the most powerful members of a gifted people called the Travelers. Silas told Qetsiyah that he wanted their love to last forever, even beyond death, and he convinced her to create a spell that would make them immortal. On the night that their wedding ceremony was to take place, Silas absconded with the elixir Qetsiyah had created, and as Qetsiyah watched the plant life around her wither before her eyes, she realized that not only had Silas taken the elixir and left her at the altar, he had also given her portion to someone else. She sought out Silas and found him in the wilderness with another woman – her handmaiden, Amara - who had taken Qetsiyah's share of the immortality elixir.

Silas, having left Amara alone for an unknown reason, returned to their hiding place to find Qetsiyah crouching over the chalice that had held the elixir they were to drink at their wedding. He cautiously inquired after Qetsiyah's purpose for being there, so she explained that, to follow up her first gift of the immortality elixir, she had brought a second gift: the cure for immortality. Silas was dumbfounded, hardly believing her, but she insisted that it worked, as she had already used it on another immortal. Filled with dread, Silas ran into the tent he had shared with Amara, only to find blood soaked into every surface, as though someone had been brutally slaughtered there. Qetsiyah followed him into the tent and lifted a bloody human heart out of the chalice, admitting that she had slit Amara's throat before ripping her heart out. She then gave him an offer to take the cure and spend the rest of his human life with Qetsiyah, an offer that Silas refused.

In retribution for betraying her, Qetsiyah used the eternal and indestructible body of Amara (whose death she had faked just prior to using magic to desiccate her into stone) to create the supernatural purgatory known as the Other Side. She then lured Silas to an island off of what is now Nova Scotia, Canada, where she trapped him inside a tomb and gave him a choice: he could take the cure and eventually die a mortal death (which would then cause him to pass on to the Other Side, where he would be trapped with her for eternity in the afterlife) or he could stay immortal and starve into petrification for the rest of his immortal life. Silas ultimately chose the latter and desiccated for the next two thousand years while the cure was left untouched.

One major consequence of Silas and Amara becoming immortal was the creation of two lines of shadows-selves, or doppelgängers of the two immortals. Their immortality had violated Nature's law that all living things must die, and so the doppelgängers came to exist as versions of Silas and Amara that could die. According to Qetsiyah, many identical replicas of Silas and Amara have been born over the centuries, finding each other time and time again as though drawn together by destiny. However, it was later revealed by a fellow Traveler, Markos, that he had cast the spell on the two respective lines of doppelgängers to draw them together so they could eventually break the curse on their people by harvesting the blood of the sole remaining doppelgängers of each line.

10th Century A.D.: Tatia and the Mikaelson Family

Tatia was a descendant of Amara and was her first known shadow-self. She lived in the New World in what eventually became Mystic Falls, Virginia, in the late 10th and early 11th centuries as a contemporary of the Mikaelson family. Even though she had already had a child by another man, a Viking warrior who had died in battle, both Elijah and Klaus fell in love with her and fought each other for her affections. Tatia ended up choosing Elijah over Klaus in the autumn of 1001 AD. Shortly afterward, their mother, the powerful witch Esther, came to Tatia to ask her for some of her blood to use in a spell, presumably because she knew Tatia was a doppelgänger due to her plan to use a modified version of Qetsiyah's immortality spell to turn her husband Mikael and her five surviving children into immortal creatures and sought out the powerful mystical properties of her blood; Esther was intent on preventing herself from losing any more family following the loss of her firstborn daughter Freya and her youngest son Henrik over the years. Esther then enchanted Tatia's donated blood and laced the wine that Mikael and the children drank with dinner that night. Afterward, Mikael drove his sword through the hearts of Finn, Elijah, Klaus, Kol and Rebekah before presumably turning the blade on himself. Upon awakening in transition, the six Mikaelsons fed on human blood and sealed their transformation into what became known as the Original vampires.

Unfortunately, with this transformation came a terrible hunger for human blood that was nearly insatiable, a side effect that Esther didn't foresee prior to casting the spell on them. When Klaus made his first human kill while feeding on a woman from their village, he triggered his werewolf gene, revealing that he was actually the product of an affair Esther had with the village's werewolf chief Ansel and causing him to transform into a wolf for the first time as a result of becoming the world's first vampire-werewolf hybrid. The morning after his transformation, Elijah found Klaus in the woods next to the bodies of six villagers he had accidentally slaughtered in his confusion. They were then caught discussing Klaus' werewolf heritage by Tatia, who was so frightened she immediately ran away from them. Elijah chased after her to explain what had happened, and Tatia admitted that she had given his mother her blood, not knowing that she would use her dark magic to turn them into monsters. Elijah, hurt by her harsh words, tried to argue that he was not a monster, but he became overwhelmed by his newborn vampire bloodlust when he caught the scent of her blood on her palm, as she had injured it earlier when she tripped and fell into the woods. Despite Elijah's attempts to get her away from him before he could hurt her, he eventually succumbed to his bloodlust and fed on her to the point of death.

