Being a dragonborn is a gift: Use the power of the voice and your other demi-god powers. And a curse: You are a dragon mentally, you are the representation of domination, pride and the will to power. You are drawned to archive it by any means.
Being a mortal could be regarded as a curse: Every other thing is immortall, and you one day die, and your very soul is played with and you can't do anything about it.
Being a vampire could be regarded as a gift: Immortality, and the power to give it to your loved ones, or cure them from diseases that could cause much suffering.

Dualities. Dualities everywhere. Are snakes evil? They are just doing what they were born to do. The best answer to every morality question like these is Balance.

Hehe...fair enough.

To some religious people, they are. Never assume others think as you do, because someone somewhere will have a different point of view, and no one is wrong when it comes to opinions on what is evil.

Vampirism doesn't make you automatically evil. Look at Rona Hassildor she didn't want to hurt a human so she didn't feed and it eventually killed her. It is all about choices. Now people are saying vampires are evil for killing humans and svcking blood. But humans can kill humans. In TES mankind and mer have probably killed more people than vampires ever will. In my mind this is the TES food chain, Padomay-Daedra-Vampires/Werewolves-Mer/Man-Beast races-Animals. Also what would happen to Serana if she cured herself, would those 4,000+ years catch up to her right after.

Once upon a time this thread was about figuring out Serena's age.

If she is really that old why didn't Harkon never made a serious attempt to find her and more important how come his castle is still there in pretty good shape after 3000 years and did nobody really made a attempt to eradicate that vile nest of vampires

I ve been wondering this ever since i first started dawnguard and is the only thing that really bothered me on this otherwise pretty good questline

Windhelm is still standing and in relatively decent shape for its age, and its older.

It doesnt make you evil, no, but the majority of vampires from a human perspective are. (underlined so I dont get a large wall of text of how evil is a point of view.)

Everyone as proven by the ferryman are afraid of the castle and won't go near it. Also it is in such good shape since the vampires are preserving what's left of it. Also to add they didn't always live in the castle, serana hints to this when talking about the moon dial. Harkon probably didn't know Serana had an elderscroll until he saw her again.

i bet her family was the first vampires in Tamriel so they where the first to receive the "Blessings" and that was ALONG time AGO

I got it! I got it! Serana's exact age!


Case. Closed.

Now how did you work that out?

I went into the console to fix that dismiss/wait bug she has, and I found out a couple of interesting things though...the main one being that it records that she and my character had the marriage dialogue, and I know very well that isn't the case. I'm not sure what the story is there, but some of the pathing was bit weird with her.

There's no evidence pointing to that. Harkon recieved his "blessing" by sacrificing 1000 souls, while serana and valerica did the deed with the King of Swing. The first vampires were violated by Miz Molag (real name escapes me), the unfortunate nedic woman who was molag's first vampire after molag "sowed his wrath". So harkons family couldnt be among the first.

The tale of the first vampire - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Opusculus_Lamae_Bal_ta_Mezzamortie
Harkon could've probably saved an awful lot of time and effort by just 'doing the deed' with Molag Bal aswell.

and
That suggests early Merethic, the barriers were probably still slightly unstable to allow this, way before Harkon's family could have possibly been born.

Not sure if this is just a mess up on the developers' part, but upon entering barrows, she comments that she was always told to stay away from these ruins when she was younger - implying that they were around (and ruins) when she was. How long ago was that?

One of the loading screen messages seemed to imply that the draugr in those ruins are still "alive" (in the loosest possible sense of the word) as punishment for allying themselves with the dragons when they were around last time. I'm not sure when Alduin ruled the dragons when he was banished in relation to the first Empire's founding, but I got the impression that they were at least a little before Serana's time.

Not really related to Serana's Age...but just an interesting tid-bit that hit me from http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Opusculus_Lamae_Bal_ta_Mezzamortie reading.

"Lamae, (who is known to us as blood-matron) imprecated her foul aspect upon the folk of Tamriel, and begat a brood of countless abominations, from which came the vampires, most cunning of the night-horrors."

I wonder what other abominations were 'begat', and if the vampires are the 'most cunning' I wonder what other night-horrors might exist. Who or what might be the 'most powerful'?

Well Lich Kings could be considered night terrors, were-creatures, possibly Daedra.

Oooo...Lich's I can see. We need more Lichs.
Daedra, maybe.
Were-creatures seem more Hircine's territory.

If being a Draugr is a punishment than how would you explain Olaf One-eye who appears both as a Draugr and Considering he fought against one specifically Numinex...

Well, there's vivec and his brood after doing the deed with the king of swing for 88 days.

Exactly, its not even remotely possible that Harkon was among them.

Something to consider

But I don't think the few that survived the Dragonguard's genocide were fighting one another for territory. Some of them went into hiding, others were working for the mortals.