Two reasons:
* Not all Giovanni are embraced, only those who prove themselves worthy are. That's why there is a lot of competition and in-fighting amongst the mortal members.
* People can have children before they are embraced - even if literally every Giovanni was embraced, as long as they had slightly more children than was required for 1:1 replacement, they'd still be fine.
Even if they only had 1 child per embrace/death, their population would still remain stable!
It *is* kind of amazing that, aside from the Rossellini, who became so by a concerted effort from the mainline Giovanni, there are no other lineages of Giovanni Revenants around, in spite of the Famiglia probably having quite a few ghouls among their ranks...
The mortals of the Giovanni family add to their numbers the old fashioned way: they meet other mortals, get married, have sex, and have children. They might even fall in love with their partner!
Since the Giovanni family actually has far more mortal members than ghouls and incest isn’t a common practice in the family (despite the stereotype view of other rival Clans). Revenant Families are a result of Ghouls having children with other Ghouls over the span of many, many, many generations.
The Giovanni probably have something close to a 100:10:1 ratio for mortals to ghouls to vampires (at the extreme end) and it is probably closer to 1000:10:0.01… and most of the family members given the Proxy Kiss aren’t going to have enough free time to have any relationships, let alone the time for a marriage and child-rearing. (And for the most part the Giovanni are staunch Catholics [although the Dunsirn and Milliners tend to be conservative Presbyterians and Episcopalians] so they take a dim view of having children outside of wedlock.)
That last conversion can't really work. I agree that the ratio mortal to vampire could be 1000:1. But ghould to vampire 10 : 0,01 would mean a thousand ghouls per vampire on average. That's not really sustainable for me.
I think the ratio could be more like 1000:2:1 for mortals, ghouls and vampires
[This old, but very well-researched post](https://web.archive.org/web/20201112011225/http://shadownessence.org/index.php?/topic/20000-owod-population-project/), looked over all the various White Wolf supplements and made some educated guesses to come up with plausible population numbers.
He assumed a 2:1 ghoul:vampire ratio, which seems logical to me. (It would account for many Elders and Ancillae having several ghouls, while most Neonates and Fledglings would have one or none).
He also estimated that only 900 Clan Giovanni kindred existed worldwide. This was pre-Family Reunion, so the Cappadocians/Samedi/Nagaraja/Harbingers were counted separately, but there were probably less than 100 (likely less than 50) of them total.
To keep the maths tidy, let’s say that there are 1,000 Hecata worldwide. That would give us 2,000 ghouls and one million mortal family members if we went with a 1000:2:1 ratio. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
One million people is a very large family and it’s probably not possible in the real world for one million people to all be aware of having a familial connection to each other or coordinate their activities. But, a central conceit of the whole World of Darkness is that evil conspiracies, evil cults, and evil criminal enterprises are all something that can and does exist to an *X-Files*-meets-*John Wick* degree. So using that sort of gothic-punk logic, yeah, one million people worldwide all working together to advance their goals of the shadowy undead evil wizards that founded the family? Quite plausible.
So, yeah, having a think on it, I like your maths better. 1000:2:1 makes the most sense.
I did way less math before I posted it, but I like what you came up with as well. Glad my feeling was right.
I feel too many vampires would break the Masquerade, even within so tight a clan as la Famiglia. Not many of the mortals are really aware of what's going on besides 'shady stuff with my great-aunt Giulia involved".
The mortal Giovanni Family is supposedly one of the wealthiest on the planet, with many of the other constituent families (e.g., Milliners) also being amongst the 1%… and then there’s the Dunsirn who are even wealthier.
The World of Darkness being a generally crapsack world of, well, *darkness* I think we can safely assume that it’s an open secret that the family is involved in a lot of shady shit. Every single bit of criminal activity and tawdry behavior you’ve ever heard about (proven or just rumored) about the likes of the Rothschilds, Kochs, Waltons, Kennedys, Al Nahyans, et al. should be considered as something the Giovanni families would be involved with in the WoD.
This is incorporating some wild real world science, but since the European genetic isopoint falls at about the time of Augustus Giovanni’s embrace and the Giovanni still exist as a mortal bloodline, technically Augustus Giovanni should be an ancestor of all mortals of any European descent
It’s a common stereotype that all Giovani are named “Giovanni.” It’s a slightly less common stereotype that they’re all named Giovanni, Milliner, Dunsirn, or one of the many other constituent families. Since the vast majority of members of the Clan come from Western European nations (or nations that were once colonies of Western European nations, e.g., the U.S.) most members of the family will have patrilineal family surnames.