When he came back to his senses, he was horrified by what he had done and brought her body back to his mother in hopes that she could save her. However, Elijah was too late, and Esther instead took Tatia's body, eventually using the small amount of blood that remained to cast the Hybrid Curse on Klaus to make his werewolf side dormant in a futile attempt to make up for her sins to her husband and the Spirits of Nature for disrupting the balance. It can be assumed that it was Tatia's child who continued on the bloodline of doppelgängers descended from Amara.

15th Century A.D.: Katerina, Elena, and the Hybrid Curse

The notion of the doppelgänger as a class of supernatural beings was first formally introduced in The Vampire Diaries Season Two episode Rose by the character of the same name. Until that point, the term was used simply to describe the human Elena Gilbert's uncanny resemblance to the vampire Katherine Pierce, who was born by the name of Katerina Petrova. In this episode, Rose explained that Elena is a "Petrova doppelgänger" and that she is one of the necessary components in a ritual to break what was referred to as "the Sun and the Moon curse," which allegedly caused vampires to be slaves to the sun and werewolves to be servants of the moon. Rose and her best friend Trevor had originally tried to hand Elena over to Elijah Mikaelson in an effort to earn back their freedom from him and Klaus.
Unfortunately, while Elijah granted Rose her freedom because he respected her loyalty to Trevor, he killed Trevor in punishment for not demonstrating the same loyalty to him and his brother, leading Rose to decide to tell Elena and the Salvatores what she knew about Klaus and his interest in the Petrova doppelgänger. Rose's story was corroborated by Katherine in the episode Katerina, when she told Elena most of the story of how she came to be involved with the Mikaelson family. In 1492, two years after she had been exiled from her home in Bulgaria by her family after having a child out of wedlock, Katherine had settled in England and had assimilated into the culture there. It was then that she was introduced to Klaus and Elijah, who were noblemen in England at the time, by Trevor; the Mikaelson brothers were immediately struck by her resemblance to Tatia and realized they had finally found the Petrova doppelgänger necessary to break the curse, which Katherine led Elena to believed was the so-called "Sun and Moon curse." Klaus then began a relationship with Katherine to keep her at the castle, though she was unaware at first that he was only using her for her blood. However, Elijah, despite his best efforts, fell in love with Katherine in the meantime, to the point where he even sought out a witch to create an elixir infused with a protection spell that would prevent her from permanently dying in the sacrifice ritual to break the curse.

Unfortunately, Katherine was eventually tipped off about Klaus' true intentions by Trevor, who had also fallen in love with her, and so right before Klaus planned to take Katherine back to Bulgaria to perform the ritual, Katherine fled the castle with Trevor's help, eventually seeking shelter at the cottage where the vampire Rose was living. Once there, Rose made it clear she intended to return Katherine to Klaus when the sun set to bed him for his forgiveness, so Katherine tricked Rose into feeding her her vampire blood and then hung herself while Rose and Trevor were fighting in the next room, turning herself into a vampire. Because the sacrifice ritual required the blood of a human Petrova doppelgänger, Katherine's newly-vampiric nature meant that her blood was now useless to Klaus, which forced her (along with her unwilling co-conspirators Rose and Trevor) to go on the run for him for the next 500 years, although her new supernatural abilities helped her evade him for all those centuries. about how Klaus had wanted to use her in the sacrifice five hundred years before, which involved his intention to "drain every single drop of blood" from her body.

In the episode Klaus, Elijah revealed to Elena that the Sun and the Moon curse was actually fake, and that the real curse was one that had been placed on Klaus to suppress his werewolf nature in order to keep him from becoming a true hybrid. He continued to explain that five hundred years ago, Klaus had intended to sacrifice Katerina in the ritual, but she thwarted him by turning herself into a vampire, thus rendering her blood and sacrifice useless – the doppelgänger had to be human for the ritual to break the curse. As a result, Klaus and Elijah created various fake curses attributed to vampires and werewolves in as many different languages and cultures as they could think of, taking care to include the ingredients they needed to break the Hybrid Curse in it (the moonstone and a human Petrova doppelgänger). Their intention was to ensure that vampires and werewolves across the globe would seek the two ingredients out, which would ultimately alert Klaus and Elijah to their existence and allow them to take what they needed to break the curse once and for all. Elijah also confirmed what Katherine had already told Elena in the previous episode—to break the curse, Klaus would need the moonstone, a witch to cast the spell, and one vampire, werewolf, and human Petrova doppelgänger each to sacrifice. Specifically, Klaus would need to feed on Elena until the point of her death after killing a werewolf and a vampire to represent each half of his supernatural heritage.

In The Last Day, Elena surrendered herself to Klaus, and in The Sun Also Rises, after Jules the werewolf and Jenna the vampire had been sacrificed and their blood spilled over the moonstone by the witch Greta, Klaus drained Elena of her blood until she died, and thus successfully broke the Hybrid Curse.

Fortunately for Klaus, Elena actually survived the sacrifice due to a spell cast by the witch Bonnie Bennett that transferred the life-force of Elena's biological father John Gilbert into her body at the cost of his life.

