@luanna801 said: Okay, I like Etienne and Mireille, and for the others I’m going with Laurent, Seraphin, Theophile, and Thibault. (Judging by ‘Lestat’ Gabrielle liked somewhat unusual names, so I tried to reflect that in some of these. ‘Theophile’ is also a reference to 19th-century French writer Theophile Gautier, who published one of the first vampire stories in 1836.)
@luanna801 said (re: Louis de Lioncourt): @mntyaggrssn Oh man, that would’ve been awkward! I’m sure he’d get over it, but it would probably be really weird at first to be calling your lover by the same name as a sibling. (I tend to think not, though – Lestat probably would’ve mentioned it at some point if Louis had the same name as his brother.)
Bonjour! I’m well, thank u, thanks for the blog lurve! <333
I don’t think his other brother was ever mentioned by name, no 😛
I don’t really love this bit of canon but it’s an interesting explanation; in Blackwood Farm, Lestat says his name is “compounded of the first letter of each of my six older brothers’ names,” so they’d have to have started with L, E, S, or T, bc A was for Augustin. And two of his brothers started with T.
I was working on a ficlet at one point and wanted to include this unnamed brother, talking about him in a PM with someone, and came up with “Étienne,” which is a French equivalent of Stephen/Steven.
Proooobably it’s bc I headcanon him as looking like Steve Zahn and I CANNOT explain why that is, but I am 99% married to this headcanon.
^This is from Joy Ride.
I think it’s bc he’s somewhat attractive, but only bc of his cartoonish attitudes, very smarmy but simple-minded, seems like the younger of the two brothers, desperate to please the older one, Augustin could easily lead him around, he wouldn’t question being ordered to beat on his younger brother, even if he didn’t take much pleasure in it.
So the brother’s names (not necessarily in birth order) would be:
L-?
E- (I am really attached to Étienne!??)
S-?
T-?
Augustin
T-?
Lestat
Off-topic but still, I like to think the eighth de Lioncourt was a girl, bc really, 8 boys in a row is unusual. @viaticumforthemarquise named her Mireille, I think *u*
“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.
I was talking w/ @takemetocoffin-or-losemeforever about this scene from Far and Away (1992), another fave movie of mine (and they pulled this gif for me!). Joseph Donnelly (Cruise), similarly to Lestat, has 2 older brothers that we hardly get any information about except their antagonization of him, and a father who we only see as an invalid, IIRC. Look at the bro on the left, just waiting for the cue to start throwing punches. Like Lestat, Joseph runs away to a more promising land (‘MURICA) and deals w/ a whole bunch of awful reality there, too, but it all has a happy ending bc PERSERVERANCE. There is probably a lot more of a comparison to be made but I’ll leave it at that for now.
I love this line especially bc rather than engage w/ their taunting that he’s such a fuckup, he makes a suggestion to improve them well it’s throwing the poor innocent goat under the bus but oh well. Such a positive influence!
Bullies are everywhere, even in our own families, and you don’t have to engage w/ it. Be original! Come up with a better response to it! Try not to suggest bestiality, though. That’s not nice.
So, we all remember that in “The Vampire Lestat” Gabrielle kills a boy solely for his more comfortable clothing, and Lestat does not protest.
Possible explanation why:
OwO *needs to sit down and have a hot tea*
…intriguing headcanon >;}
We know that Lestat is more effeminate than a normal French man would already be. So, perhaps, when he was younger, if he was wearing a nightgown he could be mistaken for a svelte female. Of course, with six older brothers, he must have done something to upset them, like a prank, and therefore, they decided to exact some sort of revenge.
So, a number of days later, it rained, and Lestat was taking care of the horses (because the de Lioncourts are poor) and he happened to slip in the mud. Of course, when he goes back into the “castle” his brothers decide to “help” him. They get his dirty clothes off and draw him a bath, while a couple of them scurry off to get him some new clothes. Unbeknownst to Lestat, they grab some clothes from Gabrielle’s room, including a corset. Then they return to the bathroom and help Lestat get dressed in his normal clothes. Then a couple of his brothers overpower him while another two force him into the corset. Then, they begin to tighten it, and they aren’t very nice about it either. It’s almost bone crushingly tight.
Of course, Lestat is doubled over in pain, and all six of his brothers leave. A chair is place in front of the door, under the doorknob, so Lestat is locked in. He isn’t found until the next morning, and his luck still isn’t good. When his father finds out that his son was in a corset, all hell breaks loose and Lestat is punished severely.
I-want-my-IWTV 