“Have you ever wondered how a country as small as the Netherlands became so rich and powerful?” The question is posed in the first episode of Ares, the first Dutch original series made for Netflix, released earlier this month.

The show draws on the mysterious world of student fraternities, telling the story of undergraduates Rosa and Jacob as they are seduced into the secretive society Ares, a cruel and elitist world where evil deeds are rewarded with power.

While the dramatic twists and turns might be confined to the screen, the secretive society setting is based on a very real phenomenon: powerful student fraternities that promise members a wealth of friends, parties and connections in exchange for their loyalty. The real-life Dutch societies have repeatedly been hit by scandals over cruel initiation ceremonies and bacchanals of drinking that have led to serious injuries and even death. The biggest societies – such as Veritas in Utrecht, Augustinus in Leiden, and Albertus Magnus of Groningen – are steeped in Latin terminology, symbols and ritual, and operate from gilded 19th-century mansions they have owned for generations.

“The fraternities are breeding grounds for politicians, for banks – the people with power still mainly come from those places,” said Michael Leendertse, the head of development for Ares. He described a key genesis of the story emerging from a conversation with his partner. “My girlfriend is of mixed heritage, like our main character Rosa, and she also joined a fraternity.”

Fraternity members are often wary of speaking to journalists after scandals in the Dutch press. In 2016 students in Amsterdam and Groningen were admitted to hospital after initiations that including jumping in canals, sleeping on rubbish and a fresher’s head being stood on by a senior fraternity member. Members of Groningen’s Vindicat – which once required initiates to sign a contract agreeing to pay €25,000 if they disclosed initiation activities – were found to have circulated a “bang list” of female freshers, complete with photos, phone numbers, addresses and ratings.

A scene from Ares. Photograph: Pim Hendriksen / Netflix

A former Vindicat member who spoke to the Observer on condition of anonymity said the “hardcore” of the fraternities is an old Dutch elite with family links going back generations, surrounded by newcomers who aspire to be part of that world.

“People were singled out for different gradations of humiliation,” he said of the initiation ceremonies. “I had to stand up during dinner and tell a funny story to the crowd. Older members were standing over me and telling me it was not funny. There are other things, like cleaning the street with toothbrushes. It’s quite tough not to feel humiliated and to keep seeing it as a game.” The University of Groningen refused accreditation and funding to Vindicat in 2018, but it insists it has now cleaned up its act.

One senior current member of a fraternity, who as a member of its board wears a special tie and business dress daily, defended secret initiation practices as forming bonds that help with networking throughout life. “If you meet someone on the other side of the world from your fraternity, you have that bond with them, because you know you both went through the same thing,” the board member said. He added that, as a student not from an elite background, rising to the top of the fraternity had offered him opportunities otherwise closed to him. In his early 20s, he already has a steering hand in an organisation with a turnover of well over a million euros a year, made up of membership fees, university subsidies, ticket revenues and prodigious sales of beer.

The drama in Ares revolves around the competition between students to land a prestigious internship with a prominent alumna. Fraternities come with real-life access too: amid shortages of student housing, many of the best rooms are in fraternity-only accommodation. “Once a house becomes a fraternity house, it stays a fraternity house,” said 18-year-old medical student Julian, who occupies a room in a sprawling fin de siècle mansion in Groningen that has been passed down to Albertus Magnus members since 1995.

Ares takes this exclusivity to an extreme. One scene shows a dinner beneath Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, as Ares members point out their ancestors in the painting. Lingering shots of old trading ships, chains and the spoils of empire hint at a dark truth beneath the opulence which bursts to the surface in a bloody and enigmatic finale.

“We took the idea of a fraternity and made it even bigger – a fictional society that goes back to a dark and bloody past,” Leendertse said. “There we found the key to the entire series.”