Stefan Cassadine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Stefan Darius Mikkosovitch Cassadine was a fictional character played by actor Stephen Nichols on the ABC soap opera General Hospital. Stefan was the second son of villain Mikkos Cassadine, who once attempted to freeze the world with a weather machine, and evil Helena Cassadine. The complex and often dark character alternated between playing protective uncle to nephew Nikolas Cassadine and tender would-be lover of Laura Spencer and his obsessive vendetta against Luke Spencer, whom he blamed for the death of his brother Stavros Cassadine and for his own loss of Laura.

Contents

[edit] Family History

Stefan first came to Port Charles in 1996 with his teenage nephew Nikolas Cassadine, the secret son of Laura Spencer and Stefan's older brother Stavros Cassadine. The Cassadines are descended from a titled, aristocratic Russian family who fled to Greece following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Stefan had raised Nikolas since infancy after Laura left him behind in Greece and returned to her husband Luke Spencer. Stefan battled his mother Helena Cassadine for control of Nikolas and control of the family company and was official head of the family by the time Nikolas was seven. His mother, emotionally abusive to him during his childhood, viewed him as weak and soft, which he was only in comparison to the more homicidal members of the Cassadine family. Helena strongly favored his older brother Stavros and alternately ignored and belittled the more sensitive Stefan. Stefan loved and protected Alexis Davis, who was raised as his first cousin but later turned out to be his half-sister, both children of Mikkos. He paid for her to attend boarding school in the United States as a teenager and encouraged her to go into the legal profession. However, he also dominated her and expected complete loyalty and obedience from her. Alexis was charged with doing much of the legwork for "Timoria," Stefan's planned vendetta against the Spencer family and General Hospital, both of which Stefan blamed for the presumed death of his brother Stavros Cassadine. In their first years on the show, fans detected romantic chemistry in Stefan's scenes with Alexis. Stefan expressed disapproval of Alexis's relationship with Ned Ashton and she later went to great lengths to break up his engagement to Katherine Bell,whom she disapproved of. Fans of the romantic pairing called themselves the "Gutter Rats," though no actual romantic relationship was ever alluded to in their scenes together.

Laura contacted Stefan after her baby daughter Lulu Spencer was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and was in need of a bone marrow transplant from a matched donor. None of Lulu's blood relatives, including her full brother Lucky Spencer, were a match, but Nikolas turned out to be a perfect donor. Stefan permitted Nikolas to donate bone marrow for the baby, but launched his Timoria plot at the same time.

Laura's marriage to Luke Spencer broke up under the strain of the reveal about Nikolas, which included the further revelation that she and Stefan had had an affair while she was being held captive by the Cassadine family and there was a possibility that Stefan fathered Nikolas. DNA testing later proved that Stavros was actually Nikolas's father. Stefan later married Luke's sister Bobbie Spencer as part of his revenge plot against the Spencers. The marriage ended in divorce. Stefan pursued Laura after her divorce from Luke and they reunited for a time. They are considered a soap opera supercouple.

In the intervening years, Stefan had an affair with and later became engaged to Katherine Bell. This relationship was derailed for a time after his "cousin" Alexis Davis produced proof that Katherine was Stefan's half-sister Natasha. This was eventually exposed as a falsehood, when it turned out that Alexis was the real Natasha. Stefan banished Alexis for a time after the revelation, but later forgave her. Katherine fell off a parapet during her engagement party to Stefan, the victim of a failed attempt to murder Helena Cassadine by Luke Spencer and Alexis Davis. Katherine was rescued by Helena Cassadine and restored to health, but died in a second fall from the parapet (this time assisted by Helena) soon after her return.

Stefan later fell in love with Quartermaine cousin Chloe Morgan and was framed for her murder when his back-from-the-dead brother, Stavros, killed her. The plot was eventually revealed and Stefan was cleared.

He appeared more aggressive and continually more deranged and desperate in his final year on the show. Stefan returned to the show after an absence. He had plotted an arranged marriage for Nikolas with Lydia Karenin, a wealthy Russian heiress, to restore the Cassadine family's wealth. He ordered Nikolas to marry Lydia, but Nikolas was reluctant to follow through. Stefan attempted to kill Nikolas's real love, Emily Bowen-Quartermaine, but pushed Luke's girlfriend Summer off the cliff by mistake. His secret was well hidden, though, he thought. Stefan's loan from Lorenzo Alcazar was due (this loan transpired as Stefan re-entered the show); Stefan and Lorenzo's henchmen fought quite a bit with him in his final weeks. At this time as well, Luke Spencer publicly kidnapped and humiliated Stefan and made a mock trial of him in front of the entire Port Charles television audience, taped by Dillon Quartermaine. Luke intended for Stefan to admit to the attempted murder of Emily Bowen-Quartermaine and actual murder of Summer "Laura" Holloway. Stefan apparently died after he was burned (and disfigured) and later stabbed in a knife fight with Luke Spencer.

Spencer was later arrested for Cassadine's murder but was released when it was revealed that Stefan had left a "suicide" note admitting that he had expected the encounter with Spencer and anticipated the outcome would be his death at Spencer's hands. Later, after his funeral arch-enemy Luke Spencer desecrated his dead body and danced on his grave much to Helena Cassadine's delight in what could easily be termed one of the most macabre scenes in soap history.

Is Stefan Cassadine REALLY dead?

It is assumed that the man who returned from Italy to do all those desperate and rather despicable deeds was the "real" Stefan Cassadine, but GH fan fiction aside, the character has a long and devoted fan following, many of whom simply do not believe the actions of the "Stefan" who died were consistent with the character as previously portrayed by Stephan Nichols. Given Helena Cassadine's loathing of her younger son, her recent experiments in mind control and her deep-freeze experiments with son Stavros it is not out of the realm of possibility that the "real" Stefan Cassadine is locked up in cold storage somewhere at the mercy of his mother's often murderous whims, awaiting the return of Stephan Nichols, or at the very least a decent recast and a really juicy storyline....

[edit] Family, Marriages, and Romantic Entanglements

[edit] Parents

[edit] Siblings

[edit] Aunts & Uncles

  • Anthony Cassadine (uncle)
  • Victor Cassadine (uncle)
  • Sophia Cassadine (aunt)

[edit] Nephews and nieces

[edit] Marriages

[edit] Lovers

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/t/e/Stefan_Cassadine_45bd.html"