CHARACTER
A Discovery of Witchesby Deborah Harkness

Matthew Clairmont

Matthew Clairmont

Quick Facts

  • Role: Ancient vampire; central love interest; Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford; Fellow of All Souls; parallel appointment in neuroscience; Grand Master of the Knights of Lazarus; scion of the de Clermont family
  • First appearance: Chapter 2, Bodleian Library (Oxford)
  • Field of study: Origins, Evolution, and Extinction
  • Key relationships: Diana Bishop, Ysabeau de Clermont, Marcus Whitmore, Hamish Osborne
  • Adversaries/opposition: Peter Knox, Domenico Michele, Juliette Durand, the Congregation

Who They Are

A brilliant, fifteen-hundred-year-old vampire-scholar, Matthew is a living paradox: a man of reason housed in a predator’s body. He curates his life around laboratories, libraries, and control—until his path collides with Diana, a witch who awakens instincts he has long suppressed and memories he has tried to bury. Their romance becomes the series’ test case for Forbidden Love and Inter-species Relationships, forcing Matthew to choose between law and love.

Matthew’s identity sits at the crossroads of Magic vs. Science and Reason; he sequences DNA by day and grapples with bloodlust by night. As an immortal who has watched civilizations rise and fall, he’s also a vessel for The Power of History and Memory, carrying centuries of secrets, grief, and guilt. His bond with Diana makes him a lightning rod for the world’s entrenched Prejudice, Segregation, and Intolerance, transforming him from detached observer into an agent of change.

Personality & Traits

Matthew’s manner is elegant and restrained—wine, courtesy, and meticulous self-control—yet it conceals an animal certainty about threat, territory, and survival. His core tension lies in reconciling the disciplined scientist with the vampire who hunts. Love draws that tension to the surface: protecting Diana presses him toward possessiveness he despises, while trusting her demands vulnerability he fears.

  • Intellectual and scholarly
    • A polymathic scientist (biochemistry, genetics, neuroscience) and Royal Society-caliber mind whose research obsession—especially with evolutionary puzzles like Ashmole 782—mirrors Diana’s scholarly rigor. His lab work and Oxford appointments anchor his human-facing identity.
  • Protective to the edge of possessiveness
    • In the Bodleian, he places his body between Diana and Knox’s mental incursion (Chapter 4), a territorial move that declares allegiance and provokes political fallout. His stance toward threats (from Domenico to Juliette) hardens instantly into predation.
  • Controlled but volatile
    • Old-world charm masks a hair-trigger temper when authority is challenged or Diana is endangered. The showdown with Domenico (Chapter 22) exposes the speed with which civility can collapse into violence.
  • Secretive and guarded
    • A millennium of survival has taught Matthew to bury truth. He parcels out information about his age, the de Clermonts, and the Knights of Lazarus, only opening up over dinner at All Souls (Chapter 12)—a first, fragile breach in the walls he’s built.
  • Loyal and familial
    • His devotion to Ysabeau and Marcus is absolute—he protects, commands, and ultimately entrusts. Naming Marcus as Grand Master signals a radical act of faith and a willingness to loosen his grip on power for those he loves.
  • Predator’s grace
    • Diana reads him as a poised “panther” poised to strike, with a scent of clove, cinnamon, and incense and an unsettling, dilated gaze (Chapter 2)—sensory cues that continually remind the reader (and Diana) that the gentleman is also a hunter.

Character Journey

Matthew begins as the consummate observer—watching, testing, cataloging—driven by a scholar’s fixation on Ashmole 782 and a survivor’s need for control. Diana disrupts that equilibrium. Attraction first amplifies his protective instincts, then compels confession: age, history, and the hidden architecture of the Knights of Lazarus. Bringing her to Sept-Tours formalizes his commitment and pits him against centuries of witch–vampire hatred. Confrontations with the Congregation escalate his inner conflict—chivalry versus territorial rage—until Juliette’s attack forces a literal blood-bond that fuses love with mortality. By the novel’s end, the man who hoarded secrets chooses transparency and risk, defying the Congregation and timewalking to safeguard Diana’s growth. Crucially, he shifts from shielding her to strengthening her—training, trusting, and making space for her power alongside his own.

