Damon Salvatore is a fictional character in L. J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries series. Damon is Stefan's elder, amoral and malevolent vampire brother. Damon is the bad vampire brother of the series, the complete opposite of Stefan. Damon is the main antagonist, anti hero and a main male character of the series. He is over 500 years old, although he has the youthful appearance of a man in his early twenties. Damon is frequently shown to engage in immoral situations throughout the series although, events in both The Fury and Dark Reunion show that Damon can be capable of fierce loyalty and affection, though he is often very misunderstood. Physically, he is described as handsome and sexy, with fine straight black hair, pitch black eyes like midnight, pale skin, and a slim but muscular body type. Damon is about 5'7" and is slightly shorter than his brother, Stefan. He and Stefan have a strong resemblance to each other, according to both Elena and Bonnie. Damon most often wears black, expensive clothing and this is due to his noble position during his human life. He seems to favor black leather riding boots as footwear, black jeans, a black belt, black sweater and a black leather jacket. Like his brother, Stefan, Damon wears a large, silver lapis lazuli ring on the middle finger of his left hand, which was given to him by Katherine, in order to walk around in the sunlight.
Legend has stereotyped him somewhat into a romantic hero, and he is generally known more for his love for Catherine Earnshaw than his final years of vengeance in the second half of the novel, in which he grows into a bitter, haunted man (although there are also a number of incidents in Heathcliff's early life that show that he was an angry and sometimes malicious individual from the beginning; again, these tend to be glossed over in the popular imagination). His complicated, mesmerising and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain.