Elijah Mikaelson ~ "In the beginning, our family was human, A thousand years ago, now. Although our mother dabbled in the dark arts, we were actually just a family trying to survive in a time when it was quite difficult to do so. And, for better or worse, we were happy".

Elijah Mikaelson was the third-born of Mikael and Esther's children, born in an area of the New World that would come to be known as Mystic Falls, Virginia. Elijah had five siblings while living in the new world. Finn, Niklaus, Kol, Rebekah and Henrik.

It is presumed that Elijah had a very strict and disciplined upbringing, mainly due to his father's influence.

Once, as kids, Elijah takes Niklaus into the woods, to teach him how to hunt. Elijah encourages his brother stating that his aim has been improving, when he misses a shot. But, Mikael intervenes and scolds Elijah for encouraging his brother and snatches the bow from Niklaus stating that he wasn't man enough to hold a weapon. Niklaus tries to apologize, but Mikael sees him as a weakling and starts beating him. Elijah then tries to stop his father from hurting his brother but is scared off, by Mikael stating that if Elijah intervened he would be next. Elijah is also shown playing along with all his siblings in the woods showing that they were happy and loved each other dearly.

They lived among the werewolves for about twenty years and during the full moon, the humans would simply hide in the underground caves while the werewolves turned. During Elijah's early life, Elijah and Niklaus both fell in love with a woman named Tatia who lived in their village. All the villagers wanted to be her suitors including Klaus and Elijah, both of them during their time with her, argued with each other and fought each other because they both wanted her for themselves. Tatia chose Elijah to be her next husband when the time came.

When Mikael found Klaus making chess toys with his hunting knife, he whipped and beat Klaus so bad that his siblings feared for his life. Elijah tried to stop his father, but he pushed Elijah away and continued to punish Klaus until Rebekah came in with his sword and wanted his abuse of Klaus to end. Mikael got furious at his children for choosing Klaus over their father and then grabbed his sword and left the three of them. One night Rebekah had enough of Mikael's abuse towards Klaus, so she took her father's knife and intended to use it on him and kill him, but Elijah came and took it from her and sent her away and looked at his father before going to sleep himself.

Shortly after becoming a vampire, one night when Niklaus made his first human kill, it triggered his werewolf side. Klaus went on a rampage in wolf form. When he awoke the following morning he was tended to by Elijah unbeknownst to them Tatia had followed them to see what happened. Seeing all the carnage created by Klaus she ran from them in fear and was pursued by Elijah. She had tripped and fell while trying to flee and cut her hand. The blood made Elijah lose control and attack her. She tried to defend herself but was no match and was killed. Elijah brought her corpse to a shocked Esther who used her blood as part of the spell used to bind Klaus' werewolf side, which resulted in Klaus' werewolf gene being dormant. Mikael also made Elijah help him in tying up Klaus so that his mother could do the spell. Elijah suppressed the memory of how Tatia actually died believing he had compelled not killed her in the woods and that Esther killed her when performing the hybrid curse.

Elijah is a very attractive, positive, quirky and upbeat person. He always tries to see the good in people and tries to be a friend to everyone. He lives by a code of honor and morality that has been with him since he was a witch. As he told Elena in All My Children, he valued qualities such as compassion, honor and virtue long before his mother turned him into a vampire. Having learned to take care of his family over the years and being naturally responsible, Elijah had developed into a very free-spirited, mature and independent person. Elijah was close with his half-brother Klaus and his sister Rebekah, he was also a little close with his youngest brother Henrik and he was devastated after he was killed by werewolves.