Key Relationships

  • Diana Bishop
    • Diana catalyzes Matthew’s transformation from solitary scientist to partner. Their bond tests the Covenant and Matthew’s self-mastery: he must temper possessiveness into protection and convert secrecy into trust. As he learns to honor Diana’s autonomy and magic, their romance evolves from rescue narrative to equal alliance.
  • Ysabeau de Clermont
    • Maker and matriarch, Ysabeau embodies the de Clermont legacy—elegance, ferocity, and historical trauma. Her hatred of witches strains her bond with Matthew, but his devotion—and Diana’s courage—compel a grudging acceptance that eventually reasserts maternal loyalty over prejudice.
  • Marcus Whitmore
    • Matthew is both sire and strategist to Marcus, whose youthful idealism rubs against paternal authority. By ceding the Knights’ leadership, Matthew acknowledges Marcus’s potential and recognizes that stewardship sometimes means stepping back rather than tightening control.
  • Hamish Osborne
    • A daemon confidant and Matthew’s clearest mirror, Hamish punctures Matthew’s rationalizations with pragmatic counsel. He names the risks of loving a witch and helps Matthew weigh personal loyalty against political cost, providing a non-vampiric moral compass when instincts run hot.

Defining Moments

Matthew’s evolution is marked by decisive choices that expose his dual nature—gentleman and predator, scientist and knight—and reorient his loyalties.

  • Protecting Diana in the Bodleian (Chapter 4)
    • What happens: Matthew physically interposes himself when Knox probes Diana, making his allegiance unmistakable.
    • Why it matters: It breaks creature etiquette in public, signals the end of neutrality, and sets the political conflict (and romance) in motion.
  • Revealing his age and history at All Souls (Chapter 12)
    • What happens: Over dinner, he confesses his true age and centuries-long pursuit of Ashmole 782.
    • Why it matters: Vulnerability replaces strategy; secrecy gives way to trust, altering the power balance between him and Diana.
  • Confrontation with Domenico (Chapter 22)
    • What happens: Domenico’s threats force Matthew to defend Diana and his claim on their relationship.
    • Why it matters: Matthew’s veneer cracks, revealing how quickly reason yields to rage—an omen of the costs of defiance.
  • The fight with Juliette (Chapter 31)
    • What happens: Juliette’s attack leaves Matthew near death; Diana unleashes witchfire and offers her blood to save him.
    • Why it matters: Trauma forges an irreversible bond, entwining love with shared mortality and confirming Diana’s power as Matthew’s equal.
  • Choosing to timewalk (Chapter 38)
    • What happens: Matthew decides to abandon the present to hide with Diana in the past.
    • Why it matters: He sacrifices status and control to prioritize Diana’s safety and education, redefining protection as partnership and long-game strategy.

Essential Quotes

“I don’t think anyone who took the time to examine me carefully would think I was ordinary, do you?” (Chapter 4)

Matthew signals both confidence and warning: he is crafted to pass among humans but cannot be reduced to the ordinary. The line seduces and cautions simultaneously, capturing his cultivated surface and the danger beneath.

“I’m a predator, Diana. I have to hunt and kill to survive.” (Chapter 22)

Here, Matthew rejects euphemism and names the truth his courtesy often obscures. The admission reframes his protectiveness and temper not as character defects but as species imperatives he must constantly master.

“Witches and vampires aren’t meant to feel this way. I’m experiencing emotions I’ve never—” (Chapter 14)

The unfinished sentence dramatizes loss of control in a man defined by restraint. It situates their love within taboo, showing the Covenant’s psychological reach and Matthew’s panic at emotions that outstrip centuries of discipline.

“I love you, Diana. God help me, I tried not to.” (Chapter 26)

Invoking God underscores Matthew’s moral struggle: love arrives as compulsion, not choice. The confession collapses resistance into surrender, shifting their dynamic from guarded attraction to declared commitment.

“I’ve loved you longer than that—since the moment you used magic to take a book from its shelf at the Bodleian. You looked so relieved, and then so terribly guilty.” (Chapter 26)

Matthew ties love to observation, revealing how his scientist’s eye first fixed on Diana’s vulnerability and power. The memory fuses scholarship, predation, and tenderness, illustrating how closely he reads her—and how long he has been choosing her.