Greetings! I’ve been advised to take my question to you ^^ At the end of IWTV, Louis talks about this young, newly made vampire that is mad at Lestat for not getting out of his chair (tries to feed him a baby). Now, this cannot be Antonie because that guy hadn’t seen Lestat from the late 1700s until 2014 when Prince Lestat came out. But as far as I can tell, this unnamed fledgling is never mentioned anywhere else. Do you think he slipped through the cracks and was just forgotten by Anne?

Hello! I have thought about this, probably thought about it TOO much… and while I don’t a clear answer, it’s a stimulating question: 

Was this young ‘nurse’ vampire a fledgling of Lestat’s? 

image

^How does the old fandom joke go? Every time X sound occurs, Lestat makes another fledgling? *facepalm*

I agree w/ your point about re: Antoine, it seems like Lestat or Antoine would have confirmed that it was in fact Antoine who was the unnamed young vampire in that scene in IWTV.

TL;DR: We have unreliable narrators** in BOTH Lestat and Louis*. I personally don’t think that the unnamed ‘nurse’ vampire in this scene was made by Lestat, but it’s quite possible! Lestat has never mentioned him again in canon, but we might find out about him in the next novel.

Hit the jump for more, cut for length.


This is an excerpt from the scene

in IWTV (the book, not in the movie) w/ the unnamed young vampire @terryfphanatics is asking about:

“Because shortly after that I saw a vampire in New Orleans, a sleek white-faced young man walking alone on the broad sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue…” (this mystery vampire kills a woman and takes her baby to a shabby old house where he meets up with Lestat) “My eyes widened as I studied this stooped and shivering vampire whose rich blond hair hung down in loose waves covering his face…

… “ ‘You all leave me!’ [Lestat] whined now in a thin, high-pitched voice.

‘You can’t keep us with you!’ said the stiff young vampire sharply.”

(Louis taps at the window)

…“ ‘It’s Louis! Louis!’ [Lestat] said. `Let him in’ And he gestured frantically, like an invalid, for the young `nurse’ to obey. … and I could see the tears welling in his eyes…How baffling and awful it was, this smoothfaced, shimmering immortal man bent and rattled and whining like a crone.”

So yes, Lestat might have made this ‘nurse’ vampire as Marius made Bianca, a dedicated fledgling vampire to help him in his recovery. 

As with the previously unnamed musician vampire in IWTV – who later became known as Antoine in PL – I used to headcanon that

Lestat couldn’t bear to even mention the musician vampire’s name in later canon bc he was either A) an embarrassment to Lestat or B) that they had broken up violently, C) both, D) the musician vampire had really been killed by Claudia, or E) other reasons. This unnamed young ‘nurse’ vampire might fall under A, B, C, or E. Or maybe someone else has killed him since then *shrugs*

When Lestat says: ‘You all leave me!’ ;A; This could be about his fledglings, bc, yes, when you take TVL into account, up to this point in canon all four have chosen to leave him: Gabrielle, Nicolas, Louis & Claudia (at this point in canon, the unnamed musician vampire appeared to have been destroyed). Armand’s warnings to Lestat about making fledglings

in TVL are relevant: 

“Oh, but it’s always a travesty, don’t you see?… And the veil will always come down between you. Make a legion. You will be, always and forever, alone!


If the ‘nurse’ vampire was not made by Lestat: It also would have been possible for a rogue vampire to find Lestat, perceive that he was an older vampire, and might have wisdom or power, or the rogue had heard of the legendary Lestat, and come in search of him purposely. I feel like this is more likely given how beaten down Lestat was from the assassination attempt and his survival of the Theatre des Vampires in such close proximity.


THEN we have THIS (also from IWTV, prior to the scene excerpted above):

“[Armand] told me something he’d concealed from me since the time we were in Paris.

“Lestat had not died in the Theatre des Vampires. I had believed him to be dead, and when I asked Armand about those vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told me now that this wasn’t so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run away from Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre. Two vampires who had been made with Lestat by the same master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.”

^Like…. WHAT?

Maybe Armand had heard it through the grapevine that Lestat had these two caretakers, but since Lestat never mentions having siblings in the blood from Magnus, it’s possible that Armand is lying so that Louis thinks Lestat already has enough support and doesn’t need a THIRD caretaker. 

Or, of course, Anne Rice either A) forgot about these two sibling vampires or B) chose not to address them. They would probably both have been too old to be the “young nurse vampire” but… MAYBE WE’LL GET THEM IN THE NEXT BOOK WHO KNOWS? Anything! is possible!

*Further complicated by the fact that Louis’s story went through Daniel and Daniel’s publishers, who may have added misinformation of their own for a better story! Reprehensible that this young vampire would bring Lestat a baby as a victim, but in Lestat’s defense, he doesn’t want it: “ ‘You might have brought me something else!’ said Lestat bitterly.”

**And there’s also the unreliable narrator issue, there is some speculation as to whether this scene occurred at all, or that it occurred differently than Louis reported.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.