I've been talking about the different worlds in Grimm Fairy Tales, and I wanted to spend some time on two terms that keep coming up while I'm reading: Highborns and Falsebloods.…

I've been talking about the different worlds in Grimm Fairy Tales, and I wanted to spend some time on two terms that keep coming up while I'm reading: Highborns and Falsebloods. Because once you get beyond the individual fairy tales and start following the larger story, those two words become pretty important to understanding who these people are and why so many different groups are interested in them. I'm sticking to the stories I've reached so far, so this is about the distinction as it comes up in that part of the series. The basic distinction is ancestry. Highborns belong to the supernatural bloodlines associated with the Realms of Power. Falsebloods have both Highborn and human ancestry. The simplest example is a child of a Highborn and a human. That's where the connection between those apparently separate worlds becomes part of an actual person. Myst, Neverland, Wonderland and Oz are real places in this universe. Earth connects with them, and the people and powers associated with those places don't stay neatly contained there. So somebody living a human life on Earth can have a connection to this whole other world through their own family, even before they understand what that means. That is the useful starting point for Falsebloods. Human ancestry, supernatural ancestry, and an individual who has to live with whatever comes from that combination. The word itself can throw you off because “false” sounds like somebody is pretending. Their abilities are real. Their connection to the realms is real. It doesn't mean they're wearing a costume and claiming a heritage they don't have. And Highborn doesn't simply mean a wealthy person, a prince, or somebody from an important family. There are royalty and rulers in these stories, obviously, but the term is being used for supernatural heritage. Having a crown and being a Highborn are different pieces of information about somebody. Sela is a good place to start because we've spent so much of the original series with her. She's a Falseblood, and her connection to this world reaches into her family history. She isn't just an ordinary observer who happens to stand nearby while other people do all the supernatural stuff. But when we first follow her, a huge part of what she does involves that fairy-tale book. She brings people into experiences where a story confronts them with their behavior and its consequences. Sometimes that gives them an opportunity to change. Sometimes they make the wrong choice anyway. The person being confronted still matters to the outcome. The book had a keeper before Sela. It comes with a history and a responsibility that she inherits along with access to what it can do. That makes her role more complicated than simply having a supernatural ability. She's using something powerful to intervene in other people's lives, and those people can still refuse the lesson. Imagine having a way to show somebody exactly where their choices are taking them and then watching them carry on anyway. Calling her a Falseblood gives us part of her background. Watching what she does with that background is the actual story. She can be trying to help somebody, make a mistake, have something used against her, or find herself dealing with a threat much bigger than the situation she originally walked into. Being supernatural hasn't removed any of that. Britney Waters gives us a very different example. She's the Red Riding Hood character, and later Red Agent, but the Falseblood part of her story doesn't look like Sela's. With Britney, the wolf side is a major part of the conversation. Her transformation and the physical abilities associated with it are very different from the work Sela does with the book. Britney also brings her own judgment and experience into those situations. Turning into a wolf doesn't make an investigation happen by itself. It doesn't decide who is telling the truth or what she should do with the information she gets. In Red Agent, the setting gives her different problems to work through, even though we are still following the same person with the same supernatural background. Now put somebody like Helios beside them. He's an ancient Highborn, and The Gathering and The Summoning make him a threat that requires Sela, Samantha and their allies to work together. Baba Yaga and the others are assembling the Sunstone of Ra because they want to unleash him against their enemies. This is somebody whose arrival can put the whole world in danger. That gives the difference in power a much more concrete form. Sela and Britney aren't just being told that a more powerful category exists somewhere. They are living in a world where somebody can bring that kind of threat into a conflict, and their existing enemies are actively trying to do it. A fight they were already involved in can become much worse because of what someone else is willing to release. And even Helios has a history behind the power. His background identifies him as the child of Highborn parents who was initially powerless. So being born into that ancestry and becoming the terrifying figure in The Summoning aren't the same moment in his life. That's a much more interesting complication than assuming he came into the world with every ability already available to him. There's a broader range on the Highborn side than the name might suggest, too. The Grimm Universe includes figures presented as gods, along with other beings tied to its supernatural worlds. The Godstorm material uses the language of Highborn gods, which gives some idea of how large this part of the setting can get. But “Highborn” by itself doesn't mean every character has the same position or the same power as a god. The 2012 Annual and Angel material give that a very specific human connection through Zeus and Heather Angelos. Zeus has Falseblood offspring, and Heather is one of them. So the difference between these categories can exist within one family. It isn't always a case of two separate groups looking at each other across a battlefield. Sometimes it's a parent and a child. Venus is pursuing control over humanity, while Zeus has reasons to protect his descendants. The gods have disagreements, attachments and competing interests. Being part of the same supernatural world doesn't mean they agree about what should happen to Earth or to the people living here. We see supernatural people protecting Earth, and we see supernatural people trying to control it. Sharing a connection to the realms doesn't make them a united group. They have their own histories, loyalties and goals. A person can be born into this world and still have to decide what they are going to do when a conflict reaches them. The Realm Knights bring Highborns and Falsebloods together to protect Earth. HiboCorp's involvement gives that cooperation another layer, because now there is a government agency organizing people whose abilities come from this much older supernatural world. They have a job to do together, but they haven't all arrived with the same experiences or the same reasons to trust one another. That's also where the Earth side of the story starts getting complicated. These people aren't only interesting to other magical beings. Human institutions become involved. They want information, they want some way of handling threats they don't fully understand, and they want access to people who can do things ordinary humans can't. By the time of the original series' Age of Darkness material, secrecy is breaking down. Issue 98 specifically deals with people on Earth learning that Highborns and Falsebloods exist. That changes the context of the whole conversation. Something that might have been hidden in somebody's personal history is now part of a public danger that an ordinary family has to think about. And an ordinary person looking at all that probably isn't starting with a carefully researched distinction between types of ancestry. They're wondering what these beings can do, whether their family is safe, and who can be trusted. That doesn't make every frightened response justified, but it explains why the existence of these people becomes a problem far beyond the battles themselves. Hellchild adds another useful point, since I've been reading her stories too. Angelica is Hades' daughter, and her story involves both her demigod heritage and vampirism. Those are different parts of what she is. Explaining one doesn't automatically explain the other. Hades being her father connects her to the divine side of this universe. Vampirism adds another condition to her life, with its own consequences. When she's dealing with her father, that's an actual family relationship with a great deal of history behind it. The supernatural part makes that relationship more dangerous, but she still has to deal with the person who brought her into the world. That family element comes up in very different forms across these characters. Sela's ancestry ties her to the realms before we ever get to her responsibility for the book. Britney's heritage manifests through the wolf side of her life. Heather connects the Falseblood idea directly to Zeus. Angelica is dealing with Hades as her father while also living with vampirism. Those are very different lives within the same wider setting. And that's where the term Falseblood becomes more useful than it might sound at first. These aren't people who have simply visited a magical place and come home with a story. The connection is part of their own ancestry. Earth can be their home while the history of another world reaches right into their family. They can be dealing with a threat that most people around them don't even know exists, and the people who do know may already have plans for them. The power also puts them in reach of enemies they didn't choose. Sela might be trying to guide somebody through a personal crisis, but she is still connected to a much larger struggle. Britney can be operating in a recognizable modern setting, investigating people and working a mission, while somebody else sees her as one more supernatural threat to eliminate. They don't get to leave their ancestry behind just because the immediate problem looks ordinary. For somebody encountering these terms for the first time, I would start with those characters. Sela and Britney are Falsebloods with very different abilities. Helios gives us an example of an enormously dangerous Highborn. Zeus and Heather show the family connection between the categories. Then Angelica gives us a character whose divine ancestry is only one part of what she is dealing with. The original Red Agent story is a good place to see how ugly that can get on Earth. Britney is trying to do the job in front of her, an organization is targeting supernatural people, and a laboratory-enhanced warrior has been created to hunt. That leaves Britney having to get inside the organization and confront a weapon built for exactly the kind of conflict she's caught in.