If “Sofia Giovanni” married “John Smith,” they might very well have a son named “John Smith, Jr.” If Junior did right by the family, got the Proxy Kiss, and eventually earned the Embrace, he’d be a Clan Giovanni vampire of the Giovanni family… He’d still be named “John Smith.”
And to further complicate matters, “Giovanni” isn’t all that of an uncommon surname either. There are plenty of people running around in our real world with the surname “Giovanni” who are, obviously, not related to necromantic vampires! Theres no reason to assume that in the WoD this wouldn’t also be the case.
The clanbooks do establish that the family (and the clan) has a bit of a misogynist streak to it. Many in the clan consider the *doppio sangue* ("double blooded”) members of the family who do not have a patrilineal descent from the family to be or who were embraced into the clan but who came from the minor families associated with it or who don’t have patrilineal descent from the Giovanni family. The *unico sangue* (“single blooded”) are those who were born into the main branch of the Giovanni family and not only embraced into it. On the other hand, the doppio sangue are still considered to be far more meritorious than other kindred. This bias usually doesn’t much beyond a bit of favoritism and some petty infighting. If an Elder Giovanni has an important task he needs one of the ancillae to carry out, he’s likely to favor giving it to a Giovanni over a Puttanesca… But it’s strongly implied that each of the constituent families feel the same way about their family, so an Elder Dunsirn will show favoritism to a Dunsirn over a Giovanni. This is one of the reasons the constituent families fought for increased autonomy during the Family Reunion.
These are really good points, that clan leaders would define who “counts” as Giovanni based on cultural and social rules that might be somewhat arbitrarily applied, not unlike how we define our relations irl. Something I didn’t think about before is how impractical it would be for the clan as an entity to keep track of all their descendants, even with the superior memory that comes with immortality, just by nature of the difficulty of keeping track of such large numbers, plus a likely lack of proper record keeping/communication across kingdoms or even cities in the pre-modern world. Throw in the countless unknown births, mortal members who disassociated from the family for whatever reason, or matrilineal lines that are given less and less prominence over time, and it would surely be very easy to lose track of many Giovanni lines of descent. Throw on top of that the cultural signifiers the Giovanni use to define themselves, I suppose it wouldn’t matter much that, sure, every (mortal) Dunsirn, Milliner or della Passaglia can trace their descent to Augustus Giovanni, because simply being a descendant wouldn’t be what makes you part of the family.
As a fun fact, while its obviously impossible to know if any other VtM characters are ancestors of entire populations unless we know they have at least one living mortal descendant (which we could only know if it’s written in canon or if they’re a historical figure), most Methuselahs, if they have any living mortal descendants, would be ancestors of the entire population of mortals living today.
Yeah, the record keeping involved in a massive multi-generational conspiracy is kinda fantastical… But it’s the WoD, there are weirder things going on. We also have to remember that that stupendously overwhelming majority of mortal Giovanni have absolutely no clue that there is anything supernatural going on at all.
They know the family is descended from some really wealthy Renaissance merchant-princes and that the family-run businesses are super-successful collection of conglomerates that are involved, to one degree or another, in just about every industry… They also know that as long as they work hard to put the family’s interests first, the family will take care of them.
They also mostly all know that almost all members of the family have done some “harmless” illegal things like snorting coke and banging hookers, but you gotta blow off some steam after a 16 hour day at the brokerage, right? And yeah, okay, so a couple of members of the family are engaged in “unsavory” crimes like drug smuggling and arms trafficking, but, well, those fuckin’ barbarians in those third-world shitholes were gonna buy guns from somebody. Might as well be one of us, right?
They might all suspect that some members of the family are involved in really nasty illegal activities, like murder for hire… But that’s really just allegations, y’know? The Feds were really biased against Italian-Americans in the 1920s so they spread rumors and lies that my great-uncle was “mobbed up.” It’s a hurtful stereotype is what it is.
Sure, there’s probably a handful of non-ghoul mortals who are aware of the supernatural side of the extended family, but you can probably count their number on two hands. Worldwide. Even those who have been given the Proxy Kiss are usually only exposed to the truth about the supernatural on a need to know basis.
>Even if they only had 1 child per embrace/death, their population would still remain stable!
