How is the relationship between the Mikaelson siblings on the CW TV Series The Originals?

The Mikaelson siblings' relationships with one another are intense and fraught with conflict but undying kinship. Outwardly to the world, they are steadfastly loyal to one another, that is to say they've got each others' backs when it comes to outsiders. Inwardly among themselves, however, they are stabbing each others' backs (or hearts as the case may be) and at each others' throats as they take sibling rivalry to the nth degree.

The siblings are from oldest to youngest: Freya, Finn, Elijah, Niklaus (a.k.a. Nick and/or Klaus), Kol, Rebekah, and Henrik.

Although Niklaus is smack dab in the middle age-wise, he rules the roost. He is quite literally the Devil with a cheeky grin. One wonders if Satan's non-Luciferin name of Nick will ever be overtly credited to Niklaus Mikaelson. As far as the siblings go, as far as anyone goes really, Niklaus is the Sun and all others are in his orbit.

In Mystic Falls, before moving to New Orleans, Rebekah was Klaus's closest sibling. Most call him Klaus but Rebekah calls him Nik. Rebekah and Klaus were thick as thieves while often heinously awful to one another. Klaus is known to drive a dagger into Rebekah's heart just to shut her up for a century or so. Notwithstanding, if anyone other than him dares to viably threaten Rebekah, Klaus goes into full-on protective big brother mode and stops at nothing to bring all of hell itself down upon that person's head. He and Rebekah have an extremely dysfunctional codependent relationship, which any dependency at all he loathes in himself and so that becomes the underlying reason for the exquisitely injurious things he does to her. Rebekah, who is anything but patient, is infinitely patient with Klaus despite his abuses, somehow always knowing that his abuse actually comes from a place of love. Like I said, totally dysfunctional.

Since the Mikaelsons moved back to New Orleans from Mystic Falls, kicking off the series The Originals, it's been increasingly Klaus's elder brother Elijah who has been his closest ally. Elijah has become Klaus's general. The debonnair if sometimes stiffly formal Elijah, who always calls Klaus by his full name, Niklaus, is Klaus's temperance and force fed reason. Elijah is the only one who can really stand up to Klaus and not get himself killed. Elijah has a long fuse, but when it's run out, Elijah becomes a blinding, white-hot, explosive force to well match Klaus's own. Elijah is the one sibling, maybe the only sibling, that Klaus truly respects, not that Klaus and Elijah don't seriously butt heads or that Klaus hasn't also daggered Elijah and put him to sleep for centuries at a time, too.

With Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah, the triumvirate of siblings is formed. The other siblings are supporting characters in both the show as well as in the character Klaus's mind. Quite simply, it's a small miracle Klaus trusts these two. He simply doesn't have it in him to extend himself further, not because he's callous but because he is so emotionally raw. Ever shrouded in an ostensibly devil may care facade, Klaus tenebrously loves each of his siblings deeply, and it's actually an equally deep fear of what he might end up doing to them if he lets them in only to be betrayed by them that causes him to not let them in closer. Klaus has an unequaled temper, and he rightly doesn't trust himself. Because Niklaus chooses not to let them be, his other siblings are not central to his orbit.

Freya is new. She is the eldest but was forcibly taken by her Aunt Dahlia, their mother's sister, before all of her siblings, except Finn, were born. Esther, their mother, never spoke of Freya and made Finn, who was still very young, eventually think he had imagined her. So, for the past thousand plus years of these siblings' existence, until 2014, they had no sister Freya. As such, she is still somewhat of an outsider looking in. She has not carved emotional canyons that run a millennium deep between and among the other siblings. Freya is also not a vampire like most of her siblings are, or a hybrid like Klaus is, but a witch like their mother. Klaus, who distrusts everyone anyway, trusts Freya so absolutely not at all. Freya is begging for sops as far as Klaus is concerned. He so far hasn't afforded her even an inch of his emotional tether. Elijah isn't much better, but that's more because, coupled with an oddly intense aloofness he carries about, Elijah's already got ten helpings of helping everybody else on his plate; he's already Atlas with the world on his shoulders, so it's more like he hasn't the time or energy for Freya than blatant disregard for her. Still, the only one who has fully vested in Freya is the newly sistered previously sisterless Rebekah whose mantra has become, "Us girls have to stick together."

