“This is my birthday present from Louis. Use as I like, he tells me…
I do not understand entirely what is meant by birthday. Was I born into this world on the 21st of September or was it on that day that I departed all things human to become this?
My gentlemen parents are forever reluctant to illuminate such simple matters. One would think it bad taste to dwell on such subjects. Louis looks puzzled, then miserable, before he returns to the evening paper. And Lestat, he smiles and plays a little Mozart for me, then answers with a shrug: ‘It was the day you were born to us.’ ”
– Claudia de Lioncourt, Queen of the Damned
Is this her birthday? Or the night she was turned? They don’t answer her. I think it was the night she was turned, “you were born to US”
According to this, September 21 is Michele Rice’s birthday, 1966. Michele died of
“This is my birthday present from Louis. Use as I like, he tells me…
I do not understand entirely what is meant by birthday. Was I born into this world on the 21st of September or was it on that day that I departed all things human to become this?
My gentlemen parents are forever reluctant to illuminate such simple matters. One would think it bad taste to dwell on such subjects. Louis looks puzzled, then miserable, before he returns to the evening paper. And Lestat, he smiles and plays a little Mozart for me, then answers with a shrug: ‘It was the day you were born to us.’ ”
– Claudia de Lioncourt, Queen of the Damned
Is this her birthday? Or the night she was turned? They don’t answer her. I think it was the night she was turned, “you were born to US”
According to this, September 21 is Michele Rice’s birthday, 1966. Michele died of
Yep, she gave us their birthdates (Louis – October 4; Lestat – November 7) outside of canon. Neither date is mentioned explicitly in canon, and so some ppl do not accept that information as canon.
(There is also some fanon that Armand’s bday is November 11, which AR never mentioned at all.)
I don’t recall the vampires ever celebrating their birthdays explicitly in canon, but I headcanon that some of them do. Some of them prefer to celebrate the date they were turned, some celebrate both (exception: I headcanon that Lestat doesn’t celebrate the date he was turned) and some celebrate neither (Khayman, maybe).
EDIT: Claudia mentions in her diary entry in QOTD that Sep. 21 is the night her dads honor every year as her birthday, and she doesn’t know why. It’s probably the night she was turned, bc Lestat tells her “‘It was the day you were born to us.’ ” It’s Michele Rice’s birthday, Anne Rice’s daughter.
[X] BTW, I was looking for a reference as to Lestat and Louis’ birthdays for an Ask and found this. Someone used one of my memeythings for Becket’s birthday in 2015. The POTP are aware of me… *shudders*
And no, AR was not among the 21 who Liked that pic.
The author reinforce this by adding that, when they adopted Claudia, Louis took the maternal role. What do you think? ( Pt 2/2 )
It’s not a groundbreaking concept, we often talk of mommy!Louis in fandom. If there were a “mom” in that relationship, Louis would be more of that than Lestat was! ❤
#don’t you love the way Claudia snuggles in there #tucks herself in #like she’s actually Louis’ doll? #she is 80% made of that dress and those curls #how he places that little kiss on top of her head right before he shuts the lid #Right before theyll be in total darkness #just to reassure her #He is such a good mom
^my tags on that gif, bc I do love mommy!Louis ❤
(Lestat was actually Claudia’s biological maker, it’s his blood that turns her; she is technically Lestat’s fledgling, which actually makes Louis her “brother”!)
Louis was based on Anne Rice herself; Lestat was based on her husband, Stan; and Claudia on her own daughter, Michele, so you could say Louis was the “mom” bc of who he was based on. IWTV was partly about AR investigating the tragic loss of her own daughter through these characters. Louis’ separation from Claudia was not his choice; neither was AR’s from her own daughter ;A;
When you’re a Ricean vampire, gender doesn’t really matter, it definitely doesn’t matter physically in making new vampires, which is how they procreate. Post-IWTV!Lestat is much more into fashion, jewelry, and other typically “feminine-specific” stuff/activities that Louis has little or no tolerance for. Lestat is also one of the most prolific makers we know of in the series. The act of making fledglings could be compared to pregnancy, and he loves doing it, so that could make him more “feminine” than Louis, who has only made two fledglings (but both were made under duress, not 100% his choice).
Lestat and Louis both parented her in their own ways. Lestat took Claudia out and taught her to hunt, and all this other stuff he shared with her that Louis couldn’t. Hunting can be considered more “masculine.” You could label more domestic things like literature “feminine,” I guess, and that’s what Louis offered her. IWTV!Lestat was just more interested in action and less interested in introspection. Your author says that one of Louis’ feminine traits is “speaking about his feelings,” Lestat does TONS of that in later books. So if you only read IWTV, you miss out on that.
