The majority of the information about his family even Julien does not know. Sure his father's youth and training in New York can easily be found out, but Nathaniel's plans and ultimate goals were his alone. Julien's parents' marriage license is a matter of public record, but there is no death certificate for his mother. The truth of the matter is Julien has never looked - why should he have? His mother has never tried to prove otherwise, in fact, she has gone to lengths to further the lie, herself.
Nathaniel Oliver Sterling was born to Henry and Grace Sterling, a poor coal miner and waitress in rural Pennsylvania. By the age of fifteen, Nathaniel had watched both of his parents die - his father to black lung and his mother worked herself to death trying to pay for Henry's medical expenses. It was at Grace's death, that Nathaniel discovered his necromantic abilities. Nathaniel had never heard the word 'necromancer', but in that moment, he understood what it meant. Nathaniel left the next day, vowing three things. The first thing was that he would never return to his hometown unless it was to burn the place to the ground. The second thing is that he would not live like a pauper if he could do anything about it - anything. The last thing was that he never wanted to grow old, sick, and weak and rot away. It was then that he began his long path searching for a way to seek that which mean have craved for all time - immortality.
Over the years, Nathaniel discovered what he was. He was trained by Tony Delmico, an animator in New York, but soon Nathaniel started seeing that there were more opportunities to be gained than "helping loved ones say goodbye" or more often than not, find where the will or insurance policies were hidden. Nathaniel saw the ability to raise the dead and force them to answer your questions as a way to better himself. He managed to gain the attention of the mafia, who used him a few times to get a few questions out of a no long living acquaintance. He also made sure that they understood, that unlike other animators, he wasn't squeamish about the source of blood that needed to be spilt. It was then that he saw the true potential. He started researching famous heists, preferably unsolved heists where the perpetrator died without giving up the goods. What they would give up in life, Nathaniel would make them give up in death. He began to finance himself.
Nathaniel also realized that keeping up a friendly face also had its advantages. As unpleasant of a reputation as he had begun to develop as an animator, he also had the reputation as someone who could do what others couldn't, so his client listing grew almost daily. One of his clients was a senator from his home state. He met the man at a social function, and during their conversation, discovered that the man had been estranged when his father died and always regretted not making amends and saying goodbye to his father. Nathaniel told him that he could give him that chance, if Senator McKenzy would do a favor for him. He raised the senator's late father, in exchange for the Senator tightening the environmental regulations of the coal mine from his youth. While he did not see the town burned, he saw the life's blood of the community closed down and abandoned. In a sense, it was a slower and more painful death for the town than had it burned.
During his years of research, Nathaniel had believed that he had found a way that would allow him could cheat death, but to do so, he would need someone with as strong of a connection to death as his own. He was not content to merely leave it to the chance of genetics that his power would be passed on to any offspring he might have. He would have to edge his bets. For who would be more willing to sacrifice themselves for a loving parent than a child? He found the suitable mate, Francesca Lamberti, an Italian strega, with the talent for animating the dead. He wooed her and convinced her that he loved her. The two were wed, and soon thereafter Francesca was with child.
Once his beloved wife was with child, Nathaniel called in a few old debts and made an arrangement with Julius Medici, a master vampire of the Dragon's line, from Venice to force his mark upon Francesca. Nathaniel promised the vampire that he could retain Francesca as his human servant once their child was born. Nathaniel was hoping that when Julius shared his "life force" with Francesca that some of it would also transfer to the unborn child, as mother and unborn child share the same life force. Nathaniel figured that the child of two necromancers, born with infused with some of the power of a master vampire, would have the power necessary for what he needed. More the pity, that the child would die in the process, but to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. In addition to giving Julius a necromancer as a human servant, Nathaniel also had to agree to name the child after the vampire, Julien if it was a boy or Julia if it were a girl. Julius considered the child to be in a sense a mortal child that he could not have himself.
Whenever Julien would ask his father about his mother, Nathaniel would tell the boy that she was dead, and that he did not know anything about the rest of her family. He knew that Julien wanted some connection to some family other than him, but he could not risk losing his hold on his son. He suspected that Francesca and Julius was keeping track of him and Julien - a fact that made him uncomfortable, but he knew that the vampire would keep their bargain. It had been so long that he had felt a connection to another person, that it was beyond his understanding that Francesca could long for the child that she never actually got to hold.
Nathaniel knew that his son's power had to be strong enough to perform the ritual to give him immortality. As the boy's power grew as he grew into adulthood, Nathaniel knew that his plan for immortality was at hand. Unfortunately for him, Julius and Francesca had been watching "their son" grow up, even if it was from a distance. By chance, they discovered what Nathaniel was planning. Julius arranged for the necromancer to meet an unfortunate end. Nathaniel was hired to raise a zombie. He did not realize that it was a trap until it was too late. The graveyard was the nest for a very large hive of ghouls, that when they smelled blood swarmed out of their tunnels. When Nathaniel got to the cemetery gate, he discovered it locked with heavy chains. On the other side of the gate was a stretched limo. Leaning against the black car, was Francesca, looking as young as the last day he had seen her. She had a cruel and vicious grin on her face, as she watched her husband be eaten alive.
