Caroline Elizabeth Forbes is a vampire and one of the main female characters on The Vampire Diaries. Caroline is the daughter of William Forbes II and Sheriff Elizabeth Forbes. She is also the surrogate mother of Alaric and Jo's twin daughters, Lizzie and Josie Saltzman. Prior to her transition into a vampire, she was known for her insecurities, which caused her to be excessively competitive, mainly with Alex and Elena.
She has always had a strong bond with her childhood friends, Elena Gilbert, Alexandria Gilbert, and Bonnie Bennett. She became best friends with Stefan Salvatore after she became a vampire and he became her mentor. She is also close friends with her ex, Matt Donovan, whom she has known since childhood.
Earlier in the series, Caroline begins dating Alex's ex-boyfriend, Matt, who encourages her to become more caring, kind, and selfless. In the Season One finale, Caroline was severely injured in a car wreck and suffered from internal bleeding. When Caroline's situation was looking pretty bleak, Bonnie, Elena, and Alex agreed that Damon Salvatore should heal Caroline by feeding her his blood. Later, after Caroline's health had improved, Caroline was smothered to death in the hospital by Katherine Pierce, who was aware that Damon had healed Caroline, therefore knowingly turned her into a vampire. Katherine planned to use Caroline to her own advantage by manipulating her, threatening those she loved and eventually giving her to Klaus to kill in the sacrifice. Damon rescues her and Tyler Lockwood, however, and the deal made by Katherine is forfeited.
She attended Mystic Falls High School, where she was the captain of the cheerleading squad before Alex took over in season three. She later attended Whitmore College with Elena and Bonnie where she majored in drama.
Caroline's new vampire nature added difficulty to her relationship with Matt and this eventually causes them to break up despite their love for each other. Matt's friend, Tyler, fell for Caroline after she helped him with his first full moon after she witnessed him triggering the werewolf gene when he accidentally killed Sarah. After a while, she realized that she's in love with Tyler too, so they begin a romantic relationship which had ended for good in Monster's Ball. Caroline was forced to see her best friend, Stefan, die right in front of her. When he comes back to life, she is extremely happy but also sad because his older brother, Damon, who was also her ex-boyfriend, died to save him.
Four months after the deaths of Bonnie and Damon, Caroline has dropped out of college and has been trying to find a way to get vampires back into Mystic Falls as an anti-magic bubble kept out all vampires as well as teaming up with Enzo in finding a way to bring Damon and Bonnie back to the living. Since Damon's death, she has also been out of touch with Stefan and later claims that he never said goodbye. She finally tracks down Stefan with the help of Enzo, and tries to convince him to come back home. Much to her dismay, he refuses, and their friendship becomes more strained and tense. Later on, Caroline agrees to help Stefan with Ivy's situation. When Damon returns, Stefan does everything he can to make up his poor behavior, but Caroline constantly gives him the cold shoulder. Soon after, Liz passes away in the hospital surrounded by Damon, Elena, Matt and Stefan.
Caroline is the last member of the Forbes Family. She is a member of the Saltzman Family, due to being the surrogate mother of Alaric and Jo's twin daughters, Lizzie and Josie.
Early History[]
Caroline was born on October 10, 1992, to Bill and Elizabeth Forbes in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Caroline had been friends with Elena and Alexandria Gilbert — daughters of Liz's best friend Miranda Sommers-Gilbert — and Bonnie Bennett since they were babies. At some point, Elena tried to decide which of Caroline's traits were the most annoying; her control freakishness or her delusional positivity. Alex told Stefan that in the second grade Caroline had Alex and Elena help her build a Barbie castle.
During her childhood in the Forbes cabin, Caroline was insecure about ride her bike, as she did not know how to do it and was afraid to try without her mother's help. She fell off her bike and was leaning against a tree when Liz arrived, saying that she had band-aids, surgical gear, and a medevac enroute for an airlift. Caroline said that she was making fun of her. Liz applied her first aid and Caroline asked if she was going to die then Liz said that everyone dies eventually but she will live for a very long time. Caroline said that she would always need her, and then Liz hugged her. Caroline told Liz that she didn't want to learn to ride her bike, but Liz caused her to do it without her help, and Caroline finally learned to ride her bike alone.