In Season Three's The Reckoning, Klaus discovered from Esther (via Bonnie and Matt Donovan, who had contacted the spirit of Matt's sister Vicki on the Other Side) for information about the curse) that the blood of the human doppelgänger is required to create more hybrids like himself; this was a fail-safe created by Esther to prevent Klaus from being able to create a race of vampire-werewolf hybrids in the case that he was able to break the Hybrid Curse, as if he killed the doppelgänger to break the curse, he would have none of her blood to use to sire hybrids. After Klaus experimented with the process of siring hybrids by feeding the werewolf Tyler Lockwood his blood, killing him, and then feeding him Elena's blood to complete his transition, it was confirmed that human doppelgänger blood is what is necessary to successfully create a hybrid.

21st Century A.D.: Silas' Return and Quetsiyah's Resurrection

In the twenty-first century, a man named Atticus Shane set in motion a series of events that led to the releasing of the immortal Silas from his desiccated state in his tomb. Once he had regained his strength, Silas manipulated those around him to further his agenda. First, Bonnie was tasked with the creation of the Expression Triangle, which he wanted her to use to permanently drop the veil between the Other Side and the living world, essentially merging the two dimensions and resurrecting all the supernaturals who had been trapped there after their deaths over the two thousand years it had existed. Once the Other Side was gone, Silas intended to take the cure, kill himself, and join his beloved Amara in the Afterlife, not knowing that Amara was still alive. Secondly, Silas threatened Klaus with a illusion of the indestructible white oak stake to force Klaus to find the cure and return it to him. These missions, for the most part, all occurred according to Silas' plan—Bonnie completed the triangle, but she only temporarily dropped the veil within the borders of Mystic Falls in hopes of contacting Qetsiyah for help in taking Silas down; and Silas gained possession of the cure by tricking Elijah into thinking he was giving it to Rebekah. However, Silas' plan went awry when Bonnie subdued him and turned him to stone with Expression magic, allowing Alaric's ghost to steal back the cure and give it to Damon.

Later, while trying to resurrect Jeremy, Bonnie died, and with her death, the spell desiccating Silas broke. Because Bonnie, who, as a ghost, was still able to interact with the living world and perform magic while the veil was down, became too distracted by bigger problems to put the veil back up when she planned. As a result of the veil being dropped longer than she had expected, Qetsiyah was able to take advantage it by using the opportunity to resurrect herself so she could finally get her revenge on Silas. That night, when Stefan was about to dump what he believed was Silas' desiccated body into the quarry, Silas appeared and revealed to Stefan his true form, which looked exactly like Stefan himself. Stefan was shocked speechless as Silas explained that Stefan was his shadow-self before locking Stefan in a safe that was meant to be Silas' grave and dropping it into the bottom of the quarry.

Months later, Qetsiyah freed Stefan from the safe and told him her version of the story between her, Silas, and Amara. She then used Stefan in a spell to link him to Silas; once they were linked, Qetsiyah cast a spell on Stefan that fried his brain so severely that it essentially disabled the powerful psychic abilities Silas possessed as an immortal, preventing him from being able to read anyone's mind or use mind control on them to do his bidding. The only way to neutralize this spell was to cause Stefan to die temporarily by snapping his neck, giving Silas his powers back for as long as Stefan remained unconscious.

The Doppelgänger Prophecy

In Season Five, Qetsiyah explained that over the centuries, she witnessed the doppelgängers of Silas and Amara being drawn to one another, whether by fate, the universe, or some other mystical phenomenon. She surmised that she and Damon were merely obstacles in the doppelgängers' destined true love that was meant to make their love stories interesting. It is unknown whether she had been deliberately misleading Stefan, Damon, and Elena with this information or not; regardless, it was later revealed that this was not exactly what the prophecy foretold. Some time later, Markos, the leader of the Travelers, revealed to Damon that the prophecy regarding the doppelgängers was not about them being destined to fall in love—in reality, there was a prophecy that the blood of the last two surviving doppelgängers could be combined and used to undo spirit magic, which would thus remove the curse that the witches placed upon the Travelers after Silas and Amara became immortals. Markos also revealed that he had cast a spell 1,500 years ago that would draw the doppelgängers together, as the Travelers needed the doppelgängers to be in one place in order to use them to break the curse, and he knew that the lure of true love would be powerful enough to make this happen.

With the exception of Stefan and Elena, the Travelers saw to it that all of the remaining doppelgängers and their progenitors were killed (specifically Katherine, Tom Avery, Silas, and Amara), the Travelers tested this prophecy by performing an experiment: they turned one of their own members, Sloan, into a vampire using Tyler Lockwood's blood, and then, once Sloan had completed her transition, Markos had her consume the mixed doppelgänger blood. Once she had ingested the blood, Sloan's vampirism was stripped away, returning her to the last state her body was in before it became a vampire—dead with a slit throat. Armed with the knowledge that the prophecy was correct, the Travelers then prepared to use a large amount of Stefan and Elena's combined blood to cast a powerful spell to remove the Travelers' Curse. To do this, the Travelers all cast Passenger spells on the town's citizens to allow them to possess them, as their curse prevented them from practicing magic as a group without devastating natural disasters occurring at their locations. Once in their new loaner bodies, the Travelers broke vials of the combined doppelgänger blood in their hands while they cast the the Magic Purification Spell, a spell that radiated throughout the entire town of Mystic Falls, unraveling and stripping away all non-traditional magic in the area, including the magic that reanimated the bodies of vampires, activated lycanthropy, created the Brotherhood of the Five, gave witches their magic, and that imbued any enchanted object such as daylight amulets. It was also the combined blood of Stefan and Elena that ultimately destroyed the Other Side and caused the majority of the souls trapped there to move on to find peace or get sucked into Hell

