An Absent Prince: The State of Toronto

By chauhansnjy – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

“The city had been built by people from innumerable elsewheres. It was a chaos of cultures ordered only by its long streets. It belonged to no one and never would, or maybe it was a million cities in one, unique to each of its inhabitants, belonging to whoever walked its streets.”

     – André Alexis, “The Hidden Keys”

It was a village before it was a city, several times: Iroquoian, Huron, Senecan, Algonkian, and Mississauga. Sometimes the rise and fall was due to the natural movement of traditionally nomadic peoples; more and more often it became the result of disease and displacement that came with the winds blowing the Europeans down the St. Lawrence and onto the shores of what would be Lake Ontario.

It was ‘Muddy York’ when Charles Sackville, once sixth Earl of Dorset, stepped off the ship from Kingston with his longtime friend and broodmate, Nell Gwyn. Each had left others in their place to live out their lives and deaths when they became Kindred; each chose to start the new century in a ‘new world,’ far from the King ruling under their dead friend’s name. Living in the city has always been a trial and a test for the Toreador – it has never been among the most beautiful of places, try as they might to change it with every controversial ROM Crystal and fantastical OCAD renovation and elegant Four Seasons Opera House.

But they found beauty in the chaos that built Toronto as the years passed. ‘Prince Charles’ was a jest that became reality as more vampires moved to the city along with their warm-blooded counterparts. Nell chose to stick to her strengths and started a number of bawdy houses, prompting Prince Sackville to name her the ‘Lady of Whores’ – granting her domain over the sex workers of the city. This became immensely profitable as the city grew.

Nell herself became a target in an 1855 Sabbat incursion that is now remembered as the ‘Circus Riot.’ An attempted abduction by a pack travelling into the city with a circus was repelled by the bordello’s staff, covered up as a brawl between a local ladder company and the circus’ clowns. The next day while the Camarilla of the city slept, the Orange Order – under the influence of the Brujah – burned the circus wagons or threw them in the lake, managing to set a number of unconscious Sabbat aflame. Following the riot, the Ventrue ensured all of the police present testified that they were unable to identify any participants.

The city grew despite fires and wars and depressions at home and away. It grew with each wave of immigration, becoming a patchwork of neighbourhoods with their own character, their own culture, their own foods and smells and sounds. Even these shifted over the decades and expanded and shrunk and moved to other places in the city entirely. Soon there were Kindred and Kine living in the city from all over the world, sitting next to each other on the streetcars, walking past each other on Queen Street, cutting each other off on the Gardiner. Soon there was a person living there from every country in the world.

Despite a minor Drabinsky issue in the late Eighties, Nell and Prince Sackville had managed to do a remarkable job in marshalling the Camarilla’s resources to build a city they would want to live in. There are world-renowned chefs and restaurants. The film festival is on the level of Sundance and Cannes. Theatre is thriving. The city’s actors and musicians are some of the best – or at least the most popular – in the world. There is more than one Ballet, more than one Opera, more than one Orchestra. It’s not beautiful, but it has its places of beauty all across the city, and even the dreadful CN Tower has come to mean ‘home’.

After all that work has finally come to fruition, after Toronto is finally cool, it seems unfortunate that Prince Sackville has disappeared. For precisely how long, no one can say. Sackville’s loyal ghoul has been maintaining his portfolio just as he has for decades. His barely-released childe and friends (‘coterie’ would be a gross exaggeration) have moved into his haven and appear to be spending his money as fast as they can.

Toronto’s Primogen are in complete disarray. The Convention of Prague had already removed both the Brujah Primogen and the Nosferatu Primogen from their ranks, the latter a move that was unexpected and proved to be crippling. When the Primogen finally discovered the Prince’s unexplained absence, they sought access to his uncooperative ghoul. Sackville’s child denied them and only revealed that the Prince is not yet dead. Though comforting, it was not helpful in the 2018 Provincial Election.

Without Sackville’s influence, the Camarilla’s resources were not enough to fight both the wave of populism and the attack from the Anarchs. Scattered to the 905 communities that many of their numbers call home and in a cold war with the Camarilla, the Anarchs knew nothing of the Prince’s disappearance initially and deployed their people and information with the goal of a split vote and a socialist NDP minority. They expected a fight from the Camarilla. They got none and Ontario got Doug Ford. It didn’t take long for the former Nosferatu Primogen to figure out that ‘Sackville’ wasn’t really there anymore.

Now as the new year begins, the remaining Primogen try desperately to regroup and reclaim the full power of the throne, while the Anarchs reassess their plans, and Nell quietly hopes no one remembers she’s the oldest vampire in the city… and that whatever took her best and last friend doesn’t get her next. 

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