Spoilers: Dominion’s jacket begins after his death. The result of Inheritance stays in the book.
Who he is in Total War
Vlad is Free-LC. SEGA lists him with Total War: Warhammer or The Grim and the Grave, same platform as the campaign. Choose him and Isabella starts as the hero. Update 9.0 can later promote that hero to a lord. He is a swordsman with necromantic magic. Put him into a fight the line needs: a character, or a regiment that is about to break. Missiles still punish a lord who stands in the open.
Update 3’s free-LC text says Mannfred is not best pleased by Vlad’s return and accepts a suspension of hostilities because of the new Emperor and the power in the north. That is a campaign relationship inside the race. It is not a peace treaty you are required to keep.
The aristocracy of Sylvania
The same Update 3 note is the short official biography used when he returned to the first game. He is the first, and arguably the greatest, of the Vampire Counts. He tainted the human aristocracy of Sylvania and thereby forged a kingdom of the undead in the heart of the Empire. Isabella’s lord page sits her in that nobility with him. The two starts are the game’s way of letting either of them open that kingdom.
Steven Savile’s Inheritance is book 1 of the von Carstein trilogy. The omnibus describes the family’s rise in Sylvania and their wars with the Empire, and the older Black Library note on Inheritance follows Vlad as he establishes that rule and asks whether anyone can save the land of the living. The question stays in the book. A Sylvania campaign you win or lose is not the answer.
The second novel, after his rule
Dominion is book 2. Its product page is credited to Steve Savile, the spelling on that page, while Inheritance, Retribution, and the omnibus use Steven Savile. The open jacket says the vampires are thrown into disarray and that Konrad von Carstein comes to the fore. Konrad is not a legendary lord in this guide. The details of how book 2 opens sit in the collapsed note.
Retribution, book 3, follows Mannfred as lord of Sylvania and is a different episode from The Return of Nagash, the End Times novel. Vampire Wars collects the three novels and nothing else on the current contents list. Read them in publication order 1, 2, 3. The omnibus is a reprint, not a fourth point in the story.
What Dominion’s jacket states
The Dominion page opens after the death of Vlad von Carstein. Konrad’s reign of terror is the war that follows. The jacket does not narrate the battle, and it does not belong in the Immortal Empires start, where Vlad is alive and in command.
Vlad von Carstein: gameplay and availability · More character stories
Sources
- Total War: Warhammer Update 3 — Total War Wiki — wiki.totalwar.com
- Inheritance — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Dominion — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Vampire Wars: The von Carstein Trilogy — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Immortal Empires DLC Ownership Guide — SEGA — support.sega.com
- Update 9.0 release notes — CA — community.creative-assembly.com