So Who Is Camille O’Connell?
Cami O'Connell is definitely my favorite character in TVDU.
She is one of the few major characters in The Originals whose biographical details are shockingly thin.
We know she moved to New Orleans at the same time Klaus and Elijah did. She has a graduate degree in psychology and is currently writing her thesis. She bartends at Rousseus. She has a black belt in karate(?). She’s an O’Connell. Her twin brother was a mass murderer who committed suicide. Her uncle was a priest and leader of the Human Faction. Her parents wanted nothing to do with Sean and Kieran's deaths. She has a secret storage full of dark objects and old records about supernaturals. She has a criminal record. She learned to appreciate beer as an act of rebellion because her mother told her it was not a ladylike drink. Her favorite drink is a Sazerac with two spoons of honey. She can hold her liquor. She has a pattern of dating the wrong men. By S3 in academics, she's probably one step away from full qualification.
And that’s… basically it.
We speculate about her parents’ personalities, her socioeconomic background, her childhood, her romantic history.
This is wildly little for a character who becomes the emotional center of Klaus’s arc, the moral and intellectual counterweight of the show, the human lens through which we understand supernatural trauma.
But what did writers give us?
They gave us a character written from the inside out. Which is very fitting considering that this character is the soul of the show.
We know her worldview, her moral philosophy, her academic foundation, her voice, and her dynamic with Klaus. Cami is defined by her choices in the present.
So who is Camille O’Connell? (Based ONLY on canon)
She is a young woman, 23 years old, smart, articulate, and witty. She is beautiful inside and out. She believes in goodness. Her worldview is not naïve. It results from her natural empathy and her academic training. People snap because something breaks them (aka trauma).
She is intellectually rigorous and emotionally disciplined.
She studies psychology not to "fix" others but to understand the human mind and soul, our complexities and dark impulses.
In s1 she is depressed, angry, lost even, but she is fighting. She is trying to find out what really drove her twin brother to act in a way antithetical to who he was. She is fighting to regain control of her mind against Klau's compulsion. She is not passive to what is happening in her life and refuses to allow anyone to dictate her actions.
She is furious at the people who keep vandalizing Sean’s grave and at the injustice of his death.
At her uncle for lying to her. At Klaus for manipulating and trying to control her.
Her anger is part of her moral clarity.
She is brave in a grounded, human way. She doesn’t run from danger. But she is not reckless for the sake of drama. Her bravery is always tied to purpose and her need to do what is right.
She has a strong sense of family and loyalty.
She fights for her brother's memory.
She fights for Kieran's life, refusing to accept that he is going to die like Sean did.
She fights for the O’Connell legacy even when she doesn’t want it.
Her loyalty is fierce and personal.
She is not a ray of unwavering sunshine (Aurora's words, not mine); she has darkness inside her, and she knows it. When we learned about her assault and battery charge, it was not a twist.
It was a revelation of who she has always been: capable of violence, capable of losing control, capable of rage, like ever other human being.
She fears not darkness itself, but the loss of control that comes with it.
When she meets Klaus, she has no idea who he is or what he is, so she treats him like any other person she encounters, openly and without prejudice. Even when she says he is "a bad boy" and she only needs good in her life, she is not holding it against him, nor is she shy to admit her increasing attraction she feels for him.
Cami never shies away from speaking her mind, calling Rebekah a bitch, calling Marcel out when he says Rebekah is old history and he has known her since he was a kid. She is not afraid to say what is on her mind ever after she learns what Klaus is, what he has done, and what he is capable of. She stands her ground and refuses to back down. Because that's who Cami is. This is self-possession.
She refuses to let anyone — even the immortal Original Hybrid — dictate the terms of her identity.
And despite everything she has been through in S1, Cami is still capable of making decisions not with her emotions but with her head.
She is not offering Klaus easy forgiveness just because he is the king of the city.
And she is not letting her anger tarnish the time she has left with Kieran just because he lied to her about Sean, about the witches, and about who the O’Connells have been for 300 years now.
She is angry with Klaus and desperate to save her uncle, but she chooses not to use Papa Tunde’s knife against Klaus; instead, she offers it to him.
She refuses his offer to persuade Genevieve to help Kieran but immediately regrets it.
She does, from time to time, have problems holding her tongue: whore-shaming Genevieve, whom she finds half-naked when she walks into Klaus’s bedroom.
She is okay admitting she is lonely and giving in to a tryst with Marcel, and she does not allow Klaus to shame her for it.
At the same time, she is desperate to save her uncle, and she stops at nothing to keep him in her life — even asking Klaus to turn him. Which he does, because he knows she needs to say goodbye even though she is not yet ready to admit it.
Her most intense period in the show was her short-lived vampire era. People tend to have lots of feelings about how she had no issues using compulsion, how she treated Klaus, how she manipulated Hayley, about stealing the white oak knight, etc.