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Powers and Abilities

• Blood: Doppelgängers, being mystical and recurrent, are massive sources of magical power.
• The blood of a doppelgänger can be used to link supernatural beings with the help of magic conducted by any witch.
• Their blood can also be used to bind an extremely powerful curse or spell or to use as a power source in spells that require more magic than the witch in question possesses on their own.
• For some spells, the blood must come from a human doppelgänger. For other spells, the blood of a doppelgänger can still be used even if they've been turned into a vampire, as seen in Death and the Maiden when Qetsiyah used Elena's blood (along with Katherine and Amara's blood) to transfer the Anchor from Amara to Bonnie. There are certain spells and uses that require the doppelgänger to be "pure" and human, however, like the undoing of the Hybrid Curse and the siring of hybrids.
• The blood of the last two "living" doppelgängers can be used to reverse spells cast using non-traditional forms of magic, especially spirit magic (e.g. turning a vampire back into a (dead) human, undoing the spell that bound the Other Side, reversing the spells cast on daylight rings for vampires, removing a triggered gene in those cursed with lycanthropy, etc).

Buckets of blood from the last pair of doppelgängers.

• Linking: Doppelgängers, being modeled after immortals and other doppelgängers, have an inherently strong mystical connection to each other that can be used to invoke linking spells.

• Unique Physiology: Doppelgängers are fully capable of being turned into vampires, and can retain the mystical properties of their blood despite their vampiric abilities. Since they can also be born witches, as in the case of Katerina Petrova, it can be assumed that doppelgängers could theoretically also be born as other supernatural species, such werewolves or Brotherhood of the Five hunters.

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Weaknesses

• Magic: Doppelgängers are susceptible to the powers of witchcraft. This is inclusive of mystical objects such as Papa Tunde's Blade, and Dark Objects.

• Mortality: Despite of their supernatural status, doppelgängers are very much human and share many of the same weaknesses as non-supernatural beings (e.g. age, decapitation, disease, heart-failure, suffocation, etc.)

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The Doppelgänger Progenitors

Silas

Silas or Silvanus (Ancient Greek: Σίλας or Σιλουανός, Latin: Silvanus, Modern Greek: Silouanos) was born sometime in the 1st century B.C., during the Biblical Times. His origins are from Ancient Greece. Silas was the world's very first immortal being and was the earliest known ancestor of the Salvatore family bloodline, as well as the progenitor of the Salvatore doppelgänger bloodline, which spawned Stefan Salvatore and Tom Avery, presumably among other unknown doppelgängers over the course of two thousand years. Before becoming an immortal, he was a very gifted and powerful witch in a community that eventually became known as the Travelers. Silas was deeply and passionately in love with his true love and soulmate, a young woman named Amara. Silas' love for Amara was so strong that his love for her was the major motivator behind him wanting to create the very first spell of immortality. To do this, he sought out the help of his best friend Qetsiyah, to whom he was betrothed, though his heart truly belonged to Amara. Silas and Amara's love, though powerful and strong, was also forbidden as Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah and Amara was her personal handmaiden. Silas manipulated Qetsiyah and convinced her that he loved her and wanted to spend an eternity with her. Out of love for Silas, she created the world's first spell of immortality in the form of an elixir, which was intended to be drunk by them both at their wedding ceremony. However, Silas had no intention of allowing Qetsiyah to become an immortal with him, so on the night he was to marry Qetsiyah, Silas stole the elixir and left Qetsiyah at the altar, instead meeting with Amara in the woods and sharing the elixir with her, turning them both into the world's first immortal man and woman.