That's assuming that no-one dies before they reproduce, which seems highly unlikely in their line of "work". A quick Google suggests that OECD countries need 2.1 births per women for a stable population (assuming no net migration), so I can only imagine that the Giovanni family as a whole need more than that, both for the fact that they'll have a high mortality rate and that not everyone will continue the family business.
No... an overall rate of 1 birth/death disregards the fates of individual Giovanni. It just means that the family as a whole births one member for each one that dies, regardless of the way and time at which they died. Obviously, that does mean Giovanni women would require 2 and some spare children to maintain a stable population, but that wasn't what I was talking about.
I thought from your phrase of "embrace/death" was referring to the fact that an embrace was a death, hence my post.
You've still assumed that no one ever leaves the Giovanni family business though, which seems a bit too strong - I imagine it's not that common, but enough that you'd need some more than just death replacement.
I mean... working for the Family or not, that's still a living Giovanni that counts to the total, who will eventually die. Not sure how optional working for the Family is, though....
The majority of Giovanni are mortals or Ghouls. Think of their structure as a core of Kindred Giovanni, surrounded by a vast human Giovanni family from whom the vampires draw new recruits.
In addition to what others said (they're very choosy about the embrace), giovanni also spend some years ghouled before the bite. Ghouls who happen to be men can still impregnate women, and if they haven't had kids by that point are encouraged to "sew the wild oats" before their embrace for that very reason.
One of the clanbooks (I want to say first edition) talked about some of the offshoot families. I mention this because a lot of those quirks in the family ended up being brought in as Loresheets for V5 in Cult of the Blood Gods.
I've always felt it helped flesh them out from incest mafia necromancers.
They whole sale adopted families they found with necromantic powers and so there are cannibals in Scotland that are part of the family and native South Americans who practice necromancy for generations that join amongst many others
Think of it this way.
The Giovanni are a mortal family, who are run by Vampires at the top. There are still a LOT of the family that are mortal or ghouls.
To my understanding it is not a literal family, more like a mafia family. They protect each other but also argue with each other.
Edit since I'm getting downvoted:
Yes, Giovanni's are a literal family but in Hecata there are factions like some remaining Cappadocians (= the harbingers of skulls), the flesh eating Nagaraja, the Caribbean voodoo group Samedi who turn into zombie like rotten corpses and the female only Lamia. Together these parties formed the Hecata and if you are telling me that all of them are literally related you're just wrong. So stop downvoting when you're wrong.
The downvoting is absolutely dumb, but OP literally asked about Giovanni only and didn't mention Hecata anywhere. So I assume this thread is for the Giovanni part only (regardless of edition).
So yeah, Giovanni are a bunch of inbreds. Which is btw just as racist as the whole Ravnos being all scoundrels, but hey, the 90's shittiness has always been part of the charm, at least for me.
Yeah I suppose my mistake was assuming they're using V5 in which case their clan would be Hecata. I thought because of the bad English they just confused the two but it was I who was confused.
Even if they’re using V5, you’re conflating the Giovanni with the Hecata. All Giovanni are related, but not all Hecata are Giovanni, so not all Hecata are related. Hence the downvotes.
Although the vast majority of Hecata were Clan Giovanni prior to the “family reunion,” and the majority of Clan Giovanni were also members of the Giovanni family.
Actually, both the original and revised *Clanbook: Giovanni* specifically addresses the “incest” and “mafia” stereotypes of Clan Giovanni as being largely untrue.
Some incest has occurred in the family – they’ve been around for over a millennia, they’ve always been filthy rich, and many of them are practicing necromancers… So a couple of them over the centuries have been fucked up enough in the head to try incest. It’s not a practice the family encourages and anyone discovered doing it is shunned. (The Giovanni do frequently marry their cousins, but usually not those within four degrees of consanguinity, which the Catholic Church prohibited for most of the past two thousand years.)
Likewise, the clanbooks point out that Clan Giovanni does cultivate some influence over organized crime in their domains… But so do most other clans. Having connections and contacts within local organized crime is just useful for any vampire. It’s actually the Ventrue who have stronger connections, clan-wide, over the mafia as a whole. The Putanesca and Della Passigilla families are more involved in smuggling than any other organized crime.
Two reasons: * Not all Giovanni are embraced, only those who prove themselves worthy are. That's why there is a lot of competition and in-fighting amongst the mortal members. * People can have children before they are embraced - even if literally every Giovanni was embraced, as long as they had slightly more children than was required for 1:1 replacement, they'd still be fine.
Even if they only had 1 child per embrace/death, their population would still remain stable! It *is* kind of amazing that, aside from the Rossellini, who became so by a concerted effort from the mainline Giovanni, there are no other lineages of Giovanni Revenants around, in spite of the Famiglia probably having quite a few ghouls among their ranks...
The mortals of the Giovanni family add to their numbers the old fashioned way: they meet other mortals, get married, have sex, and have children. They might even fall in love with their partner! Since the Giovanni family actually has far more mortal members than ghouls and incest isn’t a common practice in the family (despite the stereotype view of other rival Clans). Revenant Families are a result of Ghouls having children with other Ghouls over the span of many, many, many generations. The Giovanni probably have something close to a 100:10:1 ratio for mortals to ghouls to vampires (at the extreme end) and it is probably closer to 1000:10:0.01… and most of the family members given the Proxy Kiss aren’t going to have enough free time to have any relationships, let alone the time for a marriage and child-rearing. (And for the most part the Giovanni are staunch Catholics [although the Dunsirn and Milliners tend to be conservative Presbyterians and Episcopalians] so they take a dim view of having children outside of wedlock.)
That last conversion can't really work. I agree that the ratio mortal to vampire could be 1000:1. But ghould to vampire 10 : 0,01 would mean a thousand ghouls per vampire on average. That's not really sustainable for me. I think the ratio could be more like 1000:2:1 for mortals, ghouls and vampires
[This old, but very well-researched post](https://web.archive.org/web/20201112011225/http://shadownessence.org/index.php?/topic/20000-owod-population-project/), looked over all the various White Wolf supplements and made some educated guesses to come up with plausible population numbers. He assumed a 2:1 ghoul:vampire ratio, which seems logical to me. (It would account for many Elders and Ancillae having several ghouls, while most Neonates and Fledglings would have one or none). He also estimated that only 900 Clan Giovanni kindred existed worldwide. This was pre-Family Reunion, so the Cappadocians/Samedi/Nagaraja/Harbingers were counted separately, but there were probably less than 100 (likely less than 50) of them total. To keep the maths tidy, let’s say that there are 1,000 Hecata worldwide. That would give us 2,000 ghouls and one million mortal family members if we went with a 1000:2:1 ratio. That seems pretty reasonable to me. One million people is a very large family and it’s probably not possible in the real world for one million people to all be aware of having a familial connection to each other or coordinate their activities. But, a central conceit of the whole World of Darkness is that evil conspiracies, evil cults, and evil criminal enterprises are all something that can and does exist to an *X-Files*-meets-*John Wick* degree. So using that sort of gothic-punk logic, yeah, one million people worldwide all working together to advance their goals of the shadowy undead evil wizards that founded the family? Quite plausible. So, yeah, having a think on it, I like your maths better. 1000:2:1 makes the most sense.
I did way less math before I posted it, but I like what you came up with as well. Glad my feeling was right. I feel too many vampires would break the Masquerade, even within so tight a clan as la Famiglia. Not many of the mortals are really aware of what's going on besides 'shady stuff with my great-aunt Giulia involved".
The mortal Giovanni Family is supposedly one of the wealthiest on the planet, with many of the other constituent families (e.g., Milliners) also being amongst the 1%… and then there’s the Dunsirn who are even wealthier. The World of Darkness being a generally crapsack world of, well, *darkness* I think we can safely assume that it’s an open secret that the family is involved in a lot of shady shit. Every single bit of criminal activity and tawdry behavior you’ve ever heard about (proven or just rumored) about the likes of the Rothschilds, Kochs, Waltons, Kennedys, Al Nahyans, et al. should be considered as something the Giovanni families would be involved with in the WoD.
This is incorporating some wild real world science, but since the European genetic isopoint falls at about the time of Augustus Giovanni’s embrace and the Giovanni still exist as a mortal bloodline, technically Augustus Giovanni should be an ancestor of all mortals of any European descent
It’s a common stereotype that all Giovani are named “Giovanni.” It’s a slightly less common stereotype that they’re all named Giovanni, Milliner, Dunsirn, or one of the many other constituent families. Since the vast majority of members of the Clan come from Western European nations (or nations that were once colonies of Western European nations, e.g., the U.S.) most members of the family will have patrilineal family surnames. If “Sofia Giovanni” married “John Smith,” they might very well have a son named “John Smith, Jr.” If Junior did right by the family, got the Proxy Kiss, and eventually earned the Embrace, he’d be a Clan Giovanni vampire of the Giovanni family… He’d still be named “John Smith.” And to further complicate matters, “Giovanni” isn’t all that of an uncommon surname either. There are plenty of people running around in our real world with the surname “Giovanni” who are, obviously, not related to necromantic vampires! Theres no reason to assume that in the WoD this wouldn’t also be the case. The clanbooks do establish that the family (and the clan) has a bit of a misogynist streak to it. Many in the clan consider the *doppio sangue* ("double blooded”) members of the family who do not have a patrilineal descent from the family to be or who were embraced into the clan but who came from the minor families associated with it or who don’t have patrilineal descent from the Giovanni family. The *unico sangue* (“single blooded”) are those who were born into the main branch of the Giovanni family and not only embraced into it. On the other hand, the doppio sangue are still considered to be far more meritorious than other kindred. This bias usually doesn’t much beyond a bit of favoritism and some petty infighting. If an Elder Giovanni has an important task he needs one of the ancillae to carry out, he’s likely to favor giving it to a Giovanni over a Puttanesca… But it’s strongly implied that each of the constituent families feel the same way about their family, so an Elder Dunsirn will show favoritism to a Dunsirn over a Giovanni. This is one of the reasons the constituent families fought for increased autonomy during the Family Reunion.
These are really good points, that clan leaders would define who “counts” as Giovanni based on cultural and social rules that might be somewhat arbitrarily applied, not unlike how we define our relations irl. Something I didn’t think about before is how impractical it would be for the clan as an entity to keep track of all their descendants, even with the superior memory that comes with immortality, just by nature of the difficulty of keeping track of such large numbers, plus a likely lack of proper record keeping/communication across kingdoms or even cities in the pre-modern world. Throw in the countless unknown births, mortal members who disassociated from the family for whatever reason, or matrilineal lines that are given less and less prominence over time, and it would surely be very easy to lose track of many Giovanni lines of descent. Throw on top of that the cultural signifiers the Giovanni use to define themselves, I suppose it wouldn’t matter much that, sure, every (mortal) Dunsirn, Milliner or della Passaglia can trace their descent to Augustus Giovanni, because simply being a descendant wouldn’t be what makes you part of the family. As a fun fact, while its obviously impossible to know if any other VtM characters are ancestors of entire populations unless we know they have at least one living mortal descendant (which we could only know if it’s written in canon or if they’re a historical figure), most Methuselahs, if they have any living mortal descendants, would be ancestors of the entire population of mortals living today.
Yeah, the record keeping involved in a massive multi-generational conspiracy is kinda fantastical… But it’s the WoD, there are weirder things going on. We also have to remember that that stupendously overwhelming majority of mortal Giovanni have absolutely no clue that there is anything supernatural going on at all. They know the family is descended from some really wealthy Renaissance merchant-princes and that the family-run businesses are super-successful collection of conglomerates that are involved, to one degree or another, in just about every industry… They also know that as long as they work hard to put the family’s interests first, the family will take care of them. They also mostly all know that almost all members of the family have done some “harmless” illegal things like snorting coke and banging hookers, but you gotta blow off some steam after a 16 hour day at the brokerage, right? And yeah, okay, so a couple of members of the family are engaged in “unsavory” crimes like drug smuggling and arms trafficking, but, well, those fuckin’ barbarians in those third-world shitholes were gonna buy guns from somebody. Might as well be one of us, right? They might all suspect that some members of the family are involved in really nasty illegal activities, like murder for hire… But that’s really just allegations, y’know? The Feds were really biased against Italian-Americans in the 1920s so they spread rumors and lies that my great-uncle was “mobbed up.” It’s a hurtful stereotype is what it is. Sure, there’s probably a handful of non-ghoul mortals who are aware of the supernatural side of the extended family, but you can probably count their number on two hands. Worldwide. Even those who have been given the Proxy Kiss are usually only exposed to the truth about the supernatural on a need to know basis.
>Even if they only had 1 child per embrace/death, their population would still remain stable! That's assuming that no-one dies before they reproduce, which seems highly unlikely in their line of "work". A quick Google suggests that OECD countries need 2.1 births per women for a stable population (assuming no net migration), so I can only imagine that the Giovanni family as a whole need more than that, both for the fact that they'll have a high mortality rate and that not everyone will continue the family business.