On December 22, 2007, Caroline was fifteen years old and a freshman at Mystic Falls High School and was helping Mystic Falls for the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony. It was revealed that her parents were still together but it can be assumed that they were having issues in their marriage and Bill was also having an affair with a man named Steven by this time. She also got excited when Elena and Alex revealed that they were going to convince their parents to let Bonnie stay for the holidays as they've never spent an holiday apart from each other. However, her father left and divorced her mother after revealing that he was gay, and began a relationship with Steven, who also had a daughter.
On December 22, 2009, Caroline was a sophomore at Mystic Falls High School. Unseen onscreen at the time, during the events of season one Caroline and her friends played a "secret Santa" game. Stefan Salvatore gave Caroline a key-ring snow globe of Mystic Falls, which disappointed her; she also gave Bonnie a gift.
Personality[]
Human[]
Caroline is one of the popular girls at school, the captain of the cheerleading squad, and was organizing the parties and always displaying a high degree of leadership among her friends. Beautiful and chic, she was also very strong and determined, much like her mother, Elizabeth Forbes. She is extremely loyal and protective of her friends. She has a sensitive and loving nature. Despite having a confident exterior and high social prestige, underneath it all Caroline was very insecure, neurotic, and upset that she could never say the right thing to make guys fall for her. This tended to make her an overachiever at times, creating flaws and complexities in her character, leading to various matters that factor into her development as she overcomes them. Especially when it came to Elena and Alex, as she always felt she was in Elena and Alex's shadow. She considers Elena and Alex her competition when it comes to life in general. When she started dating Matt Donovan she began to see life in a less shallow manner and Caroline overcame these insecurities and became confident in herself.
Vampire With Humanity[]
Becoming a vampire made her see the world in a different light, with her maturing as well. She became much more responsible and protective, which she proves when comforting Tyler on the night of his first full moon and refusing to leave him, despite knowing that one bite would kill her. Ironically, she appreciates life more since becoming a vampire. Moreover, despite having killed a man, she hadn't killed again in several months, thus showing an impressive amount of control for a newly turned vampire. This continues throughout the series: in season four, Caroline was described as an "expert" in self-control. It seems that she does not desire the cure. Being a vampire has helped show her what she could do with her life.
Vampire Without Humanity[]
After her mother's death, Caroline flips the switch due to not being able to handle the pain. While being embraced by Elena at her house, she snaps her neck and lets her drop to floor, quoting that it is not Elena's choice to decide whether or not she should turn off her humanity switch. Without her humanity, Caroline doesn't care at all about what others think and decides to have a new start in everything, which includes buying new clothes and sheets, and also partying and drinking. Caroline is sassy, funny, flirty and speaks her mind, as she tells Elena that she has a gift of making everything about herself all the time. Caroline is still in full control of her vampirism since she stopped herself from killing Liam, stating that she doesn't want to ruin her life, knowing that if she killed him, the police would look for her and they would remind her of her dead mother.
When she runs into Bonnie and Elena at her dorm, Bonnie says that no humanity Caroline is almost the same as Caroline, but without feelings. Caroline tells them that in return for her good behavior, she wants a year where she doesn't have to feel any pain or grief or remorse. She warns them that if anyone tries anything to flip her switch back on, she will become their worst nightmare. It's revealed that Stefan is her emotional trigger because of their friendship, and Caroline was fully aware of that, so she threatens to kill his niece, Sarah Nelson, unless he turns his humanity off too. After a fight with Stefan, she orders Liam to finally kill Sarah, forcing Stefan to turn his humanity off in front of her.
Unlike Stefan, Caroline covers her tracks in order to avoid suspicion by the authorities. She follows an elaborate "routine", which is to attend school and look as normal as possible, just without feelings. Stefan makes an effort to convince Caroline to let go and live recklessly. It works, and Caroline strays from her "routine" and becomes even more dangerous and joins him with several killing sprees. She even contemplates killing Tyler and Matt, and even gets Tyler to accidentally stake Matt by pushing Matt in front of her when Tyler tried to stake her.
Attitude Towards Humans[]
With Humanity[]
As a new Vampire, Caroline remains loyal towards humans, despite her blood lust. After murdering her first human, Caroline felt extremely guilty over her actions. Stefan teaches her to adjust to her new life as a vampire and she is now able to feed without severely harming or killing someone. Caroline is the vampire with the fewest attacks on humans in the series, and always has great control with her bloodlust and has been rated as the best vampire among them. Like Damon and Elena, she drinks human blood from blood bags instead of hunting humans or animals.
