That doesn’t mean the vampires hate New Mexico, lol, even tho I don’t remember it being mentioned anywhere else in canon other than QOTD, either.
The only reference I see of New Mexico in QOTD is a very passing mention by a mortal (a bad guy) who’s dying: “Paralyzed, couldn’t move, thinking he was a kid again on a farm or something in New Mexico. Just baby talk.”
That wasn’t unfavorable (being mentioned by a dying bad guy doesn’t mean all ppl who had a childhood there will turn out to be bad guys), and doesn’t represent that the vampires hate New Mexico.
^Here’s a gif of Claudia playing w/ her food bc it’s similar to the scene in QOTD, someone else is playing w/ their food a little.
Keep in mind that there’s a lot of canon that takes place in other places and time periods. New Mexico was admitted into the US in 1912 [so sayeth Wiki] idk if there were vampires there before or after that, but there may have been restrictions about crossing the border before 1912. Also, travel for leisure is a relatively modern thing. In fact, Louis doesn’t mention any travel for leisure during IWTV, the three of them just stayed in New Orleans for 65 years? It’s possible.
As always, #your headcanon may vary, but from my own reading of the books and the characters focused on (the main coven), AR does not make it clear how much power the vampires have in the world* beyond the fact that they’re rich if they want to be (like Armand and Daniel owning and running the luxurious Night Island, a lucrative hotel/entertainment/casino/art-space/etc.), or not (Louis living in a dilapidated shack w/ few physical possessions).
Santino and the Children of Darkness might have had some impact with their religious zealotry, but targeted at the world in more of a negative way, a League of Shadows sort of group. Other vampires, especially the new ones introduced in PL, we don’t know much about their interest in economic or political influence.
Speaking of Louis…
he put the Coven of the Articulate’s stance very eloquently in QOTD (my emphasis added):
“It’s their world, not ours,” he said humbly. “Surely we forfeited it when we lost our mortality. We have no
right now to interrupt their struggle. If we do we rob them of victories that have cost them too much! Even in
the last hundred years their progress has been miraculous; they have righted wrongs that mankind thought
were inevitable; they have for the first time developed a concept of the true family of man.
… Don’t interfere with them.
Even if they kill each other! Give them time to see this new vision realized; give the cities of the West,
corrupt as they may be, time to take their ideals to a suffering and blighted world.“
Cut for length, not spoilers.
*That was the issue that was brought up in QOTD, whether they had a responsibility to have political power and/or have influence the world or not. There was a council of sorts, and some heavy debate was had, mainly on the part of Lestat’s ultra feminist SJW girlfriend vs. literally everyone else except Lestat who mostly sat there terrified into silence and not taking sides, and it ended with the general agreement that they shouldn’t meddle in mortal affairs.
This is partly bc writing their involvement into actual historical events could be difficult if not impossible (What, did they fight in WWII? Which side? How would that even work, concealing their vampirism from their fellow soldiers??!), and partly bc AR herself wasn’t very political back in earlier canon.
Even now, in the later books, AR keeps her world mostly separate from the Real World; IIRC, Hurricane Katrina was never mentioned in canon, and one would think that NOLA-branch coven founders Louis and Lestat would at least comment on that obviously devastating tragedy. At least one fanfic writer did take up the challenge of weaving in Katrina, and did it very tastefully. So it’s possible, but AR hasn’t gone there.
Of course, he gave me a doll as usual, the replica of me, which as always wears a duplicate of my newest
dress. To France he sends for these dolls, he wants me to know. And what should I do with it? Play with it
as if I were really a child?
“Is there a message here, my beloved father?” I asked him this evening. “That I shall be a doll forever
myself?” He has given me thirty such dolls over the years if recollection serves me. And recollection never
does anything else. Each doll has been exactly like the rest. They would crowd me out of my bedroom if I
kept them. But I do not keep them. I burn them, sooner or later. I smash their china faces with the poker. I
watch the fire eat their hair. I can’t say that I like doing this. After all, the dolls are beautiful. And they do
resemble me. Yet, it becomes the appropriate gesture. The doll expects it. So do I.