The other thing is that IWTV is Louis’ account, so yes, it paints Lestat a certain way, when Lestat was frustrated that he couldn’t reveal so many secrets that it drove a wedge between them. I feel like most of Lestat’s “masculine” behavior is just about that frustration, at having to keep his history a secret because of Marius’s threats.
As Lestat puts it in TVL, Louis’ account is somewhat accurate:
“…which for all its contradictions and terrible
misunderstandings manages to capture the atmosphere in which Claudia and Louis and I came together and stayed together for sixty-five
years…
But he adds this about Louis as a narrator:
“[Louis’] blindness to
the motives or the suffering of others was as much a part of his charm
as his soft unkempt black hair or the eternally troubled expression in
his green eyes.
So I wouldn’t say you can totally define Lestat and Louis’ gender roles in their relationship based solely on reading IWTV. But many of us, myself included, enjoy daydreaming about mommy!Louis ❤
^Stan and Michele Rice on the left, Lestat and Claudia de Lioncourt on the right. As a side note, before this gets into the more serious topic, AR has said she based Lestat on Stan, and there is a story out there that his name was meant to be “Lestan,” but ended up as “Lestat” bc of a typographical error. I don’t have a source on that.
(In the first draft of [IWTV], Rice described Claudia as three or four years old.)… Rice based Claudia’s appearance on her own daughter, Michele, who died at the age of five from leukemia. Claudia even shares Michele’s birthday, September 21.* However, despite the intense tone of suffering and guilt evident in Louis’s telling of the story, Rice insists that she had not been aware that she had included her feelings about Michele’s tragic death. “I never consciously thought about it when I was writing the book,” she says. “I wasn’t conscious of the connection. I knew that I was using the physical beauty of Michele as the model, but Claudia was a fictional character in her own right. The character, the voice, and the things Claudia say have nothing to do with my daughter – but there’s no question that this is the symbolic working out of a terrible grief. What else can it possibly be?”
In the first version of [IWTV], Claudia eventually goes off with three vampire brothers whom she meets in Paris. She does not die. As such, it was as if Rice had attempted to give her daughter a form of immortality. Rice, however, experienced psychological problems that cleared up only after she had rewritten the ending – by killing off Claudia and taking Louis through an experience of intense grieving. This version was much more cathartic for Rice.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length, not content.
From Premiere Magazine, November 1994:
(sorry, I don’t have a link, I transcribed this from the page)
In real life, Claudia was a nickname for Michele Rice, Anne Rice’s vibrant blond daughter, who had once piled her hair on top of her head, and spoken in a smoky voice like Claudia Cardinale. She was three years old when she developed leukemia, and five when she died, in 1972.
At first, Rice soaked her maternal despair in a steady stream of sixpacks. Then she unleashed her rage unto paper, into what eventually became Interview with the Vampire. Michele was reincarnated as Claudia, the raging woman locked in a child’s body. “Louis was me,” says Rice. “That dark, brooding, melancholy person ripped from Catholic faith and tormented with guilt – that was me. I’d love to be Lestat: the wishful me, the active, the dream, the other one. Louis was the more true, autobiographical portrait of the conflicted and lost and orphaned person. That’s what the book is about. It’s about being orphaned.”
“Writers write about what obsesses them,” says Rice. “You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.“
Does anyone else feel that the quality of the Vampire Chronicles books goes downhill the further you read into the series?
I mean, I love Anne Rice and her novels but sometimes I get the feeling she put out a book because of contractual obligations. Some of the VC books are just.. meh.
(If you don’t mind my input) I feel like the quality kind of slopes downward, comes up again just a little bit and then goes down even further. I actually enjoyed The Vampire Armand (despite the weird shit that went on), but as for the 2 books that preceded it, I really didn’t care for them at all. I haven’t read on-ward since because I’ve heard things regarding the other half of the series so, I can’t attest to that half.
I don’t mind 🙂
I’ve heard that some of the books are better but after I read TOBT it really killed my enjoyment of the series and I’ve only recently gotten back into it.
You’re not wrong—there are a lot of people who have the same general opinion (YMMV on which book began the downward spiral). #i-want-my-iwtv — you need to weigh in on this one!
I have argued to doctorate holders that IWTV is a true work of literary genius. TVL is my favorite for its unrepentant hedonism and introspection–I think Lestat is more self aware than Louis is, and more aware of how others think than Louis is, and I love his narration (despite the fact that I am literally Louis).
Queen of the Damned is well on par with TVL in its quality–and its a high quality straddling the line between good popular fiction and high brow literature……Armand, Blood and Gold, Pandora, Vittorio: they’re right below it in literary quality for me. The rest seem to be just good popular fiction, not great, but good.
I love them all to bits, and will defend Anne and her work, and continue to read whatever she writes, but….you are right, there really is a change in her writing.