Francesca Lamberti was born in Cumae, a small town about twenty miles west of Naples. This Italian born beauty was the daughter of a skilled animator. She inherited the gift from her father. Despite her beauty, Francesca was often quite lonely, as her father's reputation as being an animator was more than most young men could handle in the very Catholic region.
Perhaps this is why she was so easily swept off her feet by the attentions of Nathaniel Sterling, when they first met. The man, then ten years her senior, had come to her father's house to discuss business. Francesca was flattered by the attention that Nathaniel gave her, taking her out to dinner nearly every evening for a week, taking her to the opera. She thought that she had found true love. Their courtship only lasted a few months, when tragedy struck. While the two where out, Francesca's home was burned. Both of her parents died in the fire. Nathaniel was there to support her. Only days after her parents' funeral, Nathaniel asked her to be his wife. Having just lost her parents, she could not think about losing the man she loved as well, so she agreed.
While she was not yet ready to have children, six months after the two were married, she found out that she was pregnant. She never knew that Nathaniel had been slipping fertility drugs into the coffee he brought to her every morning. Even though Francesca did not think that she was ready to be a mother, she was happy to see Nathaniel so happy. Then everything changed.
Once Francesca was pregnant, Nathaniel's loving attention began to fade. He would depart on business trips for days at a time. Then one day he said that he was taking her with him. Often she had assisted her father in jobs, and she relished getting to do so with her husband. They took a leisurely trip up the coast, eventually crossing East, to Venice. Nathaniel drove up to a large villa, just outside of the city. He did not even knock, but just led her inside. Nathaniel led her to an older man with almost inhumanly aware eyes. Instantly, she knew the man's nature. Nathaniel had brought her into the home of a vampire. Without even speaking, the man rose from his seat and walked around her, as if inspecting a horse before deciding whether to buy it. The vampire looked at Nathaniel and spoke, "We have an agreement." It was then that Francesca realized that the life with her husband had been a lie.
Nathaniel had agreed to give his wife to the vampire as a human servant. Betrayed she screamed and lashed out, clawing at Nathaniel's face. Her host, she came to find out was named Julius Medici and was several hundred years old. Julius forced the first mark on her, before showing Francesca to her quarters. He spoke matter-of-factly with her, telling her of the arrangement that Nathaniel had made with him. Julius would begin the process of making her his servant, while she was still with child, not to be completed until after the child was born. He was not sure, why exactly Nathaniel wanted a child that might bear some of the effects of bearing the first mark, but that did not concern him. His last human servant had met an unfortunate end, and he was now ready for a new one. Nathaniel promised him a beautiful and gifted animator, and he had delivered one.
After the baby was born, Nathaniel left with her son. Julius told her that he had sworn that he would not interfer nor let her interfer in the raising of the boy. For years, she hated Julius, or at least wanted to. At least until Julius revealed to her that he was keeping an eye on her son. In a sense, he considered the boy to be a mortal son of his as well, since the boy possibly carried some of his on life force. As the years passed, Julius allowed Francesca to be part of Julien's life, at least from a distance and annonymously.
Then the unthinkable, Francesca returned home to find Julius in a fury. He told her that one of his contacts told him that they thought that Nathaniel's reasons for wanting Julien was so that he could sacrifice himself to perform some ceremony on Nathaniel, that Nathaniel had been collecting elements of for years. If Julius's contact was right, then effectively, Julien would take in Nathaniel's mortality in exchange for Nathaniel being made immortal, or at least ageless. The oath that he had given was that he would not interfere in the boy's life, it said nothing about not interfering in his death. Julius made arrangements with some of his American brothers to deal with Nathaniel. Francesca asked a favor of Julius, that she be allowed to watch.
One of Julius's "friends" in the United States hired Nathaniel to raise a zombie for him. Nathaniel showed up to the cemetery, met the man, and began performing the ritual to raise the dead. He did not notice the man disappear from the area, until it was too late. The cemetery was the nest of a large pack of ghouls, and they had been drawn to the blood. Nathaniel ran, leaving the freshly raised zombie to try to fend off the ghouls. When he got to the cemetery gate, he found that it had been chained shut. Leaning against his client's stretched limo was Francesca and Albert Gordon, another necromancer that Nathaniel had dealt with in the past. When he saw Francesca, he knew that it had been a trap. She watched the man that was her husband be pulled away from the cemetery gates and eaten alive.
At Nathaniel’s funeral, Julien sat in the funeral home in near solitude. Very few people showed up for his father’s wake. A few animators who held a begrudging respect for the man’s powers, even if they did not respect his ethics, a few clients that would miss his services – some of these especially left Julien mildly unnerved, employees, and former employees showed up, but few others. About nine o’clock, as Julien was about to leave the funeral home, a beautiful woman in a black suit, with a small, black satin pillbox hat, draped with a hard laced veil, entered. At her side was a large, imposing man in a dark blue Armani suit.
