SEXUALITY: Asexual Heteroromantic
Screencapture credit to imdb.com
Raphael Santiago is a character who appears both in Cassandra Clare’s bestselling Mortal Instruments book series and its companion books, along with Freeform’s Shadowhunters TV show. During Raphael’s time in Clare’s books, his sexuality was never stated within the works themselves, although the author has since stated via Twitter that she views the character as being asexual [x][x]. In the television series, however, Raphael’s sexual identity is made much more explicit. After spending a portion of the first season as a secondary antagonist before becoming an almost unwilling ally to the show’s protagonist and her friends, in the second season Raphael finds himself assisting main character Isabelle Lightwood [portrayed by Emeraude Toubia] through a drug addiction. In the process, Raphael and Isabelle become romantically linked with one another. Throughout the show Isabelle is shown to be sexually promiscuous, sleeping with a character known as Meliorn in the first season, and it is because of this that Raphael tells Isabelle, “I’m just not interested in sex.” When Isabelle questions if being a vampire had made Raphael uninterested in having sexual relationships despite expressing romantic interest in her, Raphael responds, “No, I’ve always been like this.” [x]. It is worth nothing that in Cassandra Clare’s original books, Raphael was a vampire who had been turned at the age of fifteen, while in Freeform’s show, Raphael is portrayed by 21-year-old David Castro, which weeds out the possible viewpoint that Raphael’s asexuality comes from his youth, therefore validating it further.
ACE OUT 