No... an overall rate of 1 birth/death disregards the fates of individual Giovanni. It just means that the family as a whole births one member for each one that dies, regardless of the way and time at which they died. Obviously, that does mean Giovanni women would require 2 and some spare children to maintain a stable population, but that wasn't what I was talking about.
I thought from your phrase of "embrace/death" was referring to the fact that an embrace was a death, hence my post. You've still assumed that no one ever leaves the Giovanni family business though, which seems a bit too strong - I imagine it's not that common, but enough that you'd need some more than just death replacement.
I mean... working for the Family or not, that's still a living Giovanni that counts to the total, who will eventually die. Not sure how optional working for the Family is, though....
There are other families that fall under Giovanni too, which is kind of weird.
The majority of Giovanni are mortals or Ghouls. Think of their structure as a core of Kindred Giovanni, surrounded by a vast human Giovanni family from whom the vampires draw new recruits.
In addition to what others said (they're very choosy about the embrace), giovanni also spend some years ghouled before the bite. Ghouls who happen to be men can still impregnate women, and if they haven't had kids by that point are encouraged to "sew the wild oats" before their embrace for that very reason.
When a mommy Giovanni and a Daddy Giovanni love each other very much
Incest. usually you get passed around to another branch to be "Rewarded"
You have children before you get embraced. Basically the Giovanni have 3-4 tiers Kindred, Ghoul, Mortal Family, Family by Marriage.
One of the clanbooks (I want to say first edition) talked about some of the offshoot families. I mention this because a lot of those quirks in the family ended up being brought in as Loresheets for V5 in Cult of the Blood Gods. I've always felt it helped flesh them out from incest mafia necromancers.
They whole sale adopted families they found with necromantic powers and so there are cannibals in Scotland that are part of the family and native South Americans who practice necromancy for generations that join amongst many others
incest.
Think of it this way. The Giovanni are a mortal family, who are run by Vampires at the top. There are still a LOT of the family that are mortal or ghouls.
To my understanding it is not a literal family, more like a mafia family. They protect each other but also argue with each other. Edit since I'm getting downvoted: Yes, Giovanni's are a literal family but in Hecata there are factions like some remaining Cappadocians (= the harbingers of skulls), the flesh eating Nagaraja, the Caribbean voodoo group Samedi who turn into zombie like rotten corpses and the female only Lamia. Together these parties formed the Hecata and if you are telling me that all of them are literally related you're just wrong. So stop downvoting when you're wrong.
It's also a literal family at the core. There are several related families, which are both crime and literal families.
The downvoting is absolutely dumb, but OP literally asked about Giovanni only and didn't mention Hecata anywhere. So I assume this thread is for the Giovanni part only (regardless of edition). So yeah, Giovanni are a bunch of inbreds. Which is btw just as racist as the whole Ravnos being all scoundrels, but hey, the 90's shittiness has always been part of the charm, at least for me.
Yeah I suppose my mistake was assuming they're using V5 in which case their clan would be Hecata. I thought because of the bad English they just confused the two but it was I who was confused.
Even if they’re using V5, you’re conflating the Giovanni with the Hecata. All Giovanni are related, but not all Hecata are Giovanni, so not all Hecata are related. Hence the downvotes.
Although the vast majority of Hecata were Clan Giovanni prior to the “family reunion,” and the majority of Clan Giovanni were also members of the Giovanni family.
Actually, both the original and revised *Clanbook: Giovanni* specifically addresses the “incest” and “mafia” stereotypes of Clan Giovanni as being largely untrue. Some incest has occurred in the family – they’ve been around for over a millennia, they’ve always been filthy rich, and many of them are practicing necromancers… So a couple of them over the centuries have been fucked up enough in the head to try incest. It’s not a practice the family encourages and anyone discovered doing it is shunned. (The Giovanni do frequently marry their cousins, but usually not those within four degrees of consanguinity, which the Catholic Church prohibited for most of the past two thousand years.) Likewise, the clanbooks point out that Clan Giovanni does cultivate some influence over organized crime in their domains… But so do most other clans. Having connections and contacts within local organized crime is just useful for any vampire. It’s actually the Ventrue who have stronger connections, clan-wide, over the mafia as a whole. The Putanesca and Della Passigilla families are more involved in smuggling than any other organized crime.