I am so jealous!! Having a Louis-like friend is not quiiiite enough to be Lestat. Do you pester him, belittle him for his introverted qualities? Are you the manic pixie nightmare creature trying to pull him into a more colorful and exciting life? Do you have a gorgeous head of pampered yellow hair?
Louis and Lestat are not friends. They’re hopelessly in love with eachother and live to “stick pins” in eachother. Or fangs. Whichever.
Out of curiosity, which version of Louis is your new friend? There are many, but the two main ones are: Freshly-Dragged-from-the-Gutter!Louis:
Or BAMF!Louis:
^The ego is the same but the outward display of confidence is hugely different. And the smell. BAMF!Louis smells like almonds, black tea and honey. Gutter!Louis, not so much. More like wet cat D:
awww thank u Coolest blog on the internet- whut? omg you like me, you really like me! (that is a Sally Field reference for you youngsters) Come off anon and say that to mah face, figuratively ❤
^Louis’ reaction to being mentioned after Lestat.
He knows he plays second-fiddle to Lestat at all times. He prefers that Lestat take the bulk of the fangirl/boy/other attentions, but we must never forget that Louis is a BAMF. He must be some kind of awesome for His Holiness the Brat Prince to love him so damn much.
Yet within six months he had dropped the movies for video cameras and must make his own films. All over New York he dragged Daniel, as he interviewed people on the nighttime streets. Armand had reels of himself reciting poetry in Italian or Latin, or merely staring with his arms folded, a gleaming white presence slipping in and out of focus in eternally dim bronze light.
Why thank u dear, such a lovely compliment! I shall have to post more selfies… unless u are referring to my inner beauty of which I have an abundance *u*
I do ship L/L! Absolutely! However did u guess?? sometimes Louis doesn’t ship them but thats fine bc nobody ships L/L as hard as Lestat ships L/L.
I don’t remember when exactly, but I think AR did call Louis a “damaged pilgrim” at one point. There’s that.
If you want to cry over Louis, read Merrick, if you haven’t already. He has a lead role in that one ;] But be prepared because your feels will be squarely hit.
Hit the jump for my thoughts on why we don’t get much Louis action post-IWTV.
My theory re: Louis’ low profile is listed below. Because he had served his purpose with his major job (point 1), AR seemed not to need him as much. She kept him around for the same reason Akasha spares him QOTD, because the star of the show, Lestat, loves him.
1. Louis was AR’s vehicle through which to deal with the grief of the death of her daughter. Louis intended to kill Claudia.
Claudia was 5 yrs old, Michele Rice was 5 yrs old.
Claudia and Michele share a birthday (9/22, indicated in her diary entry in QOTD),
btw, Louis shares a birthday with AR (10/4, although I don’t think it’s in canon).
Louis was, in a way, Claudia’s mother: “You became my mother, and my father, and so I’m yours forever.” says movie!Claudia (which, let’s not forget, AR wrote the screenplay).
But more than all that, Louis was the one that AR wanted to interview, “Why did you kill my daughter? Did God, or the Devil, tell you to do so? What did she do wrong? What did we, as parents, do wrong?” Louis basically answered her that Claudia was just in the wrong place at the wrong time; he had no more contact with God or the Devil than AR does, and he was just a hungry animal in the savage garden, and Claudia was just an innocent victim.
2. Louis’ “voice” is rich and structured; IWTV emulated the (I think?) Victorian-era gothic novels (annabellioncourt might know the proper genre) that AR loved. His whole way of being is a quiet intensity, beauty that roils beneath the surface, and that is hard to write. Lestat’s easier, he’s a rollercoaster of egotistical bastard and cowering crybaby. Plus, when Louis is not the POV, you can have pages of other character’s swooning over him ❤
3. AR focused a number of the VC on other characters, and he’s peripheral to their stories. Louis does have some action and has a small section from his POV in PL, though!
More seriously, since I saw the movie before reading the books, I pronounce the final “T” of Lestat, while it’s usually not the case in French. So, theoretically, in modern French, the pronunciation would be something like “lesta”. But it sounds kinda silly, and there is an awful lot of exceptions to the “t” rule. Furthermore, “Lestat” hugely looks like the Occitan word “estat”, prononced “S-taT”. And guess where Occitan, an old language still used nowadays, is spoken? In south France, which include Auvergne. So, in a very twisted way, “LestaT” as an old french name is making sense. At least if you accept the idea that “the state” is a decent name for a person.
OuO very informative.
AR says it was a typo of Lestan, “Le,” French for “The,” + “Stan” for her husband, Stan Rice, and the typo with the “T” stuck. In a way, Uncle Lestan is actually how AR intended his name to be.
In canon, Lestat explains in Blackwood Farm that his name is just the first letters of his siblings’ names:
“What an unusual name, Lestat,” she returned. “Does it have a meaning?”
“None whatsoever, Madam,” Lestat answered. “If memory serves me right, and it does less and less, the name’s compounded of the first letter of each of my six older brothers’ names, all of whom – the brothers and their names – I grew up to cheerfully and vigorously despise.”
^This could work, but we only know one of his brother’s names, Augustin.
Discussing this with viaticumforthemarquise-archive… maybe Augustin (or one of Lestat’s brothers) told him that just to hurt his feelings, like “YOU ARE SO WORTHLESS THAT AT BIRTH OUR PARENTS COULD ONLY MUSTER THE CREATIVITY TO TAKE A LETTER FROM EACH OF OUR NAMES” *SLAPS*
Lestat: *screaming internally*
They told him this at a young age … and he never questioned it ;A;
I-want-my-IWTV 