Team Eric: True Blood Gifts

• Eric Northman was born in Scandinavia, circa 962CE.
• His father was the king of their Viking clan.
• As a teenager, Eric was far more interested in women than in fulfilling his destiny as heir apparent.
• He watched vampires kill his whole family, and was powerless at the time to stop them.
• The oath of vengeance, sworn by Eric then, has driven him ever since.
• Eric was once a Viking warrior, dying in battle...
• ... then he met his second vampire. Godric snatched Eric from the gates of Valhalla to make him a vampire too.
• For over 1000 years, Godric and Eric traveled around the world as a vampire family. When Godric made Nora a vampire too, Eric considered her to be his sister.
• Eric had never created another vampire until he reached San Francisco in 1905. There he gave brothel keeper Pam the dark gift.
• Eric is currently the vampire sheriff of Area 5. That's Louisiana to you and me.

In HBO's True Blood, we first meet Eric Northman as the proprietor of the vampire club Fangtasia.

But that's not all he is. In the extensive hierarchy of vampire society, Eric Northman looms large as the Sheriff of Area 5. Humans and vampires alike can come to dark ends in his cellar. The lucky ones make it to trial.

A dangerous man, Eric watches over his people with a brooding boredom. Bill would rather keep Sookie well away, but he can't refuse the summons, when Eric beckons.

There is something very different about Sookie. She's not your average Louisiana lady. Bill knows it and Eric soon senses it. There's the telepathy for a start. It's a trait which Eric can use, and he does.

The scene is set for Sookie slowly entering Eric's life, much to the chagrin of both Sookie and Pam. But Eric remains gleeful; and he soon has reason to be glad that he continued the pursuit.

When witches leave Eric cursed and vulnerable amongst his kind, it's Sookie Stackhouse who comes to his rescue. She's seen a softer side to the Sheriff. It's a side which she would cultivate, whatever the cost.

As for Eric, his concern is still mostly what it's always been. A millennium old blood-feud sworn his dying birth father, with a Mjölnir pendant around his neck.

• Team Eric involves supporting Eric. Have you seen him? Bill Compton just does not compare.
• Eric might be a vicious, self-serving sadist, but he never claimed to be anything else.
• And it makes him useful as protection.
• He does have self-control as well. Bill talks a lot about drinking Tru Blood, but his actions leave rather a lot of puncture marks in Sookie's neck.
• Once he actually cares about someone, he's intensely loyal. He severely endangered himself to fulfill a promise made to his father a millennium ago.
• Eric has stamina...
• Let's be practical here. Eric has an income. He runs a nightclub and he's got property all over the place. How precisely is Bill supporting himself?
• Eric has connections which go right to the very top of vampire society.
• Bill Compton might be able to help historians by describing the American Civil War, but Eric could tell them all about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. And everything that's happened since.