| Jasper | |
|---|---|
| Biographical information | |
| Born |
25 November, 1844 |
| Changed |
1863 |
| Perpetual age |
19 |
| Created by |
Maria |
| Alias |
|
| Physical description | |
| Species | |
| Gender |
Male |
| Hair color |
Honey blonde |
| Eye color |
Brown (Human) Burgundy Red Crimson (Newborn) Gold (Vegetarian) Black (When thirsty) |
| Skin color |
Pale |
| Family information | |
| Family members |
|
| Special characteristics | |
| Abilities |
|
| Special abilities | Pathokinesis (the ability to feel and manipulate emotions) |
| Affiliation | |
| Loyalty |
|
Jasper Hale (born Jasper Whitlock in 1844, in Houston, Texas) is one of the few surviving vampires of the Southern vampire wars, who later joined the Olympic coven. He is the husband and soul mate of Alice Cullen and the adoptive son of Carlisle and Esme Cullen, as well as the adoptive brother of Rosalie Hale, Emmett and Edward Cullen. Jasper is also the adoptive brother-in-law of Bella Swan and the adoptive uncle of Renesmee Cullen.
After becoming a major in the Confederate Army, Jasper was set upon by the vampire Maria, who proceeded to turn him. After the transformation, Jasper aided Maria in her creation of a newborn vampire army which successfully conquered the feeding grounds of Texas. However, Jasper became tired of this violent and bloodstained life, as he felt uncomfortable because he could sense the feelings of his prey, and eventually became a nomad. Fortunately, he was eventually found by Alice, the love of his life and with her began a life with the peaceful coven of the Cullen family
History
- "I didn't have quite the same upbringing as my adopted siblings." - Jasper on his early life.]
Jasper Whitlock joined the Confederate Army before he turned 17, using his way of persuasion. In the following 2 years, he was promoted to major in the army and became the youngest major in Texas. After evacuating women and children, he rode on his way to Galveston, and saw a vampire by Maria and two other female vampires, Lucy and Nettie, who had recently lost their respective territories. Maria knew from his suit that he was in the military and changed him into a vampire to create an army. She used him and other newborns to reclaim her territory and later claim dominance over others. Nettie and Lucy were later destroyed by Jasper when they tried to rebel against Maria. Jasper and Maria seemingly shared a short romantic relationship but she never got over her deceased mate. When he became a vampire, he gained the ability to feel and manipulate people's emotions which was very useful in controlling the younger newborns. Jasper commanded Maria's newborn army that participated in the Southern vampire wars. Since Maria wouldn't keep vampires that proved useless after their first year, Jasper was responsible for disposing of them, something he felt remorse for because he could feel their pain when he killed them just as much as he could feel the pain of his human victims. While in the army, he befriended a newborn named Peter, whom he persuaded Maria to keep.
When Peter ran off with Charlotte, a newborn that they were supposed to kill, Jasper allowed them to escape. After this incident, Maria's feelings for him changed: he could sense how fearful and somewhat mistrustful she was toward him, and knew that she would plot a way to destroy him. He began planning how to destroy her first, despite his reluctance to the idea of destroying the one person who mattered to him, but his years in the coven had affected him so deeply that he almost became a savage.
In 1938, Peter came back and told Jasper about the way vampires could coexist up North. He immediately left Maria and her coven to join Peter and Charlotte. However, he did not find peace, since he could still feel the emotions of his human victims, which deeply depressed him. Eventually, he left Charlotte and Peter. He tried to kill less often, but the thirst always grew overwhelming.
In 1948, he ran into a diner in Philadelphia and met Alice Cullen. At first, he was puzzled by her happy behavior around him, but nevertheless, her joyful emotions impacted him greatly. As it turned out, she had been waiting for him. When she held out her hand, he took it, and felt an unfamiliar emotion for the first time: hope.
She also told him about the ability to survive off of animal blood instead of human blood, as well as their future with Carlisle Cullen and his family. He didn't know such a thing could exist but he followed her. With the help of Alice's 'sight', they searched for the Cullens and eventually joined them in 1950. Sometime after that,by Carlisle's suggestion, he and Alice married. When he joined the Cullen family, Jasper changed his surname of Whitlock to his adoptive sister Rosalie's surname of "Hale" and poses as her twin due to their physical similarities. Out of the whole coven, Jasper has the hardest time being around humans, due to his unrestrained upbringing as a young vampire in a violent army environment. He was not taught to control or how to regulate his blood lust, and this imperfection continues throughout the next 50 years, leading him to burden himself with the mentality of feeling weak by not being able to possess the same level of restraint as the rest of his family.
Maria sought him out when they were in Calgary. The encounter prompted the family to move again, and Jasper politely asked Maria to keep her distance, because he had no interest in rejoining her coven and lifestyle.
Throughout his time with the Cullens, he has attended high school and university many times, and earned degrees in history and philosophy.
Sometime in the 1980s, he started doing business with a lawyer who forged illegal documents to help provide his family with new identity certificates. After the lawyer retired, his apprentice, J. Jenks, took over.
Physical Appearance[]
"He was blond, like the first, but taller and leaner. His skin was absolutely covered in scars, spaced most thickly together on his neck and jaw. A few small marks on his arm were fresh, but the rest were not from the brawl today. He had been in more fights than I could have imagined, and he'd never lost. His tawny eyes blazed and his stance exuded the barely contained violence of an angry lion." - Bree Tanner
Jasper is 6'3" tall and has honey blond hair that falls just above his collar. He is muscular, but lean, unlike his brother Emmett. Like the other Cullens, he has pale, marble-like skin, inhuman beauty and bruise-like purple shadows under his eyes, which appear gradually as his thirst increases. He has golden eyes, like all vegetarian vampires, which turn darker, eventually becoming black, as he grows thirstier. His original eye color was brown.
He has many scars on his body, face, neck and jaw from the bites of vampires he fought during his time in Maria's coven. These scars are invisible to humans unless contrasted by a strong light, but when viewed by someone with supernatural eyesight they are said to be his most dominant feature, causing defensive reactions in vampires who don't know him. In Breaking Dawn, Bella thinks the scars "screamed dangerous." She also asks herself, "How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper?", and answers, "The same number that had died in the attempt."
In the Twilight movie, Jessica Stanley describes him as "the blond one who looks like he's in pain."
Personality[]
Jasper can sometimes pass as cold, because he has a very militaristic mindset from his time as a human in the Confederate army and later as a vampire in Maria's army. However, the truth is that he is a very kind, polite, gallant and simply good person. He is described by Alice as 'a good Southern gentleman'. He is a natural scholar and avid reader, and has a shrewd mind on business and battle tactics.
Jasper is completely in love with Alice and he often acts a lot more open when he is around her. He would also do everything to protect his family, sometimes being a bit overprotective when trying to protect Alice. An example of this was when Jasper was trying to be 'everywhere at once' to protect Alice as they had their battle with the newborn vampire army in Eclipse.
Jasper has the least control over his thirst and would occasionally find human blood tempting, making him uncomfortable around humans, as proven when he tried to attack Bella after she bled from a paper cut. To keep him in check, Edward and Alice would team up to help him, though he finds it irritating. Because of this, he would feel smug whenever someone else in his family was having the same hard time; for example, he expected eagerly for Bella to lose control of her thirst when she became a vampire in Breaking Dawn, and in Midnight Sun, he was smug at Edward's annoyance over their supervision. However, Bella's remarkable control as a newborn made Jasper question himself and eventually begin to expect more control of himself, and reevaluate his view on newborns.
Powers and Abilities[]
"Now that I could see, the scars were Jasper's most dominant feature. It was hard to take my eyes off his ravaged neck and jaw-hard to believe that even a vampire could have survived so many sets of teeth ripping into his throat. Instinctively, I tensed to defend myself. Any vampire who saw Jasper would have had the same reaction. The scars were like a lighted billboard. Dangerous, they screamed. How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper. Hundreds? Thousands? The same number that had died in the attempt." - Bella on seeing Jasper for the first time as a newborn.
In the Cullen family, Jasper is the best fighter, the second fastest (after Edward), and the second strongest (after Emmett). In Eclipse, during training sessions Jasper gives the Cullens and Quileutes, Jasper noted that he was unable to beat Edward because of his ability to read minds: neither was able to defeat the other (but without Edward's mind reading ability, Jasper would have defeated him). This was shown during their sparring, which only stopped when Carlisle told them to, suggesting that it could have continued indefinitely. In battle, he is a very fierce fighter and difficult to defeat.
Out of the entire family, Jasper is only member to possess any military experience prior to being converted into a vampire. His experience on the field allowed him to single-handedly slay newborn vampires who had reached the end of their first year. As mentioned in Breaking Dawn, the Quileute wolves consider Jasper the largest strongest opponent above all the other Cullens, describing him as "power and speed and death rolled into one."
His greatest weakness is his thirst for blood: he had lived in a coven where blood and battle were all a vampire could think about. Even after decades of joining the more peaceful Cullen family and practicing vegetarianism, he still has a hard time abstaining from human blood, which can easily make him lose control if they are in close proximity.
Main article: Pathokinesis
"Jasper is very interesting. He was quite charismatic in his first life, able to influence those around him to see things his way. Now he is able to manipulate the emotions of those around him - calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It's a very subtle gift." - Edward on Jasper's gift[src]
Because he was charismatic as a human, Jasper can sense and change the emotions of others as a vampire, though he must be careful not to constantly manipulate those around him, so as not to create a false reality of others simply feeling what he wants them to feel. His gift is one of few that can affect Bella without getting blocked by her mental shield, because his power can actually influence people's feelings rather than create an illusion. Jasper also becomes very connected to Bella in Breaking Dawn because of her constantly joyful mood as a vampire.
He mainly uses it to calm down people who have been angered, to end a situation peacefully. During his years with Maria and her coven, his power allowed him to control the newborn vampire soldiers better, which is what made him Maria's favorite. He could constantly sense the pain of those he killed, either for position or sustenance. This experience made him emotionally damaged as he found killing the only way for survival, until he met Alice and started the process of satisfying his thirst with animal blood.
Although his power is useful, the mood he inflicts only lasts for as long as his targets are within his range.