Finn, the eldest brother, is a fuddy-duddy and a mama's boy. Nobody likes him, not even his mother, Esther. Freya liked him for a hot minute, but his fanatical puritanism quickly soured him to her. The siblings all found him self-righteous, pedantic, and excruciatingly boring for most of their thousand years, resulting in Klaus leaving him daggered (forcibly put to sleep in a coffin) for most of that time. When the Mikaelsons were still in Mystic Falls (when still on The Vampire Diaries, before spinning off to The Originals), Finn was killed by Matt. Nobody much cared. However, he was ressurected by his mom, Esther, in The Originals, and still pedantic and self-righteous, Finn became a righteous pain in the a s s as he tried to "cleanse" all his siblings, first by making them mortal then by just killing them. There is no love lost with Finn. That said, I have a sneaking suspicion a cooler, mellower, reinvented Finn who has since been disillusioned by his mother's lack of loyalty repaid in kind is about to rise from the ashes.

Kol is another tangential sibling. He is impetuous and possibly even more devilish than Klaus, certainly more reckless, and he is the only sibling who possesses anywhere near Klaus's level of impish charm. But Kol doesn't have Klaus's brains, or his wherewithal, or his relentless insidiousness. He's often desperate for attention, which tends to irritate his siblings and brings Klaus and Rebekah to take him for a fool and treat him like a tool, while Elijah just tends to overlook him. Kol, like Finn, was killed in Mystic Falls. He, too, was resurrected by his mother for the same purpose as Finn, to be the undoing of Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah, but Kol flipped allegiances (a couple of times) and ended up on the side of Klaus, Rebekah, and Elijah, eventually buying him redemption and even goodwill in their eyes. Rebekah, in fact, became mortal and stayed mortal as long as she could in an effort to try to bring Kol back a second time after a curse by his mother caused the mortal body she had planted him in to die. We like Kol. He's like Klaus lite. But, if he comes back, he's going to have to come back as the original actor that played him, which is the version of Kol people actually like, not the actor who played the reincarnation of him in mortal coil. In regard to Kol, all of the siblings have been brutally torturous towards him, but they get mad as hell if anybody else is. It's very much, "He's our little brother and only we can torture him."

Henrik was a young sibling who was eaten by werewolves when the Mikaelson siblings were still human and still children a thousand years ago. Henrik's dying is why Esther created the spell that turned her kids into the original vampires, to protect themselves in an all out war with the werewolves in a pre-Columbian America. Klaus blames himself for Henrik's death, for not adequately protecting him. Klaus has at times shown himself to be completely racked with guilt over Henrik's death. This in and of itself is quite remarkable as it is out of character for Klaus. Klaus has continuously proven himself to be otherwise impervious to remorse, bulletproof even. He just doesn't laden himself with anything so pedestrian as regret. He has issued the very occasional proforma apology for the sake of appearances and/or politicking, but even when he may not like the consequences of his actions, even when he avoidably or inadvertently has hurt or even killed those he cares about, his resolve is unblinking without even a vacillation of contrition. So Klaus's anguish and self-blame over Henrik are unique and exist in large part because Mikael, the father of all the Mikaelsons except bastard Klaus who resulted from an affair his mother had with a werewolf native American, also blamed Klaus for Henrik's death, adding fuel to a long burning hate between Klaus and Mikael. Because of this thousand year thread of singular regret, I do wonder if there might yet be something more to come of Henrik's story or even Henrik himself if for the only reason that it would land protagonist Klaus in a quagmire of emotional turmoil that he would neither be able to readily handle nor readily avoid.