After Qetsiyah discovered that Silas had granted the gift of immortality to his true love Amara and not her, she supposedly cured Amara of her immortality and then brutally killed her out of jealous rage by slitting her throat and cutting out her heart. Silas was completely and utterly devastated. Qetsiyah then lured Silas to an isolated island and entombed him in darkness, leaving him to starve and desiccate for eternity. Buried with Silas was the cure for immortality, in which Qetsiyah created. Silas had two choices: either take the cure, die a mortal death and be on The Other Side, which is a purgatory meant for dead supernatural beings, with her for eternity or stay entombed in darkness and desiccate forever. Out of spite, anger and vengeance towards Qetsiyah murdering Amara, Silas chose to not take the cure and ended up staying entombed in darkness and starving for over 2,000 years. Because Silas refused to take the cure and die out of spite, Qetsiyah ended up creating the Other Side in order to trap Silas should he take the cure and die. Creating the Other Side would prevent Silas from finding eternal peace and being together in death with Amara on the earth's metaphysical plane, which is where human souls go after they die. Qetsiyah also created The Five, a group of supernatural hunters whose main goal and mission was to find Silas, cure him of his immortality and kill him, so that Silas would end up on the Other Side with Qetsiyah instead of with Amara as she wanted. After over 2,000 years of being entombed in darkness, Silas has risen and plans on wreaking havoc everywhere he goes. He is determined to join his true love Amara in death by getting Bonnie, who is a very distant descendant of Qetsiyah , to drop the veil so that he could take the cure and die a mortal death and cross over to be with Amara. It was revealed after 2,000 years that Qetsiyah had lied to Silas about Amara and had faked her death. Qetsiyah had actually desiccated and entombed Amara and then used her as the physical anchor for the Other Side spell in which Qetsiyah had created in order to trap Silas' soul shall Silas die a mortal death. Silas reunites with Amara after she is re-awakened, Qetsiyah having lied about her death. Amara tells Silas that she loves him and that she is sorry. She then stabs Silas in the neck in order to obtain the cure for immortality which is running through Silas' veins as she doesn't wish to live anymore. Silas still intends on destroying the Other Side so that he could be with Amara in peace in true eternal death. Silas and Amara reunite once more and Amara begs Silas to kill her so that her suffering can end for good and she can find peace. Amara tells Silas that she loves him and that she will always love him but that she cannot live for another day and wants to end her suffering. Silas tells Amara that he understands. Amara stabs herself and dies, crossing over to the metaphysical plane where humans go to after they die. Afterwards, Silas is stabbed by Stefan, his doppelgänger and descendant, and he dies. Unfortunately, Silas dies before he ever had a chance to destroy the Other Side. Silas ends up crossing over to the Other Side, which means that he is separated from Amara forever. To make matters worse and more tragic, Qetsiyah ends up killing herself after transferring the anchor from Amara to Bonnie. Qetsiyah crosses over to the Other Side, where Silas is stuck with her for all eternity. This means that Qetsiyah got her 2,000 year old wish; Silas being stuck with her on the Other Side and being separated from his soulmate for all time and for all eternity. When Silas made himself truly immortal, he created an imbalance in nature and nature needed a loophole, a version or versions of Silas that could die. Therefore, shadow selves, doppelgängers or a doppelgänger bloodline of Silas was created in order to maintain the balance of nature. Silas was a distant ancestor to the Salvatore family.

Amara

Amara (Ancient Greek: Αμάρα, Latin: Amarantha) was born sometime in the 1st century B.C., during the Biblical Times. Her origins are from Ancient Greece. She is the oldest known ancestor of the Petrova family bloodline. Personality wise, Amara comes off as gentle, docile, and innocent, similar to that of Katherine before she became evil. Her age is unknown but it could be assumed that she was anywhere between fourteen to eighteen years old. As a human, she was the handmaiden to Qetsiyah, a very powerful witch. Amara fell deeply and passionately in love with a young, gifted and powerful warlock named Silas. Amara's love for Silas was so strong that she desired to be with him forever. However, her love for Silas was also strongly forbidden as Silas was engaged to be married to Qetsiyah. Therefore, Silas and Amara had a secret relationship. Silas also strongly loved Amara, so much that he desired immortality so that he and Amara could be together for eternity. Silas manipulated Qetsiyah into creating the spell of immortality with the intention of sharing the gift of eternal life with Amara, instead of Qetsiyah. However, after betraying Qetsiyah's trust after she created the spell, Qetsiyah became filled with anger and rage and she wanted revenge. After Silas and Amara drank the immortality elixir, Qetsiyah found the latter by faking her death and forced her to become the phyiscal Anchor to The Other Side, binding it's existence to her immortal life and desiccating her. After her awakening two thousand years later, the pain of her existence was too much to bear and she wished to die. She consumed the Cure in order to become mortal again. Amara reunites with Silas after 2,000 years of being apart from him adn she confesses her undying love for him but says that although she loves Silas, she desires to die just as much. Amara then asks Silas to kill her and end her 2,000 years of suffering. Silas is hesitant to do so at first but he then understands. Unexpectedly, Silas is killed by Stefan after he is stabbed with a blade. Silas passes through Amara as she was still currently the anchor before Qetsiyah had transferred the spell and made Bonnie the anchor instead. Amara, realizing that she has officially nothing to live for now that her beloved is dead and she has endured endless suffering for centuries and centuries, tells a dead Silas that their eternity together would start with her death. She then takes the same knife that killed Silas and stabs herself, killing her and ending her endless suffering. She is presumed to have found peace and has passed on to the afterlife where human souls go to once theyr die. Unfortunately for Amara, she did not get her dying wish which was to be reunited with Silas in true death as Silas ended up stuck on The Other Side with Qetsiyah, who ended up killing herself to be with Silas. It is currently unknown whether or not Amara reunited with Silas and found happiness in death with her true love after the Other Side deteriorated since Silas was seen being sucked into oblivion.

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Known Doppelgänger Lines

Amara

Amara's doppelgängers are Tatia, Katherine and Elena, all three of which have appeared on-screen. Elena is sometimes referred to as the Petrova doppelgänger because of her striking resemblance to Katerina Petrova.

