Abraham Van Helsing

"Come, come. We must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not; we fight him all the same."

- Abraham Van Helsing.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was an aged Dutch polymath physician, lawyer, preacher and hunter who has much knowledge of vampires and many other creatures, who most famously took down the Romanian vampire Count Dracula along with many other dangerous creatures of the night and monsters.

Overview
Abraham Van Helsing is a renowned vampire hunter with an extensive knowledge about the existence of vampires, other creatures of the night, and the occult in general, as well as how to fight them. However, he now lacks the physical prowess to take action by himself due to his age, and instead acts as a mentor to others to stop the evil at hand.

He is revealed to be a descendant of one of the knights belonging to the Knights of the Round Table of whom Van Helsing decided to revive by continuing their legacy of extinguishing the forces of darkness. He was born a catholic, but later became a protestant and founded the Hellsing Organization, who continue to fight vampires and other monsters to this day, and would later be apart of the Dark Knight Initiative along with the Van Helsing Clan who would continue the work of his ancestor Gabriel Van Helsing's duty to defend against the supernatural.

Background
Abraham was born into a Catholic Dutch family in the early 1700s. As he came into adulthood he married and settled down to start a family as he studied several fields of science, medicine, physics, and psychology. His family was wracked with tragedy when Van Helsing's only son passed away. The passing drove his wife mad to the point that she became dead to Abraham, yet his status as a devout Catholic prevented him from divorcing her. Abraham continued his academic studies to receive degrees and doctorates in several fields including medicine, philosophy, and scientific study.

In the course of his career, Van Helsing became a professor and took on students. Among these students is a John Seward who would one day become a doctor himself. During an incident involving a knife that had come into contact with gangrene, Van Helsing was cut and poisoned by it. Thinking quick, Seward sucked the poison out and saved Abraham, a favor he would not soon forget.

Saving an Empire
At some point, he crossed paths with Johanna Constantine as he was investigating the strange events concerning amalgamations between vampires and clockwork machinery. The two worked together for a time only to find out the root of the cause behind the Industrial Revolution was a cult known as the Church of the Broken God that worshipped an ancient deity known as Mekhane. With that discovery they also found that Delilah Copperspoon, the leader of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, was using the power of the Broken Church in order to take the throne of the British Empire. Delilah herself was the illegitimate daughter of King George III who felt cheated from her rightful place as the heir to the throne.

Copperspoon would use the Oraculum to harness the primordial power that lay within the otherworldly metal that made up Mekhane's body in a bid to perhaps use this energy to open a temporal gateway, and allowing her to alter reality where she becomes the ruler of the United Kingdom. Johanna and Abraham were soon joined by Haytham Kenway, a Ghost Rider, and after much trials and tribulations, they succeeded in defeating Delilah and dismantled the Church of the Broken God alongside the Golden Dawn.

The Last Romanov
Abraham was also said to have aided Vitali Romanov, a survivor of the House of Romanov whom were brutally murdered to bring down the imperial monarchy of Russia and end the Tsardom, in taking down the rising lycanthrope plague which was devastating most of Europe. However, this soon turned into a large web of conspiracy, threaded by vampires whom infiltrated society, that both Abraham and Vitali would work together to solve and prevent the collapse of Western civilization alongside the aid of other confidants including Johanna Constantine, an ancestor of John Constantine. Abraham and Vitali's partnership also sparked the first technical collaboration of the Hellsing Organization and the Order of the Silver Cross before the two were ever established.

At some point, Abraham and Johanna consorted only to end up separating but unbeknownst to Abraham, Johanna was pregnant with his child.

Dealing with Dracula
Later, he is summoned to London by his student John Seward to investigate the case of a strange disease that is afflicting a friend of his, Lucy Westenra. Throughout the course of the story, Van Helsing learns that she is afflicted with vampirism, which leads him, accompanied by a group of men, to hunt down the author of this atrocity, Count Dracula.

Abraham was soon drawn to the activities with the vampire which resulted in the hunter and his compatriots to initiate their grand battle against the vampire count. While powerful in his own way, Dracula was shocked to see the tenacity and strength of humans, the very same beings he regards as inferior and mindless animals.

Foundation of Hellsing
With Dracula given a humiliating defeat at the hands of a group of humans, pieces of his broken body became hidden in the snow which made all but Van Helsing not notice them. Some days later, Van Helsing came back to the area and picked those pieces up. He then had the assistance of a wizard to mold them into his own vampire known as Alucard who had the memories of Dracula and Vlad III.

This vampire made a blood oath to be in eternal servitude to Van Helsing and his bloodline. He became the Helsing family's ultimate weapon against the forces of darkness under the service of the Hellsing Organization which was founded by Abraham Van Helsing.

Legacy
When Van Helsing and Johanna separated she would end up raising their son Lucius Constantine on her own only to have another after she settled down and married another man. Lucius' descendants would be separate from the Constantine family, as the main family line ends with John Constantine and Lucius' line ends with Trevor Constantine who by birthright would come to inherit the Hellsing Organization after Integra Hellsing's death.

Integra initially wanted Shelby Penwood's grandson to lead the organization in her stead as she believed that hereditary leadership had run its course. It was only until she discovered the existence of Trevor Constantine that she gave the organization to him and with her blessing.

Quotes

 * "There are many immortal monsters who roam this Earth. Ones that I have encountered and ones that I originally believed to have only existed through dreams. When I look at them I wonder, where they created out of the desire for immortality? Or to simply carve out the weakness that held them back? That is their humanity, even if it were a fraction of it. Their humanity is, to them, what reminded them of their frail and weakened former selves. They believe it is what truly limits them from creating the greatest of horrors across battlefields drowned in blood. And yet, there is this sense of longing. What this longing could be I cannot say for certain. Is it one of euphoria? Or death?" - Abraham Van Helsing.


 * "He is a seemingly arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than anyone else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day, and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy." - A letter From Dr. Seward to Arthur Holmwood.

Trivia

 * According to some rumors, Abraham Van Helsing is stated to be a descendant of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades.
 * The family tree listed in the document states that Abraham Van Helsing comes from the line of Marry Belmont who married "Leo Hercing", later becoming the ancestors of the Van Helsing family.

Image Sources

 * (Van Helsing 89.png) Van Helsing by ???
 * (Grayson Portrait.jpg) Grayson from The Order: 1886
 * (Peter Cushing Abraham Van Helsing.jpg) Van Helsing by wjh3
 * (Abraham van helsing by taneysha dc3nqo6-fullview.jpg) Abraham Van Helsing by Taneysha