For my birthday this year, the lovely @gairid sent me this spectacularly appropriate Dark Gift of the full set of the Adagio tea VC fandom blends [source], designed by @underhyll*. I had pined for the set but couldn’t choose which characters I wanted to drink from (hehehe), but having the whole set now, well, THEY ARE ALL DELICIOUS.
And if you think I saved Lestat’s flavor for last, you are very wrong. He was up first, and his sweetness and bite were exactly right, very in character ^,….,^
@gairid informs us that “Marius makes a lovely iced tea sweetened with honey,” I shall have to try that. He sounds like an ideal spring/summer flavor. Also, that “Louis is just gorgeous (which makes sense).” It does make sense! He very much is. “I agree about Lestat, too…crisp with a little snap to it!”
So far though, Louis is my favorite. Early grey, blackberry, and lavender. It’s smooth, wholesome with a touch of sweetness, almost like caramel. Must drink w/ a candle nearby, optional: while wearing Lestat’s thumb ring**
The contents in the tins are artful in their own natural way, so I took pics of mine. I love how the Louis blend is dark, the Lestat and Claudia blends flanking his are basically blonde!
I’ll be posting reviews of the other flavors later 😉
*They may or may not be developing more character blends… !
**I’m looking for a jeweler who can make more of these thumb rings; I got mine at Hot Topic in the 90′s and it is pretty fragile, so I rarely wear it. Would love to redesign it out of more durable metal…
So much advice to give, and yet, when others have given me advice it often fails to sink in until I’ve learned it the hard way… that’s why the “brat” part was wedged into my title *sighs*
There’s too much to tell, and I’d rather not bother with the obvious things your maker should have taught you, or if you lacked one as I did, things you learned yourself in the first few nights (for your sanity: try to keep to a diet of evildoers only, try to cover up your kills, try not to kill in your home, spare no expense on lair security, etc.)…
But I’ll give you a few other choice pieces that I’ve picked up along the way, which can apply to mortals as well:
“I was the seventh son and the youngest of the three who had lived to manhood.” – TVL (all the quotes going forward are from TVL, too)
^Yep, he’s the 7th son. We can assume that the other two de Lioncourt men had kids, so in some combination they had fathered at least four kids, (hence the plural “nieces and nephews”) and whether that was bc one of them had all four or they had two each, etc., Lestat doesn’t specify, so we don’t know.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t think the de Lioncourts had access to any young and wealthy women, if they couldn’t find one for the eldest son, they probably wouldn’t be able to find one for the youngest, either :-
The short answer:
Attitude issues :[ – Lestat’s dad (and alot of others) thought Lestat was bonkers (didn’t seem to connect that beating him up practically every other Thursday had anything to do with that!)
Lestat was broke af.
And the family relied on Lestat for hunting their dinner. They couldn’t afford to lose him or let him burden himself w/ more mouths to feed bc u know he would have had like 17 kids let’s be real.
As for Lestat’s marriageability:
1. Attitude issues :[
Lestat also had something of a major attitude going on about his existential crisis, so he wasn’t really on the best of terms w/ his father, who probably would have been the one to set in motion any plans to marry Lestat off.
“And in this unbearable state of agitation I commenced to do something I’d never done before. I turned to those around me and questioned them relentlessly.
‘But do you believe in God?” I asked my brother Augustin. “How can you live if you don’t!’ ”
… “You’re mad, you’ve always been mad!” [the Marquis] shouted. “Get out of this house! You’ll drive us all crazy.”
The village families probably thought Lestat was something of a bad egg, too, what w/ his trying to enter the priesthood at 12, and then doing a complete 180° by running off with the actor troupe at 17, and the crazy way he was acting, and harassing ppl. It probably didn’t go unnoticed in such a little town.
For more, hit the jump.
2. He’s broke af:
“I had no claim to the title or the land, and no prospects. Even in a rich family, it might have been that way for a younger boy, but our wealth had been used up long ago. My eldest brother, Augustin, who was the rightful heir to all we possessed, had spent his wife’s small dowry as soon as he married her.”
^Lestat is broke af. Augustin was the eldest and would be the one to get the title when the Marquis kicked the bucket.
Lestat has $0 to bring to a marriage, no title, no land, and no prospects (? I guess this is the word for assets of any kind). He doesn’t have much to sell himself ;n;
3. On the plus side… he was hot and he could hunt!
All Lestat really has are his Devastatingly Good Looks™
(he probably got the LION’S SHARE lol!), and his Particular Set of Skills™
(”I was the lord and the only lord anymore who could sit a horse and fire a gun,”).
Lestat was the family’s bread meat-winner:
“I had become the hunter. I brought in the pheasant, the venison, and the trout from the mountain streams – whatever was needed and could be got – to feed the family.” ^I forgot that he fished, too! I also remember him saying he talked w/ the villagers re: ideas he had for better crop productivity but I can’t find it.
…BUT REALLY, they all just wanted him shut up and kill stuff.
What his family needed him for was putting literal food on the table, which might have abruptly stopped if he was married off and moved out, or worse, moved his wife in. Another mouth to feed, and possibly more if they had had kids.
And the Marquis probably didn’t want any little crazy mini-Lestats running around, either!
(If Lestat had not run away to Paris, maybe shown that he could calm down in the next few years, we might have seen him married off by 25.)
[^ X] So Lestat spent most of his time out in the field, or eventually w/ Nicolas, seeking ppl who would really love him for him, and not just what he could do FOR them. He lived as much off the Marquis’ radar as possible.
And THAT’s why I think Lestat never even mentioned arranged marriage or forced courtship.
It’s actually “a vision for a trilogy of Vampire Chronicles films” and possibly “a spinoff television series to explore all the side characters and their back stories.”
Personally, I’m willing to wait for quality. We’ve waited this long, we can wait a little longer. I know we all have mixed feelings on this, since our epic betrayal w/ QOTD (but even then some ppl do enjoy that movie, surprisingly) but let’s try to be cautiously optimistic *u*
And BY THE WAY, just bc the cover of the script had “Interview with the Vampire” as the title for this project, that doesn’t mean he’s redoing that movie exactly.
I think we’ll be getting the Interview with the Vampire Lestat, this time around.
Boone has to incorporate at least some of Louis’ story, and then get the ending back on canon track, bc movie!IWTV ended w/ Lestat and Daniel driving off into the sunrise*. Lestat was basically giving Daniel the choice to join him.
Keep an eye on my #VC News tag, that’s where I keep updates on this.
*If that ship (Lestat/Daniel) were to sail, then alot of canon after that would have to be reworked.
[ always nice to get a lil shoutout from one of your favourite vampire chronicles fandom blogs. thanks @i-want-my-iwtv! ]
You are most welcome, thank u for doing the same! You’re making me want to watch Versailles… Do I have to start at the beginning to fully appreciate it?