Tatia

Tatia was born during the 10th century A.D. in the area where Mystic Falls was to be formed. She was a contemporary of the Mikaelson Family around the early 10th century. During the Middle Ages, Tatia had a child with an unknown man; later in time, she met Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson, both of whom fell in love with her (especially Klaus, according to Elijah). Esther, the mother of Elijah and Niklaus and also the Original witch, used Tatia's blood in the spell or ritual to create the Original Vampires, as part of the wine laced with blood in which Mikael had given his children. Her blood was also part of the spell Esther used to bind Klaus' werewolf side, which resulted in Klaus' werewolf gene being dormant.

Katerina Petrova / Katherine Pierce

Katerina Petrova (a.k.a. Katherine Pierce) was born in Bulgaria during the 15th century on June 5, 1473. In the year 1492, when she was still a human, she was captured by Klaus. She knew that she was going to die, so she tricked Trevor, one of Klaus' servants, into helping her escape. Katherine was clever, cunning and smart; she knew that if she became a vampire, she'd be rendered useless to Klaus. Katherine stabbed herself with a knife but was given vampire blood by Rose in an attempt to heal her stabbing wound and afterwards, Katherine hung herself and came back as a vampire. In return for her escape, Klaus made her suffer by killing her entire family in Bulgaria, thinking that the doppelgänger would never appear again. What Klaus didn't know was that Katherine had a child out of wedlock that was kept secret and this child continued the bloodline of the Petrova family, leading to the birth of Elena Gilbert. Tired from running, Katherine intended to make a deal with Klaus by giving him the ingredients he needed to break the curse in exchange for her freedom. She planned to hand over the moonstone, Elena Gilbert, Caroline Forbes (a vampire), Tyler Lockwood (a werewolf) and Bonnie Bennett (a witch). When Katherine was about to take out her own doppelgänger, Elena shoves the cure, into her mouth. She is the doppelgänger of Tatia and her doppelgänger is Elena Gilbert.

Elena Gilbert

Elena Gilbert was born in Mystic Falls, Virginia during the 20th century on June 22, 1992. Elijah was the first one who found out about Elena before Klaus. At first, when Rose told Elijah about this, he didn't believe it. But soon enough he found out that the Petrova Family line didn't end with Katherine because she had given birth to a baby girl, thus continuing the Petrova bloodline. Once Klaus learned of the Petrova doppelgänger, Elena, he came to Mystic Falls, and he kidnapped Katherine, temporarily taking over the body of Alaric Saltzman. As with Katherine, Klaus is responsible for the death of Elena's family, most notably their aunt Jenna Sommers, Elena and Jeremy's legal guardian. He terned Jenna into a vampire and killed her for the sacrificial ritual. Unlike with Katherine, Klaus successfully killed Elena and as a result, he breaks the curse. Fortunately for Elena, John Gilbert had Bonnie form a special spell that bound Elena's life force or essence to his. This spell brought Elena back to life, but in return, killed John and took his life. In The Departed, Jeremy took Elena to Mystic Falls Hospital after discovering her lying unconscious at home. Meredith Fell discovered Elena was suffering from a serious cerebral hemorrhage and secretly injected her with vampire blood to heal her. This action fortunately saved Elena from death. The same day, Rebekah ran Elena and Matt off Wickery Bridge to save her siblings from Alaric, since his life force was tied to Elena. That way, if she died, so would Alaric. Jeremy arrives home to see Alaric, and he talks to him and Jeremy realizes that he is a ghost, and that if he is dead, that means his sister, Elena, must also be dead. Stefan hurried to Wickery Bridge, intending to save Elena, but she insisted that he save Matt's life instead, who was unresponsive after crashing into the water. By the time Stefan pulled Matt out of the water, Elena had drowned and died. Stefan brought her body back to Mystic Falls Hospital, where she woke up, transitioning into a vampire with Damon's blood in her system. She is the last of Amara's doppelgängers. More recently, She has revert back to being human human again after taking The Cure.

Silas

Compared to the Petrova Doppelgängers, the Salvatore Doppelgängers do not seem to be as recognized, since Klaus and Rebekah seemed to have failed at recognizing Stefan for what he was during the early 20th Century, other than an emotionless vampire at the time.

Stefan Salvatore

Stefan Salvatore was born in Mystic Falls, Virginia during the 19th century on November 1, 1846. He was turned into a vampire along with his older brother Damon in the year 1864 by Amara's distant descendant, Katherine Pierce. Like his ancient ancestor Silas, Stefan was involved in a love triangle with Katherine and Damon. Stefan was unaware of the fact that he was a doppelgänger during his human years, and had no idea Katherine herself was a doppelgänger. Stefan was turned into a vampire against his will; Katherine had been compelling Stefan to consume her vampire blood for weeks. When Katherine is captured by the Founders Council Members, Stefan and Damon plot to rescue Katherine from being burned in a church by fire. Although Stefan and Damon do end up rescuing Katherine, Stefan and Damon are both shot dead by their own father Giuseppe. It was then that Stefan transformed into a vampire. When he first transitioned, Stefan suffered from severe hunger for blood and therefore, had problems controlling himself around human blood. Regarding the bloodline of Silas, not too much is known about it, its background and its history. Qetsiyah mentioned to Stefan that she has seen doppelgängers of Silas preceding Stefan while watching from The Other Side.

