#charles evenson

I would think the answer to that one would be obvious, and at any rate, he died. At the hands of my son.

I mean, that's not unlike what James and Victoria did, and in both cases Carlisle proved that he considers self-defense to be morally acceptable. He's not an absolute pacifist. By human considerations he's really not that radical, his ideals are 1. don't kill people on purpose, 2. see rule #1. He only becomes radical because he's a species that kills to survive, and killing kinsmen is so normalized that the Volturi don't even have a law against it.

That being said, though, I find this scenario... questionable. How would Charles even know where to find the Cullens? How would they know they existed, even? If Edward did a villain monologue I suppose he knows Esme is a happily married bloodsucking demon now, but if Edward didn't then Charles is Vampire Victim #20901 with no knowledge of nor intent to pursue the Cullens.

... but, knowing Edward, he would not be able to shut up.

More, let's say that Charles wakes up a vampire, and Edward had a villain monologue so Charles knows Esme's involved. He wants revenge.

How does he find the Cullens?

Edward might have brought up Carlisle during his villain speech. But he might not have brought up that Carlisle lives among humans, nor the Carlisle uses his own name. I'd be surprised if Charles assumed both of those things to be true.

Charles is searching for three vampires, not a doctor Cullen and family somewhere in America.

Between the three days of his transformation passing, and the rush of being a newborn, the odds of Charles deciding to kill the Cullens and being put together enough to think to follow anybody's scent before Edward's scent has disappeared altogether, he's not going to be able to follow them in that way.

No, what Charles has is the memory of what Esme looked like as a human, and what the monster that killed him looked like. These memories are human and unclear, and likely failing him even as he tries to think about them clearly. He only met Edward once, it was highly traumatic, it's likely he wasn't focusing on committing Edward's features to memory.

Charles is an abandoned newborn with only the obsession of half-forgotten people to guide him. If he ever finds the Cullens, that will be luck and coincidence.

But I don't think he'll make it that far.

This guy was a violent and aggressive human. Now he's a newborn vampire, ignorant of the Volturi to boot.

I imagine he has a series of indiscretions, living the grand newborn life, which comes to a brutal end at the hands of the Volturi.

From there, Edward, who per the timeline was off the diet at this point and killing rapists, gets a knock on the door from the Volturi, as Demetri could track him from Charles' memories. It is illegal, after all, to abandon a newborn, and to do so carries a capital sentence for both newborn and creator. In Edward's case, his progeny aroused the attention of the Volturi, so he can't use the "No harm was done!" defense.

Given his gift, though depending a bit on who has been dispatched from Volterra, Edward is likely offered a spot amon the Volturi. It is a nifty gift.

Oh Carlisle would have, full stop. It is highly likely he was actually planning on doing it. If we accept that Edward killed Charles (which SM accidentally retconned in Midnight Sun--why oh why did I, who build out the entire world for the tiniest of secondary characters, get so obsessed with books with such lousy continuity) the most logical explanation isn't really that he was trying to protect Esme. She was a vampire; Charles couldn't kill her or hurt her, and he wasn't likely to find out about her anyway. And the Guide says he was the first kill, so Edward went out specifically looking for him in order to solve something. But that something wasn't the danger he posed to Esme. So there had to be some other reason he felt compelled to kill Charles. Sure, maybe it was just a vengeful "No other woman will suffer at the hands of this guy" but given the kind of deification he ascribes to Carlisle, I think it much more plausible that it was, "I have to keep Carlisle from killing this guy." If Carlisle kills Charles, then Edward has to take him off the pedestal, and Edward needs very badly for Carlisle to be on that pedestal. So he keeps him there, even if it means murder.

So I find pretty strong evidence in Edward's thinking that Carlisle was contemplating murdering Charles. (An old jossed story favorite of mine explores what might have happened if Carlisle actually did go to seek Charles). We see over and over in the books that Carlisle has several pretty big exceptions for the "We don't murder people" rule and this one would fall right into those. Would he do it humanely? Yep. Might he try instead to find someway to just...get Charles to end up dead but not quite by his hand? Yep. But would he make sure Charles died? Little doubt. Royce and his friends are a little harder. Edward would've been burning to kill Royce and Co. But this is a scant two years after he's returned from The Time and he's anxious to re-earn Carlisle and Esme's approval even though he doesn't need to (agape is a hard concept for him). So I suspect he doesn't kill them. It's not because of his known Madonna/whore complex, and it's not out of a lack of willingness to do so, but is because he has literally just redefined himself as The Guy Who Does Not Do That Anymore and he would want badly to live up to that black and white definition of himself. So the answer to that one is no.

Moodboard of Charles Evenson.