Without Humanity[]
At first, Caroline was very cautious and careful about drinking from humans. She was more concerned about hiding the evidence to avoid risk of getting caught. This made her unique; she had the ability to control her bloodlust. For example, she was able to stop drinking from Liam before it killed him, because she didn't want to have to come up with a plan to cover his death up. However, after getting Stefan to turn his humanity off as well, he convinced her to let go, which made her much more reckless. She carelessly killed a man in a bar by mind compulsion, and also assisted Stefan in feeding off of an innocent college girl. She even came close to killing her friends Matt and Tyler.
Physical Appearance[]
Caroline is a beautiful young woman with a pale complexion, blue-green eyes and medium length blonde hair which she often wears in a variety of different styles; straight, curly or naturally waved. She has a slim, yet due to her cheerleading, toned and athletic figure. She is also one of the tallest women in the series. She stand's 5'8.
Since Caroline was introduced, her style has changed drastically, seemingly since her transition into a vampire. As a human, Caroline's clothing style included pinks and yellows, expressively bright colors which would draw attention to herself. Caroline took care of her appearance, always making sure to match her hairstyle and accessories to her daily outfits. Caroline's accessories were very eye-catching; large earrings, small bags, jewelry, and hairbands. The one color Caroline is rarely seen wearing is the color "blue", as she told Damon that her clothes seemed too tight on her body.
In the later seasons, Caroline's clothing choices change to a laid back, yet much more mature style; preferring to wear pale t-shirts, skinny jeans, high-boots; and the color isn't as bright and attracting as it once was. She sometimes wore short dresses in a variety of colors for occasions such as parties and fashionable skirts with matching tops. Her style in season two wasn't as eye-catching as it was once was, preferring paler colors instead of bright colors.
In season three, she wore a mixture of floral dresses and skirts with colorful cardigans and sandals, and dark jeans and jackets over bright colored shirts. During the Mikaelsons' Ball, she wore a blue-grey dress with very little makeup and hair pulled back. In Season Four, she chose to wear floral patterned shirts and tank t-shirts underneath biker leather and denim jackets, although on occasion would resort to wearing paler colors, skirts and tops. Her make-up choice has changed somewhat over the seasons, in early seasons, she wore much makeup, particularly lip glosses and lots of black eye-makeup to make her blue-green eyes stand out; however in later seasons, she wears a much more natural look, with little to no make-up.
Powers and Abilities[]
Caroline possess all the standard powers and abilities of a non-Original vampire. However, at her first day as vampire, while she was still a new-born, Caroline managed to compel one of her nurses to do her bidding, a thing that is very rare among new vampires, as Mind Compulsion is an ability a new vampire needs to be taught (either by an older vampire, or with time). Caroline also managed to use Dream Manipulation, a high form of Telepathy (a skill that usually requires practice and learning to achieve) on the first try, while she was less than five years old as a vampire. Over time, though considerably short when compared to other vampires, Caroline's skill over mind compulsion has drastically increased. After Alexandria Gilbert and Lexi Branson she is the only other vampire shown to cast realistic illusions on individual people (the only exception to this is Silas, who as an Immortal possessed far superior psychic capabilities). When she turned off her humanity, she was capable of tricking the mind of a person into believing that he could not breath then subjecting visions of spiders crawling all over his body, which led to a heart attack, then death.
Caroline is also a really skilled fighter. As a young vampire, Caroline showcased tactical strength when fighting the Tomb Vampires, all of whom were at least 150+ years older than her at that time. She's also managed to hold on her own against much older vampires such as Damon Salvatore, and Lorenzo. She also has been seen running at extraordinary speed, being able to outrun even werewolves on the Full Moon; she has also been shown to defeat a werewolf in human form with much ease. Caroline is also a very skilled deceiter: she succeed in tricking even Rebekah Mikaelson, Katerina Petrova and the Heretics, vampires centuries older than she is. And unlike the vampires on both shows, Caroline can also use a gun - which most vampires are rarely seen doing.
Weaknesses[]
Caroline has the typical weaknesses of a non-Original vampire.