Tom Avery

Tom Avery was born during the 20th century. He was a doppelgänger of Silas who is discovered in the episode While You Were Sleeping. He is a paramedic who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. In Rescue Me, it is revealed that he was kidnapped by a witch named Hazel and put in a comatose state under a cloaking spell in order to protect him from The Travelers. He is later found by Caroline and Enzo. Caroline snaps Enzo's neck in order to prevent him from killing Tom. Caroline then takes Tom to a diner and compels him to tell her about his life. Confirming he is a good person, she compels him to run, far from the Travelers and Enzo. Before he can leave, however, Enzo catches up to them and snaps Tom's neck, killing him and making Stefan the last living doppelgänger of Silas.

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Fun Facts

• Silas and Amara's doppelgängers may not be limited to a continuous 500 years recurrence as it has been speculated since Season Five.

• In Original Sin, Qetsiyah stated that "century after century", she watched versions of Stefan and Elena find each other and fall in love—this could mean that Klaus only presumed that Petrova doppelgängers only appeared every half-millennium or so because it took him that long to find one after losing Katherine. However, it is also possible that Qetsiyah's statement was meant to be hyperbolic to emphasize the misery she felt watching the shadows of Silas and Amara continue to find love while she was trapped on the Other Side.

• According to Qetsiyah, the shadows of Silas and Amara are destined to find each other and fall in love, based on her observations throughout the centuries. It is unknown if Qetsiyah saw versions of Silas and Amara fall in love when they were alive or if they died and fell in love on The Other Side. However, evidently, they are also capable of developing romantic feelings for other people.

• The term doppelgänger doesn't seem to imply any hierarchy, though the term "Shadow" has some implied hierarchy as opposed to doppelgänger.

• Doppelgängers are humans for most intents and purposes. However, they are a supernatural occurrence and are therefore, considered to be a supernatural species. The difference between regular humans and doppelgängers is that spells that use a doppelgänger can be broken using another doppelgänger.

• Death by a doppelgänger counts as a supernatural death. A person wearing a Gilbert Ring will come back to life if killed by a human doppelgänger.

• The Gilbert rings do not protect supernatural creatures and is, thus, theorized not to work on a doppelgänger. This has never been confirmed.

• They can, however, be compelled by vampires like any regular human.

• It seems that the men who spend a lot of time with doppelgängers of Amara can't help but fall in love with her or fall vulnerable to her charms. Back in the 11th century, it was stated that every man in the village fell in love with Tatia, though Elijah and Niklaus Mikaelson more than any others. Trevor, Elijah, Damon Salvatore, Stefan Salvatore and Mason Lockwood all fell in love with Katherine, and Noah was obsessed with her. Matt Donovan, Stefan, and Damon fell in love with Elena.

• Similarly, it seems that many women also find themselves strongly attracted to Salvatore doppelgängers. An example is Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Katherine, Qetsiyah and Rebekah all finding Stefan appealing and all of them being attracted to him at one point or another. It could easily be assumed that Silas was also very attractive to the opposite sex as well, since he had two women who were passionately in love with him (and one psychotically so) in Qetsiyah and Amara.

• Silas and his doppelgänger, Stefan, have first names beginning with the letter "S". It is unknown if other doppelgängers of Silas also had names beginning with the letter S.

• Tom Avery, the second known doppelgänger of Silas (who is assumed to be the final doppelgänger of the line) seems to break this tradition, as his name begins with the letter T.

• All of the known shadows of Amara, like herself, have first names that rhyme with each other. All of the known Petrova doppelgängers, including the progenitor Amara, have first names which end with an "A" (AmarA, TatiA, KaterinA, ElenA).

• A doppelgänger will look identical in appearance to their immortal progenitor, but there will be variations in both their looks and their personalities due to differences in their rearing and community standards (such as their expressions, speech, reason, and connections with others), especially as a result of them all being born in different time periods.

• According to some myths, doppelgängers tend to undo the lives of each other. Tatia was used to create the Original Vampires but her doppelgängers have influenced the deaths of all three deceased Original Vampires.

• Now that Stefan has been revealed to be a doppelgänger of Silas, in retrospect, it seems more than just a mere coincidence that Stefan too influenced the deaths of the three Original Vampires.

• The very danger, of being prematurely undone by his doppelgänger, is probably why Silas locked Stefan in the safe and left him to drown repeatedly - he might have wanted to keep Stefan out of the way for as long as he remains immortal. As it turns out, Stefan's release from the safe allowed Qetsiyah to neutralise Silas' mental powers.

• The term "Petrova Doppelgänger" comes from the last name of Katherine Petrova, the second doppelgänger of Amara. It is a term used by those who strove to find Katherine's doppelgänger and once discovered, directly referred only to Elena.

