Ventrue

History
1800s England was a good time to be Ventrue. The combination of centuries-old feudalism with the nouveau riche middle class served to keep the Ventrue at the top of the power structure. From there, they could oversee both international politics and the finances of an entire country.

Many Ventrue childer, already hungry for territories of their own, were sent to colonies through the British Empire, creating Camarilla beachheads in India, Australia, and Egypt. The vampires who already occupied these regions (primarily Ravnos and Daitya in India, and Setites in Egypt) faced years of vicious propaganda declaring them to be heathens, savages, and worse. Most people - both Kindred and kine - adopted these views wholesale, making the work of controlling popular opinion that much easier for the Ventrue. If a Ventrue wanted to increase profit from a mine in Africa, all they had to do was spread the word that the mine's workers were closet heretics, justifying the decline of pay and living conditions. The Danava of India were able to invoke their historical connection with the Ventrue to leverage themselves into a position resembling neutrality, at least on the surface. After over a century, the native Daitya were able to eventually wrest control of India back from the foreign British Ventrue.

Not all Ventrue were robber-barons and misanthropes, but enough of them were to make vampiric opinion turn against them for the first time since the founding of the Camarilla. The Toreador were repulsed by the Ventrue obsession with money and political gains; the Tremere had more important things to worry about than who was Prince of a small English town; the Gangrel were treated as servants and animals when they weren't being hunted down.

The Ventrue made just enough compromises to smooth things over, at least with any Kindred whom they could make use of; it was during this time that the Ventrue learned to temper their cutthroat business dealings with an outward veneer of philanthropy. They remained, of course, a clan out for profit and prestige, but there's no reason not to remain civil while doing so. This policy was put to the test in the New World, where the Ventrue spread West across North America and provided much of the impetus for doing so: The clan's money could sponsor quite a few landstaking ventures and West Coast mines, and wherever cities sprang up so did Ventrue interests.