Annabelle "Anna" Zhu, portrayed as an attractive young woman with Asian roots, standing 5'5" tall with brown eyes and hair, was a major recurring character in The Vampire Diaries. She was a vampire and the daughter of Pearl Zhu. This analysis delves into her complex character, exploring her motivations, relationships, and tragic fate.
Early Life and Motivations
Anna lived in Mystic Falls in 1864 with her mother Pearl, a successful businesswoman with extensive botanical knowledge. However, after the townspeople and the founding council discovered the existence of vampires, they began to hunt them down. Pearl was captured by the council and buried under the Fells' church, according to information provided by Bonnie Bennet's ancestor Emily Bennet.
Driven by a desire to free her mother from the vampire tomb, Anna returned to Mystic Falls as early as the night of the comet festival and watched Damon miss his every opportunity he had to open the tomb where her mother was. Anna met Jeremy Gilbert at the Mystic Falls library, where she was researching the town's history to find a way to free her mother from the vampire tomb in which she was buried.
At first, Anna tried to win Jeremy Gilbert's friendship and romantic interest by introducing him to the world of vampires. But, eventually, this proved to be a facade as her true purpose was to free her mother from the vampire tombs of Mystic Falls.
To achieve her goal, Anna turned Jeremy's classmate Ben and Logan, a local journalist, into vampires. She used them to perform various tasks, such as kidnapping Jeremy's sister and forcing Bonnie to find a way to open the tomb. Finally, she managed to free her mother from the grave.
Relationships
Jeremy Gilbert
Despite Anna using Jeremy constantly, she began to have genuine feelings for him. Jeremy Gilbert and Anna maintained a loving relationship for a time, despite opposition from Pearl, who hated the Gilbert family. However, the relationship came to an end when Jeremy decided to become a vampire in order to try to bring Vicki back, not knowing that she was already dead. Despite this, Anna and Jeremy made up and Anna even enrolled in the Mystic Falls school to be close to him.
After her mother's death, she shows up in Jeremy's room in tears, telling him about what happened to her mother. On Founder's Day, Anna goes to Jeremy with a vial of her blood, telling him that if he drinks it he dies and he will become a vampire. He was unsure, but she leaves the vial for him, just in case he changes his mind.
When Anna returned as a ghost, Jeremy recognized her as the love of her life and tricked Bonnie into kissing her.
Pearl Zhu
Mother and daughter maintained a close bond, though they had their ups and downs throughout their long lives. After the tragic loss of her mother, Anna found comfort in Jeremy, confiding in her grief.
Elena Gilbert
Elena and Anna did not get along due to Anna dating Elena's brother. Additionally, Anna was responsible for freeing Katherine Pierce and other vampires from the tomb, which led to additional resentment between them.
Ben McKittrick
Ben and Anna had a purely sexual relationship, motivated by the fact that she had turned him into a vampire.
Vampire Abilities
As a vampire, Anna possessed a range of supernatural abilities:
- Super Strength: Vampires are much stronger than supernatural hunters, immortals, and humans.
- Super Speed: Vampires can move quickly to cover short distances and appear as vibrating blurs of motion when running across long distances.
- Improved Agility: Vampires have superhuman agility, allowing them to jump, climb, and run at incredible speeds without exhaustion.
- Enhanced Senses: Vampires have highly developed senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste.
- Enhanced Durability: Vampires can withstand a lot of physical damage without being hindered.
- Regeneration: Vampires have a remarkable ability to heal from physical damage within seconds to minutes.
- Enhanced Emotions: Vampires experience emotions more intensely than humans.
- Immortality: Vampires stop aging after they are turned and become immune to all conventional illnesses and infections.
- Mind Compulsion: Vampires possess the power to manipulate thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
- Telepathy: Vampires have a form of telepathy that allows them to enter the minds of humans and other supernatural beings through tactile contact.
- Dream Manipulation: Vampires can use their telepathic abilities to control dreams and the subconscious of humans and other vampires.
- Illusions: Vampires have the ability to create illusions in the minds of other vampires, causing them to see or feel things that are not real.
- Bloodlust: A vampire with bloodlust is their appearance hidden under their normal human face.
Anna Zhu Logoless
Character Development and Death
At first, Anna used Jeremy to get his blood to get her mother back. However, in the process, she fell in love with him and began to feel guilty about her plans upon realizing her true feelings. She discovers that Jeremy was also using her to get close to Vicki. Despite this, Anna and Jeremy began dating, but Anna's death tore them apart.
She goes to the remaining tomb vampires, pretending to join them in attacking the Founders later that night, and then goes to warn Damon about them, possibly to protect Jeremy as he's a Gilbert and the Gilbert's are Founders. Damon tells her about the device, but also says that it has been despelled so she is not in danger, in which she replies a lot of people are going to die because the tomb vampires. She was with Jeremy when John Gilbert sets off the device, as she went to warn and possibly defend him if any tomb vampires tried to attack him.
Anna was immediately incapacitated, because she was within a five-block radius of the device. A policeman finds her with Jeremy and she was injected with vervain and dragged out of Jeremy's arms and to the Gilbert building to be burned alive, a replica of the original plan to eradicate the vampires in 1864. When John Gilbert sees Anna lying in the building with the other vampires, he stakes her, possibly out of mercy for her to receive a less painful death or out of anger that she was dating his nephew.
Damon sees what happens to her and after he tells Jeremy she had died, he admits he actually felt sorry for her and wanted to help, but couldn't- this was one of the first times Damon wants to help someone else for nothing in return, making her death a crucial point for Damon, not just Jeremy.
Anna's body was burned in the fire with the other vampires who were caught.
Here's a summary of Anna Zhu's key relationships and their dynamics:
| Relationship | Description |
|---|---|
| Jeremy Gilbert | Romantic interest, initially used but later developed genuine feelings. |
| Pearl Zhu | Mother, close bond, main motivation for Anna's actions. |
| Elena Gilbert | Antagonistic, due to Anna's relationship with Jeremy and freeing Katherine. |
| Ben McKittrick | Purely sexual, based on Anna turning him into a vampire. |