| “ | Our family has a surprisingly progressive tradition. Knowing war and violence are typically started by men, we place the final decisions, the hard ones, with the women. Our sons are trained to be soldiers, our daughters... to be leaders. | „ |
| — Chris Argent | ||
The Argent Family are one of the main families of Hunters in the series. It should be noted that "Argent" is French for silver; however, it is not silver that weakens werewolves, but rather the family itself, which is how the legend of werewolves being vulnerable to silver began. They are a well-known, respected, and very wealthy bloodline of hunters, and, as far as it is known, all the Argents are hunters; there has yet to be a member of the Argent family introduced who was not a hunter, or in the business of protecting innocents and killing monsters.
History[]
Their family name goes as far back as the late 1700's; in fact, the first ever Argent hunter was a young woman by the name Marie-Jeanne Valet. Their history begins with Henri Argent, who had collected the materials and skills to protect himself against werewolves (such as mistletoe and mountain ash, suggesting he may have been a Druid) but was not actually a hunter. However, he did teach Marie-Jeanne what he knew about these materials and skills, which, when combined with Marie-Jeanne's expert hunting abilities, allowed her to slay the famous Beast of Gévaudan.
As the years went by, the Argent bloodline continued to grow, raised with the hunting skills of Marie-Jeanne and the herbal skills of Henri. In the late 20th century, the brothers Alexander Argent and Gerard Argent were born, the latter of whom later married and had two children, Chris Argent and Kate Argent. Though the Argent family is proud to have matriarchal leadership, it was Gerard who acted as the patriarch as he raised his son and daughter in the Argent hunter tradition. His family also trained the children to work in their family business-- a security consulting firm and a federally-licensed firearms dealership known as Argent Arms International-- which acted as a front or cover for their hunting activities. Kate would eventually become more of a rogue hunter who followed her own rules, similar to her father, who often eschewed the Hunter Code; conversely, Chris would grow up to be a hunter that followed the rules and was strictly by the book, following the Code to the letter.
Chris later married Victoria Argent and they had a daughter, Allison; however, unlike the children in earlier generations, who were taught to hunt at a young age, Chris and Victoria waited until their daughter was seventeen years old before they introduced her to the supernatural world. The Argents are known for their training sessions; the first lesson a hunter ever has involves being captured and brought to a secluded location, where they are tied to a chair. In the background, a recording plays, "Ever wonder what happens if a hunter gets bitten? Ever wonder what happens if you get bitten? What do you think your father would do? What do you think he’d have to do? When all it would take to change everything, is one bite." The neophyte hunter is then given an implement of some kind (in Allison's case, this was a broken arrow with a steel arrowhead) and are left to free themselves from their restraints.
Overiew[]
The Argents, along with others hunter clans such as the Calavera family, are said to follow a code, "The Hunter's Code." Since the Argents are a French family, they translate this code, "We hunt those who hunt us," into their mother tongue, "Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent." However, in early fall of 2011, Allison, the newly-ascended matriarch to the Argent hunter family, changed their Code to reflect the alliance that she and Chris had made with the McCall Pack-- "Nous protégèons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes," or "We protect those who cannot protect themselves."
Also, like other hunter families, the Argents, for the most part, follow the part of the Code that states that any hunter who is bitten by an Alpha werewolf must take their own life before the next full moon to ensure that they do not transform. While most members, such as Victoria and Alexander, did successfully kill themselves on the night of their first full moon as intended, two other members, Gerard and Kate, did not follow this rule; in Gerard's case, he purposely sought out the bite to cure his cancer, whereas Kate was unintentionally transformed into a werejaguar after Peter Hale tried to kill her, and simply decided to live as a supernatural rather than kill herself as the Calavera family insisted.