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Creation
Character
Flashbacks to her childhood have shown Selene to have been a normal, happy, vibrant child, born in the late 14th century. The youngest of two daughters of a master mason and smith, Selene and her sister Cecilia were shown to love painting pictures, and playing games like 'Silly Goose'. At the age of nineteen, the untimely and gruesome deaths of her entire family completely broke her heart, as she had loved them all dearly, and left her an orphan. The deaths of her six-year-old nieces hit her especially hard. Deceived by their murderer, Viktor, into believing that a pack of Lycans were the ones responsible, (which, given the states she found their bodies in, wasn't a hard lie for her to believe), Selene dedicated herself to avenging their deaths.
As a Death Dealer (the Vampires' fighting elite), Selene committed herself to the duty of exterminating the Lycans as a species, a duty she saw as 'sacred' one, burying herself into her work. She would also isolate herself, never socializing with anyone outside of the Death Dealers, as the majority of the Vampire Coven are more concerned whiling away their immortal lives in hedonistic pursuits instead of concerning themselves with the serious business of the war against the Lycans.
She would also serve as one of Viktor's most loyal and most powerful Death Dealers, having been vampirically-sired by him personally. While she would look up to Viktor as a surrogate father figure (and he sees her as a surrogate daughter), she would still continue to feel the pain of her grief and loss of her real family's deaths for the centuries to come.
According to Kate Beckinsale in The Making of Underworld, by the point in time of the events of the first movie, Selene had been a soldier of the Vampire Clan for so long, it had gotten to the point where "[Selene's] almost forgotten she's a woman, she's absolutely focused on revenge and killing, and she's really good at it. Then, she meets Michael, she starts to get a... kind of memory of what it's like to be human, and to be with humans. She's not completely human, but she is actually 'human' somewhere underneath there."
According to the novelizations of the events of the movies, prior to crossing paths with Michael, Selene had never been in love before, although she wasn't still a virgin; neither love nor lust had lured Selene into 'carnal encounters' with other vampires, but rather curiosity, (having been turned while still a virgin) and loneliness. Such encounters had been few, infrequent, and without consequence, all of them temporary indulgences quickly put behind her.
Personality
Selene is headstrong and stubborn, even to a fault, not willing to back down when she knows something is wrong, or leave any stone unturned when she is investigating Lycan activity. This can continue even to the point of endangering herself, such as when she passed out from blood loss at the wheel of her car after Michael warned her against driving in her condition. Selene is described as being "steely-eyed", and having great "emotional independence" from the rest of the Coven, as well being of "extreme intelligence" and of "sharp intuition". In her Underworldofficial bio, it is stated that she "trusts almost no-one", and that she has a "passion for truth, albeit laced with vengeance", which "traps her in a reluctantly violent and tragic purpose".
After centuries of militaristic discipline, having served as a Death Dealer of the Vampire Clan, Selene had long since developed a near-impervious, stoic external demeanor. Selene is not known for a sense of humor, and is actually one of the most honest Vampires in the franchise. She is also something of an idealist, believing in certain ideals as justice. Although a Vampire for six centuries, Selene only really willingly interacted with other Death Dealers, and has never fit in with her own kind (most of whom are too absorbed in their own pursuits of self-gratification). Unlike them, Selene has never forgotten why she became a Vampire, and that they are at war with the Lycans, which leads her to consider them layabouts and dead weight, so she cares little for what they all think of her.
In the first installment, Kraven, who fancies himself as her suitor, complains that she pays far too much attention to hunting and killing Lycans, and that she takes "this warrior business far too seriously". Selene, meanwhile, regards Kraven as 'a pig, a coward and an insufferable egotist' who is too wrapped up in himself to even pick up on the fact that Selene simply doesn't want anything to do with him, let alone be his arm-trophy at the Coven's social events. She dodges his social gatherings, she outright rejects his romantic advances at every turn, in public and in private, and she prefers to dedicate her every waking hour into her calling as a Death Dealer.
For the most part, Selene comes across as "icy" and "unemotional" to those who don't really bother to get close to her, like most of the Coven. After years of being a disciplined soldier, Selene is well into the habit of keeping her emotions in check, and keeps her cool in the heat of battle and the face of danger. This same rigorous mentality has made it difficult sometimes to open up to others, especially Michael, early in the story. By her own admission, she's "not good with feelings". In the first novelization, she is described as being "much more comfortable discussing interrogation techniques" than "divulging the seamier underside of the vampiric lifestyle". In Awakening, her own daughter easily misinterprets her behavior for being "as cold as one already dead", before Selene explains that her heart isn't cold, but rather it is broken (as Michael is missing at the time). Selene is also in the habit of downplaying any pain or wounds she has received — a habit of hers that Michael has since become familiar with.
Cracks in Selene's emotional armor start to show themselves when she and then-human Michael Corvin meet for the first time at a subway, moments before a shootout, at the beginning of the first film. Other Vampires, like Kraven and Erika, quickly catch on to Selene's feelings towards Michael before even she herself does. The two experience a mutual "dynamic attraction" at first sight, and things start to escalate between the two of them, even after she learns that Michael has been bitten by a Lycan while she was trying to protect him from them. Because of his innocence, Selene defends Michael from both Vampire and Lycan, knowing full well Viktor would kill her for doing so.
Selene also becomes noticeably more violent when those she loves suffer or die. When her family was murdered, she went on a revenge spree against the Lycans (whom she had been led to believe were responsible by Viktor), that lasted over six centuries, until the truth was revealed to her. When she learns of Viktor's hand in her family's murder, and sees him about to kill Michael, she slices through his head with his own sword the first shot she gets, without hesitation. Furthermore, when she believes Michael dead by Marcus' hand she goes on a suicide mission to eliminate Marcus and William, before Michael's Hybrid abilities revive him; Selene doesn't care if she dies, just as long as she can take Marcus and William down with her. When Marcus brings up her family, after impaling her with one of his wing talons, saying how it was a 'mistake' for Viktor to have "[kept Selene] as a pet. He should have killed you with the rest of your family" (in the novelization, Marcus also calls them 'insignificant'); in a fit of rage, Selene snaps the wing talon off at a joint, using it to stab him through the head before pushing him into the spinning rotors of a helicopter. In Awakening, when her daughter is taken by the Lycans at the Antigen facility, Selene stages an attack on the building, luring the Lycan security personnel into a trap by taking the elevator up the building and setting silver gas explosives at every floor, to get back her daughter.
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