Not knowing how her son would react to her being a human servant to a vampire, knowing that it would be difficult to explain how it was that she appeared to be just a few years older than her own son, she decided to lie to Julien and allow Nathaniel's lie to continue. She also could see how the boy was destroyed by his father's death and couldn't stand to bring him more pain by telling him at that time what a monster Nathaniel really was. She knew that Nathaniel had told Julien that his mother was dead, and to tell him otherwise, especially the details of their marriage, would shatter the illusion of the man he thought his father was. So she introduced herself as Francesca Lamberti, Julien’s mother’s niece and namesake. Francesca introduced Julius as her father.
They told Julien that Nathaniel and his mother’s family had a falling out after she died and had been forbidden to contact him as long as Nathaniel had been alive. They told him that he had a small, but close knit family back in Italy, who would welcome him with open arms and treat him like the prodigal son returned should he ever decide to join them. While he could not see any similarity between his uncle and himself, the similarities between his cousin and him could not be denied. Francesca spent the next several days visiting and getting to know her son. Julius of course could not be out during the day, so they told Julien that he was not able to adjust to the time difference, and so he was attempting to maintain he normal schedule, which would be sleeping during what was Julien's day and up during the night. So in the evenings, the three of them visited.
Despite Francesca's best efforts, she could not convince Julien to just pick up and move to another country, though he did promise that when he was ready, he would come to visit. Since then, the two of them have kept in contact, as Francesca calls him at least every other week, if she has not heard from him. Francesca has also convinced him to start a blog so that the rest of the family can keep up with what's going on in his life. Despite her wishes, Francesca is trying to let her son live his own life and not just scoop him up and take him back to Italy, so that she can make up for lost time.
Born Lorenzo de' Medici in 1449, Julius was once the man known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, a very powerful statesman and the unofficial head of the Florentine Republic. He ruled Florence through threats, pay-offs, and strategic marriages. Though Florence flourished under his control, he was hated and many rival families began to harbor a resentment for the Medici family. In 1478, members of the Pazzi family, backed by the Archbishop of Pisa, attacked Lorenzo. Though he was injured he escaped. His retribution ended with the hanging of the archbishop and the death of the entire Pazzi family. The Pope was outraged and excommunicated Lorenzo for his actions.
Lorenzo's conflict with the church did not end there. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts and considered himself to be an artist himself. He watched as his beloved Florence fell under the influence of the religious zealot, Giralamo Savonarola, who supposed damned Lorenzo on his death bed, who believed that Florence was immoral and needed to be cleaned up, including the removal of all non-religious arts, mirrors, and unnecessary finery.
The night of April 8th, 1492, Lorenzo, as he lay dying in his bed, was visited by a stranger. The stranger was a vampire, who felt that Lorenzo's death would be a waste and decided to make the Florentine despot one of his kind. Lorenzo awoke three days later, with the man who had come to his bed perched above him. He looked around in horror to find him in the same chapel that his brother was buried in. Allesandro told Lorenzo that he was now a vampire of the Dragon's line and that he would have to leave his beloved Florence. Allesandro took Lorenzo back to his own home outside of Venice, where Lorenzo created the new identity of Julius.
Over the years, Julius watched his children grow up and have children of their own. Over the centuries, Julius would re-introduce himself into the family as a long lost relative from Venice, so that he could interact with his family. He watched the Medici rise and fall in power until the death of the last true Medici, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, in 1743. After that point, he watched the last of his descendants die and was resolved to the fact that he had no more family.
By this point, Julius was already a powerful vampire and considered a master. The years rolled past him with little relevance, until twenty four years ago, an upstart necromancer barged into his home with a purposal. He offered to hand Julius a young, beautiful necromancer to do with as he would, if he would place upon her the first mark of being a human servant, while she was pregnant with his child. At first, Julius was not interested, until Julius presented him with the raised body of Savonarola, who Julius had hated for the Bonfire of the Vanities, five years after he had ceased to be Lorenzo and became Julius. Being given a chance to have a sense of revenge after so many centuries, Julius agreed.
Nathaniel brough Francesca to him, and he was pleased. She reminded him of the powerful woman from times past. Julius, from his own vanity, stipulated that the child would be named Julien, if a boy, or Julia, if a girl, after him. He thought that in a sense it would be like having a child. After the boy was born and taken away, Julius realized that in many ways, Julien was almost like having an illegitimate child with Francesca. After over two centuries, he once again had a mortal family to watch over again.
Then when Julius found out what Nathaniel was planning on doing with "his son", he was outraged. He and Francesca arranged for Nathaniel to be dealt with, in a manner that Julius though held a certain, delicious irony - he would be killed by the dead. After it was done, Francesca and he flew to the United States to meet and visit with Julien. Like Francesca, he wanted to bring Julien back to Italy, but he thought it best to allow Julien to live his own life, just as he had done with his own descendants after his transformation to vampirism.
Like his family began, Julius controls a vast textile company that produces some of the finest fabrics in Europe. For now, he is content watching his son in America. Like in his life, Julius is a powerful businessman that does not like taking no as an answer for anything. Though rarely seen himself, Francesca handles most of his affairs. Unlike some older vampires, Julius has had little difficulty keeping up with the passing of time, as he has kept an eye on the developement of fashion and art through the ages.
