Elena Gilbert

Elena Gilbert is the main female protagonist of The Vampire Diaries. At the beginning of the series, Elena appears to be a regular human girl, but is then revealed to be a Petrova doppelgänger. In the Season Three finale she becomes avampire despite never wanting to be one.

Elena has been struggling to live a normal life ever since her adoptive parents,Miranda and Grayson Gilbert, died in a car accident when she was seventeen years old. Her life also changes drastically as she and her friends are caught up in the supernatural world that surrounds them and are forced to face powerful supernatural enemies.

Elena is described as a star student. She is popular, sporty, smart, compassionate, empathetic, caring and friendly. She can be very vulnerable and a damsel in distress.

Elena is best friends with Bonnie Bennett and Caroline Forbes as well as her current boyfriend, Damon Salvatore. She is also close friends with her ex-boyfriends, Stefan Salvatore and Matt Donovan. Her actions and beliefs throughout the series have been most influenced by her on-and-off romantic relationships with the Salvatore brothers, as well as by her antagonistic relationship with Katerina Petrova.

In Season One, Elena is still coping with her parents’ death when she meets a mysterious new student at Mystic Falls High School, Stefan Salvatore. Elena and Stefan fall in love with each other. However, not long after that, Elena discovers that both Stefan and his brother, Damon, are vampires. She also becomes aware of the existence of Katherine Pierce, the woman who turned the Salvatore brothers into vampires in 1864, and to whom Elena bears a striking physical resemblance. In the process, Elena discovers a shocking truth - she was adopted, and her real parents are John Gilbert, her uncle, and Isobel Flemming, Alaric's wife.

In Season Two, Elena learns that she is Katherine’s doppelgänger, which explains their identical appearance. Because of this, an Original Vampire, Klaus, wants to use her in a sacrifice to break an ancient curse. Despite Elena’s and her friends’ best efforts, the sacrifice takes place. Her biological father, John, sacrifices his own life to keep Elena alive and human. However, Klaus kills Elena’s aunt Jenna.

After Jeremy's death in Season Four, at Damon's command to ease her pain, she turned off her humanity. Vampires in rare cases form a sire bond to the one who turned them, based on how strong their human feelings were before transitioning. After a brief time, she was finally able to regain her humanity after a surprising plan was carried out by Damon and Matt.

During the events of Season Five, Elena's body was also possessed by Katherine, who was attempting to escape her fate caused by the effects of the cure. It took a while for Elena's friends to discover Katherine's deceit and when she died, she left a'little present' in the form of infecting Elena's body with a deadly toxin, but this was later cured. Near the end of the season, she and Damon got back together near the end of the season, but it was short-lived. After Stefan's shocking death, in order to bring him and others back from The Other Side, Damon, Elena and Caroline devised a plan, involving Liv Parker performing a spell that the Travelers had used to bring back their leader, Markos. However, the spell was interrupted before Damon could pass through the Anchor, Bonnie, and as the Other Side began to disintegrate, Elena and her friends were left heartbroken by their impending deaths.

For most of her life Elena lived at 2104 Maple Street, in the Gilbert family house. InSeason Four, she briefly moved to the Salvatore Boarding House, when her brother,Jeremy, became a member of The Five and developed an uncontrollable urge to kill vampires, making it impossible for them to live together. Later than season, after Jeremy’s death, Elena burned down the Gilbert house. After that, she lived in the Salvatore Boarding House for several months, before moving to the Whitmore College dorm, where she still currently lives.

She attended Mystic Falls High School from Seasons One to Four, where she was a cheerleader, honor student, and one of the most popular girls in the school. Elena wanted to become a great writer and she has a diary in which she writes everything that happens in her life. She was originally turned in this direction by her adoptive mother, who gave Elena her first diary when she was ten. As of Season Five, she attends Whitmore College and majors in pre-med, wanting to become a doctor.