But what people miss is that her vampire arc is about autonomy — about regaining control over her life again.
Which she lost when Aurora compelled her to drink her blood and slit her throat, the moment she knew Klaus loved her… And ironically, this was not the moment he gave that wedding-vow speech, nor the moment he kissed her or stopped making out to just look at her with awe and surrender. No — ironically, that realization came the moment she opened her eyes and saw him sleeping peacefully beside her. It was the moment he was finally at peace, walls down, defenses down.
People tend to forget that vampirism was forced on Cami as a kind of punishment for being loved by the wrong guy. It was forced on her as a way to dissuade Klaus from his feelings for her.
Cami was someone who exercised control over herself — her decisions, her emotions, her darkness, and her actions — and vampirism stripped that control away. She was burdened with emotional instability, bloodlust, and hunger.
Her conflicts were "Who am I now?" "Can I trust myself?" "Can I trust Klaus?" "Can I reclaim my agency?"
Her obsession with her dark objects is exactly that, an attempt to regain control.
Being forced into transition, waking up to find her life changed without consent, dying under Klaus’s protection, realizing she can’t trust him to keep her safe, and realizing she can’t trust herself yet either. She is trying to rebuild her identity under this new biology. She needs space, not control. She needs partnership and equality in their relationship, not Klaus's guardianship.
My point is that the vampire era should not be treated as a behavioral arc. It’s a philosophical arc.
Cami is trying to answer, "Who am I when the rules of my own mind and body have changed?"
And Klaus is trying to answer, "How do I protect someone I love without destroying her agency?"
Vampire Cami vs dying Cami
Another issue of fandom is that with her dying realization (Lucien's upgraded bite), Cami's priorities change, and she runs to Klaus to confess her feelings, standing over Aurora's comatose body, not interested in revenge anymore—as if she is back to being the old version of herself. In my view, that is not what happens.
Cami doesn’t suddenly rediscover her humanity because she is dying. She has been fighting for it the entire time.
She faced Aurora. She saved Klaus. She faced her fear. And even if she had any lingering doubt about who Klaus loves or who he will protect in the end, the way he pleaded for her life and the look he gave her when she plunged that syringe into Aurora’s neck, incapacitating her… she knew. And by extension, she knew that withholding her own feelings was unfair. Lying to him was unfair. She loved him and never stopped.
She ran to tell him that once she recovered from Lucien's attack. Because she needed him to know, to hear the words. Not the lie she said in the church, but the truth that was always there between them. And yes, she ran to stop him, to make sure he wouldn't fall into Lucien's trap and lash out. That is what you do for those you love. You try to protect them.
So when she stands over Aurora's body, she doesn't have some sort of epiphany; she is finally at peace with the voices in her head. It's the quiet that comes when fear finally loosens its grip. She doesn’t become who she was. She remembers who she was.
So What Did Klaus Actually Change in Her?
Besides the obvious—being her kindred when she was in desperate need of one, becoming her family, her protector — the honest answer is that Klaus didn’t change who Cami was.
He changed what she allowed herself to admit.
He didn’t give her strength; Cami had that already.
He didn’t give her resilience. The way she lived her short life was proof of her own.
But Klau was the one to accept that she may be flawed, not the ray of unwavering sunshine that everyone thought she was.
Klaus saw her depression and obsession over her brother's death and tried to guide her out of it (wrongly, yes). Klaus was the target of her anger and understood the whys behind it. Her darkest secret was something she feared would change his view of her, but Klaus treated it as a joke, because that’s what it was. He understood the allure of darkness, and he recognized that she knew that allure too (day one, guys — the painting scene).
In reality, Klamille are a meeting of equals in the only arena that matters to both of them: the inner world.
Because Cami’s story was never written. Only her symbolism was.
Some in the fandom make her a saint. For others, she is the therapist. Most of us call her Klaus's moral compass, his redemption device. For some, Cami is a manic pixie dream girl or simply a love interest; tragic or not, it doesn't matter.
For me, Cami is a woman defined by choice, clarity, anger, compassion, and agency.
The show never gave us the biography that would explain how she became that person.
And that’s why she’s so hard to meta. But even with the luck of that, Camille O’Connell is extraordinary. Because she is not a saint. Not a martyr. Not a therapist archetype.
Not a moral compass. Not a redemption device.
She is a woman who walks into darkness with her eyes open and believes in goodness because she understands evil. Chooses compassion without denying anger. Holds herself accountable even when others fail her. Refuses to be controlled. Refuses to be reduced. She keeps her eyes open and tries to understand the complexities of the world around her, but not for a moment does she stop hoping.
Cami is extraordinary because she is ordinary—human, flawed, frightened, and brave—and she chooses, again and again, to be more than what the world expects of her.
She is the woman who walks into the dark and refuses to let it change who she is. But instead she changes the darkness—well, at least she changes Klaus.
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