Well, I can not answer questions in the book about Anne Rice’s vampires, as that is copyrighted stuff right there, but you are more than welcome to ask me anything you want. Though I am not an expert in Anne Rice’s vampires. If you want to talk to an expert, I would turn you towards i-want-my-iwtv.
And as for the science behind burning in the sun, well, the first vampire to actually be effected by the sunlight to the point of death was Count Orlok in Nosferatu. The reason he disappears in the sun was to avoid copyright infringement on the ending of Dracula. So historically speaking, there is no lore to suggest that vampires would actually burn in the sun. In Dracula his powers were weakened but he did not burn. I think the main idea that vampires hunted at night is because humans slept at night, which left hours of mystery around what happened in the dark. If someone died in the night, or got sick in the night, they had no clue what caused it. It was much easier to think a creature from beyond the grave did it because the darkness is scary and science was lacking.
But if we want to say sure, vampires burn in the sun, we have to think “why?” The first reason might be the same reason I burn in the sun. They are pale. Pale people burn in the sun. Another reason could be because they are damned, and as such are not allowed to live in the illumination of God. God created light, after all. And if you think about it, Lucifer is known as the Morning Star, so it makes sense that vampires would have to live under the light of the stars.
Hope that answers your question for now! I will go into further detail in the book.
My idea was the vampires in AR’s books.
They say (or seriously imply) that vampire blood is flammable. Also in one of the books the vampires can absorb blood through the skin if they really really need it. That made me question the permeability of their skin—our skin is selectively permeable. Our body can more or less decide what to let in and out. What if their skin was less selective? Still hard to the touch of course but more open to diffusion by osmosis?
What if it had a susceptibility to certain radiation from the sun, which when it went through their skin, ignited their very-flammable blood?
This radiation can be IR, visible, or UV in nature, I haven’t been able to decide yet. UV light vibrates at the highest frequency of the three so it /seems/ more conducive but then UV light is blocked by glass and they could not be burned through a window. IR radiation is felt by humans as heat so that’s another likely candidate.
As you can tell, I like to steer away from religious reasoning. The science behind vampires and other creatures is my favorite thing. 🙂
Thanks though!
^This explanation is interesting.
- Re: Ricean vampire skin being more/less permeable than ours, well, it is described as having a different texture and sheen so that would make sense.
- Skin being permeable to absorb blood: blood is absorbed through the skin in movie!IWTV, during Louis’ transformation, and blood is absorbed through the skin in Merrick, during Louis’ other transformation (I think there was a line of dialogue, smtg like, “his whole body is drinking it!”)
- BUT vampire skin is not permeable to dirt, they’re often described as not able to get all that dirty? Like the filth doesn’t really cling to them. The hardness probably contributes to that.
- I don’t think window glass would be sufficient to block the destruction of sunlight on vampire flesh; Ricean vampires are always going on about the heavy curtains they use on the windows. It’s a combination of the UV rays and something else in sunlight that’s dangerous to them. Obviously they can be in a lighted room or stage just fine, so it’s not the visible light. Something else in the sunlight acts as a catalyst to burn the flammable flesh and blood.
- The susceptibility to the radiation from the sun seems lessened by the strength/age of the vampire, Lestat has his little tanning sessions where he can handle a level of burn that others just can’t.
It seems, since Louis is described as tan in Prince Lestat, that Louis has been coerced into joining Lestat on these tanning excursions. So OOC.
I don’t know – maybe his darkened skin is a still-remaining sign of the burning he went through in Merrick? Considering that he was charred to a crisp in that book (he seemed as nearly dead as a vampire can be without actually being dead, and Lestat had to save him by pouring blood into the coffin with him in the first instance, then feeding him), it seems possible that even after being brought back to health and strength by Lestat’s strong blood, he would still show some effects. After Marius was burnt in 1499, his skin was still tanned when Pandora met him in Dresden in the 1600s.
I love the theory of their skin being selectively permeable; it explains a lot in the books…
ooc; See, and I’m inclined to believe shroudsinvenice in regards to Louis. The only issue is, when Lestat revived him with his blood, David described Louis as having super pale skin (which made zero sense).
Yeah, it seems like we have a conflict between two rules of vampirism:
1. When they get strong blood it powers them up, which makes them go paler.
2. The tan from being burnt takes aaaaages to die away even for old/strong ones.
And I think Anne Rice probably never sat down and established a chart of effects that shows what trumps what. Which is understandable in a way – it’s not D&D with point values and stuff. But it does sometimes leave us with these weird inconsistencies…
merciful-death, that was what I remembered, too! Without checking the book bc really, canon is not always canon anyway.
shroudsinvenice: a chart or some consistency with your points would have been favorable. In the absence of such… we can either ignore that Louis was incorrectly described as pale in Merrick (which is just fine by me!), or we can go with your theory that Louis was still dark from burning.
I prefer your explanation to mine, with Louis happily going arm-in-arm with Lestat to the desert for such superficial reasons!
I-want-my-IWTV 