@ReaptheMusicSo, your character demonstrably poses a threat to them and their families, routinely orders them to perform acts that would logically go against their personalities and basic self-preservation instincts, and treats them like animals unless they're sexy, but they stay with you completely on their own volition. That seems rather suspect, don't you think?
Hell, there's even less of a reason for these people to stay with you than the Ghouls of other vampire fiction, because it doesn't seem that they get any special powers beyond "vampire blood tastes good" and "maybe I can screw the person who just forced me to kill my coworker to prove a point". Thus far, it doesn't seem that there are
any perks that could make a person with any semblance of free will stay with you. Vacations, money, and drugs are things that
can entice a person to commit evil acts, but not to this extent and not without changing them as a person.
If they were all people with a lack of conviction that allows them to do all the things you've had them do, Avalai wouldn't be a noblewoman with a crowd of hangers-on and party boys, she'd be a
cartel owner.For the record, the entities closest to your thralls would be the Ghouls of the World of Darkness. These poor fellows are biochemically and magically forced to adore their master's blood. Going cold turkey off Blood for more than a month gives them withdrawal symptoms on par with getting off
multiple hard drugs, and so a Ghoul is effectively brainwashed whenever their master comes up.
If you had taken a page of the World of Darkness and said "these are Avalai's meat-puppets and her blood is their life now", this whole thing would make
much more sense. As it is right now, Avalai's thralls zigzag between "completely devoted minion" and "friendly coworker" depending on how you feel. You can't have your cake and eat it, you know. It has to be either "thralls are my mindless minions and do whatever I say for just a drop of my blood" or "thralls are merely servants who are kept in line through good employee benefits".
You've clearly demonstrated that the thralls have something close to free will only some of the time, and make them into semi-mindless slaves for the rest of the time. This whole thrall thing is needlessly edgy and often provides mood whiplash
within the same scene for little to no reason.