• It is possible that the doppelgängers were finding each other and falling in love on The Other Side. Doppelgängers are known to be supernatural beings and hence, would go to The Other Side when they die. This could possibly be what Qetsiyah meant when she said she has watched versions of Silas and Amara find each other and fall in love century after century; she could have been watching them find each other and fall in love on the Other Side. However, with the destruction of the Other Side, this is presumably no longer possible.

• Doppelgängers can be born or the doppelgänger "gene" can be passed down the bloodline without the doppelgänger himself/herself having children or a direct bloodline due to having children. For example, Silas and Amara, the progenitors of the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgänger bloodlines respectively, were assumed to not have had any children before they became truly immortal. Therefore, it is very likely that they had a sibling(s) which would have passed down the doppelgänger "gene" through Silas and Amara's respective bloodlines. So, doppelgängers would not need to have children in order for the doppelgänger "gene" to be passed down the bloodline. It should be noted that all of the known Petrova doppelgängers (i.e. Tatia and Katherine), with the exception of Elena due to becoming a vampire, have had children. It could be assumed that Silas' doppelgängers all had children as well, with the exception of Stefan, since he became a vampire and therefore, could not reproduce.

• The two known doppelgänger lines are, both, the result of The Immortality Spell being cast. It is possible that other spells (such as The Hybrid Curse while it was active) may also produce doppelgängers depending on their nature.

• As of Season Five, both Amara and Silas had become mortal and died. Theoretically, being cured of immortality and their deaths means the end of their doppelgänger lines, as nature would no longer require their shadow selves to die in their places.

• Since Tom Avery was born in the 20th century chances are is that he was meant for Elena, had she not met Stefan. If the prophecy held truth, then that means that Stefan may have never been meant to meet neither Katherine or Elena, nor fall in love with them. Katherine may have had another Salvatore doppelgänger that was meant for her, and Stefan could have had a different Petrova Doppelgänger that was meant for himself, IF, of course, the prophecy meant that two doppelgängers were born in the same century and were meant fall in love with each other.

• It was revealed that the reason why the Travelers want the blood of the doppelgängers was because they wanted to break the curse that was placed on them by Luke and Liv's coven 2,000 years ago.

• Qetsiyah's belief that the shadows of Silas and Amara were destined to find each other and fall in love was proven to be incorrect; it was revealed that the reason why the Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers find each other is because of the spell that was placed on them by Markos 1,500 years earlier to obtain doppelgänger blood. The Salvatore and Petrova doppelgängers fell in love on their own throughout the centuries.

• It was coincidental how Amara was the handmaiden of Qestiyah in 100 BC, while in the 19th century, Qestiyah's descendant Emily Bennett was the handmaiden of Amara's doppelgänger and descendant, Katherine. Another one of Qetsiyah's descendants, Bonnie Bennett, was best friends with Petrova doppelgänger Elena Gilbert, showing a pattern of Qetsiyah's descendants being involved in some way with Amara's doppelgängers. Likewise to this, Ayana was a witch, and one of Qetsiyah's descendants, that lived in the same 'New World' village as Tatia.

• There are several theories in the show's fandom that speculate the true number of doppelgängers spawned by Amara and Silas' immortality. One theory suggests that there were nine total doppelgängers for each line, not including Silas and Amara, one for each century. This theory came from Qetsiyah's comment in Original Sin that she has been forced to watch as century after century, Silas' doppelgängers fell in love with Amara's doppelgängers and vice-versa. However, Qetsiyah could have been exaggerating or using hyperbole to describe the torture of watching their love. The second theory is that there has been one doppelgänger from each line every five hundred years, meaning that there would be Amara (1st century BC), her first doppelgänger (5th century AD), Tatia (10th century AD), Katherine (15th century AD) and Elena (20th century AD). However, since Executive Producer Julie Plec and actress Nina Dobrev had described Tatia, the Petrova doppelgänger who came between Niklaus and Elijah Mikaelson, as the first true doppelgänger after Amara became immortal, making this theory also unlikely.

• Due to Klaus' obsession to break The Hybrid Curse over the last 1,000 years, he would have kept an eye on the Petrova Bloodline which led him to Katherine in 1492 a little over 500 years after the curse was placed on him. Then he killed her entire family after she turned herself into a vampire not knowing about Katherine's daughter, having been given away at birth two years earlier. Still he had vampires go around the world chasing after Katherine and looking for ways to break the spell for 500 years. If there had been a human Petrova Doppelgänger in the 19th Century any vampire working for Klaus would have notified him immediately. It wasn't until the 21st Century that a human Doppelgänger was found: Elena Gilbert. So not including Amara there are ONLY three known Doppelgängers in her line: Tatia, Katherine and Elena.

• According to an interview with Michael Narducci on November 3, 2014 with ksitetv Tatia IS truly the first Doppelgänger of the Petrova Line. He explained it as such, "Tatia did have a husband prior to her relationship in the past with Elijah. He died in battle and through that marriage with the man who died she had a child. That child would begat the Petrova line and then after generations and generations, bloop, there would be another doppelgänger. And then after generations and generations there would be Elena."

Last Updated: 1/2/17