*Officially weighing in*
Lots of good points above, I absolutely agree that IWTV is a true work of literary genius. Agreed on everything annabellioncourt wrote. For me, none of the later books remotely approaches the richness and intensity of IWTV, TVL, or QOTD, but yes, I’d say TVA was very good, and shouldn’t be lumped into the lesser VC simply bc of its post-MtD publishing date.
I would agree w/ firelight-fading that it’s not a sharp downward slide in quality, but more that “the quality kind of slopes downward, comes up again just a little bit and then goes down even further.” Blood Canticle would have ended this series, and for what it’s worth, I would say that Prince Lestat begins to get things back on a better track plot-wise and emotion-wise than it nearly ended on.
My short answer: I think AR can still capture that old quality we all fell in love with, albeit in slivers. Which is why I can’t disregard any of the books entirely. It’s still hard for me to accept Prince Lestat as canon, I might never, but there are moments and lines of dialogue in it that are SO VERY GOOD. Moments where I’ve had to pause and smile, because it was as if the old Lestat, from IWTV or TVL, actually graced us with his presence, if only for a moment.
However, in general, I would say that the VC began as a work of catharsis for her (we probably all know the Claudia = Michele Rice connection by now); she had real questions that needed answering, she had a powerful hunger to flex her storytelling muscles, steeped in all that older literature, she could still relate to us mere mortals, and she had her poet husband’s emotional and creative support. Don’t underestimate Stan’s contribution 😉
So I’d say that’s why the first few books (1-3 or 1-5 or whatever, depending on your cutoff point) are so strong, and why we mourn the loss of that passionate searching. Because as she got more successful, as she exorcised her demons, she might have lost touch with the emotions and questions she began the journey with. I’m happy she’s happy! I would probably still be a mess, if I had lost a child and a husband, both who still had a lot of life ahead of them ;A;
But I’m glad she seems to be in a good place, and that she’s still writing, even though she is probably financially secure enough not to need to touch WordPerfect ever again!
Hit the jump for more.
It’s easy to denounce a pile of books. It’s easy to just slam them down or make a gif of them on fireyes I did that before I finished reading it and it’s kind of a bonding experience to all agree to like or dislike a thing together. I get that. Hey, I actively dislike movie!QOTD. I immediately feel a little kinship w/ others who agree w/ me on that, and I am aware that’s mean to those who feel nostalgia for that movie, so I try to keep it to a minimum publicly.
Why do people dislike the later VC books? Because they’re wild? (They are!), They are historically inaccurate? (Probably!) The characters seem “off” or present unreliable narration as to past events told by other characters…? (They are and they do!)
^All of which are varying degrees of criminal acts that call for Fictional Character Protective Services™ but I advocate for the proverbial devil because that’s one of my things that I do so here we go:
She’s trying to appease the POTP who have begged her to give Lestat a biological child (check that off the list), and get married with a ~ceremony~ (allegedly happening in the next installment, Blood Paradise) bc how can he be at all remotely happy w/out making an honest man out of Louis FFS like c’mon.
She’s always tried to push the envelope and TOBT was WILD for its time in this series, how incredible that she’s managed to make that seem so tame in comparison to later canon!
Probably! But I’m not a history buff, so for me, to say the characters are wearing something that wasn’t invented until, idk, 50 yrs later, doesn’t bother me.
I can understand why it might irritate the hell out of someone else, though.
The characters seem “off” or present unreliable narration as to past events told by other characters…
But that happens in real life, too! X might have one version of a story and Y, who also experienced it, might have a much different version. I enjoy seeing the perspectives, and consider for myself who’s version I believe.
In the last analysis, AR can still blow me away with a scene, or just a line of dialogue, even in the far less popular books in the series. She can still make me put the book down and stare off into space for a breather.
BUT, as I mentioned above,
I think AR can still capture that old quality we all fell in love with, albeit in slivers. Which is why I can’t disregard any of the books entirely. It’s still hard for me to accept Prince Lestat as canon, I might never, but there are moments and lines of dialogue in it that are SO VERY GOOD. Moments where I’ve had to pause and smile, because it was as if the old Lestat, from IWTV or TVL, actually deigned to be present, if only for a moment.
“This is my birthday present from Louis. Use as I like, he tells me…
I do not understand entirely what is meant by birthday. Was I born into this world on the 21st of September or was it on that day that I departed all things human to become this?
My gentlemen parents are forever reluctant to illuminate such simple matters. One would think it bad taste to dwell on such subjects. Louis looks puzzled, then miserable, before he returns to the evening paper. And Lestat, he smiles and plays a little Mozart for me, then answers with a shrug: ‘It was the day you were born to us.’ ”
– Claudia de Lioncourt, Queen of the Damned
Is this her birthday? Or the night she was turned? They don’t answer her. I think it was the night she was turned, “you were born to US”
According to this, September 21 is Michele Rice’s birthday, 1966. Michele died of
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!
I-want-my-IWTV 