You’re so welcome, glad you enjoyed it! Answering asks is so much fun for me, it makes me consider my own current and previous thoughts, sometimes I even ask around privately for more ideas… and try to write it out as best I can, it gives me an excuse to make fresh gifs/memes, sometimes it inspires others to make fanworks… and I always like to hear back from the original asker that the effort was appreciated *u* ((No, you only get one question per quarter. Pffft. Of course you can ask more!))
“in general, how do we as a base know what is unreliable information or not when it comes to our narrators because from what I’ve always gathered, they have the earnest desire to convey the truth as they can see it.”
You would think that, but just like in real life, people can narrate a story for their own motivations.
TL;DR:
The characters telling their stories don’t always have the earnest desire to convey the truth, so it’s not always clear what the reliable information is! When we have accounts of the same event where the details align, that seems to be the best way to confirm it’s canon, bc even Anne Rice can’t always answer fan’s questions about canon stuff to everyone’s satisfaction.
When there’s conflicting details, we have to rely on headcanons, which ppl can choose to agree on or not, hence the fandom phrase, #Your Headcanon May Vary.
For example of facts aligning: I think we can all agree that Armand was the unspoken leader at the Theatre des Vampires bc Lestat left him there in a position of authority in TVL, which is where Louis found him some 80 years later in IWTV, confirming that that was Armand’s role there.
In the scene above,
IDK at that point in canon whether Lestat believes in a God, but if not, he’s deliberately lying to Claudia, bc she’s never going to see her mother again. Even if he does believe in God, he still doesn’t know where his dead go! He’s trying to answer her in a way that will keep her calm and complacent. He knows Claudia’s mother is dead, he saw the corpse in the movie. But she is still a child and he doesn’t want to scare her or depress her, or make her feel guilty about killing, which she just did!
I also think he’s a little taken aback bc she’s asking him for the whereabouts of her biological mother just minutes after he turned her into a vampire, a process that’s been compared to birth. It’s the most intimate act a vampire can experience. His smile falls right after she asks bc in a way it seems like he’s a deflated that she wants her biological mother, it’s like she’s already saying, “You’re not my REAL dad!” It might also remind him of his own mother who abandoned him ;A;
Re: Lestat P.1: In TVL, Lestat tells Armand:
“I never lie,” I said offhand. “At least not to those I don’t love.”
I’m still not 100% clear on this, bc of the double negatives. Can we translate it to “I’m honest with those I don’t love.” –> “I lie to those I love.” ? He spent some 65 years lying by omission to Louis and Claudia about the other vampires, and all the secrets he knew. So who’s to say he doesn’t also lie to his readers, “those I don’t love” ? How much does he really love his readers?
Re: Louis: I’ve always felt, and there are others who share this opinion, who gave me this opinion, that IWTV was dictated to Daniel from Louis with the intention of pissing Lestat off enough that he would rise from wherever he was hiding and find Louis. While I don’t think Louis intentionally LIED, I do think he might have embellished some things, exaggerated here and there, left out certain things, in order to achieve his goal. And it WORKED because…
Re: Lestat P.2: The Vampire Lestat was Lestat’s rebuttal to IWTV, containing all the secrets he couldn’t tell Louis during their time together, so I’m inclined to believe that Lestat earnestly wanted to correct the record and win Louis back, since he still loved Louis.
Re: Armand: TBH, I don’t know Armand’s story well enough, what I believe and what I don’t, in all of canon, to say that he’s a liar. I think, like Louis and Lestat, he embellishes, he lies by omission, and he tells people things when he wants a certain reaction out of them. He lied to his coven when he was a leader all those years since he never really believed in serving Satan. Or did he? It seems like he didn’t.
There is a particular scene that Armand describes in TVA that is questionable, as to whether it happened.
How he tried to “help” Claudia the night she died (fanart by @sheepskeleton here, if you dare, it’s gorey). Personally, I sometimes believe it’s the truth bc Armand does like… experiments! But then I also remember how David was flirting excessively with Armand in that book, and so it’s possible that “this story was just something that Armand made up; somehow trying to intimidate the others, displaying the cruelty he could be capable of.” (quote from @annabellioncourt)
I-want-my-IWTV 