[^ fanart by @liquorandptsdvarietyshow who deactivated, but I’m crediting them and I have permission to repost their art]
We don’t really know much about mortal!Louis’ sex life… in the movie he had been married, and the wife had died in childbirth, one would hope that was his kid, and then he was hanging around w/ whores when he was trying to get himself killed, but he barely even acknowledges that one whore’s presence, even though he has his arm around her to stabilize himself. My general impression of Louis is that of all the vampires, he’s one of the least sexually-motivated.
In IWTV, Louis tells Claudia re: sex: “ ‘It was something hurried,’ I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. ‘And… it was seldom savored… something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’ ”
We don’t know if he just said that to be make her feel better about the fact that she’ll never experience it but Louis usually tells the truth.
I don’t think Louis would have had sex w/ Merrick.
Spoiler alert.
So would Merrick and Louis have had sex? If Merrick wanted it she probably could have voodoo’d him into it, she voodoo’d him into breaking his moral principle to never make another vampire. Without bewitching him, I’d say no.
So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end
The Tale of the Body Thief, by Anne Rice (via vampchronfic)
[^Armand nudging Louis into climbing a tower which is not at all some kind of phallic symbolism EMBRACE IT! by @garama]
I have these kinds of questions, too, things that have bothered me for years, I know that feel.
TL;DR: I don’t think the tower that Armand nudges Louis to climb is the same tower as Magnus’ tower. I think Armand has made himself several lairs, maybe bc of his later canon experience that having one lair isn’t all that safe. I don’t think Louis got to visit Magnus’ tower in IWTV.
One reason I think this is that when they get up to the window to let themselves in, it’s a window w/ a sill; Magnus’ tower had barred windows. It’s possible Armand had them changed, but why remove defenses on a such a secure fortress?
“Higher and higher we climbed, until we
had reached the window of the tower itself, which Armand quickly
wrenched open, his long legs disappearing over the sill; and I rose up
after him, feeling his arm out around my shoulders.”
Hit the jump for more.
I don’t think Louis got to visit Magnus’ tower in IWTV.
Why? BC that scene begins w/ Louis and Claudia going w/ Madeleine to burn down her doll shop. After she’s done, M and C run off to celebrate w/ a manicure (or smtg girly? IDK but Louis does not seem to be invited) and Louis goes off w/ Armand. They take off powerwalking towards the Seine:
“We were walking together now, fast, nearing the Seine,”
They come to some kind of older part of town that Louis doesn’t recognize, maybe they’re on the outskirts of the city, but they powerwalked there, didn’t take a carriage:
“I didn’t knew where we were now, only that in my wanderings I’d
passed here before: a street of ancient mansions, of garden walls and
carriage doors and towers overhead and windows of leaded glass
beneath stone arches. Houses of other centuries, gnarled trees, that
sudden thick and silent tranquility which means that the masses are
shut out; a handful of mortals inhabit this vast region of highceilinged
rooms; stone absorbs the sound of breathing, the space of whole lives.”
Here’s the tower:
“…
Above, I could see story
after story rising to a lone tower that barely emerged from the dark,
teeming rain. ‘Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,’ Armand was saying.”
Armand says, Don’t acknowledge it if the ppl see you or you’ll fuck this up for me, n00b:
“
‘But note
this. The inhabitants of this house have known me far a hundred years
and think me a spirit; so if by chance they see you, or you see them
through those windows, remember what they believe you to be and
show no consciousness of them lest you disappoint them or confuse
them. Do you hear? You are perfectly safe.’ ”
So I don’t think it’s that far outside the city.
Whereas, in the Vampire Lestat, when Lestat’s looking out the window of the cell in Magnus’ tower:
“It was evening. And through a wide, heavily barred stone
window I saw hills and woods, blanketed with snow, and the vast tiny
collection of rooftops and towers that made up the city far away. I
hadn’t seen it like this since the day I came in the post carriage…
Battlements. I opened my eyes again. And I knew I was lying
in a high tower room several miles from Paris.”
Lestat doesn’t mention that there’s anything around that tower except a little village he explores some distance away, when he’s an orphan wandering around alone.
The one issue w/ my theory that it’s not Magnus’ tower is that Lestat also says there are no higher towers.
Louis, IWTV: “… Above, I could see story after story rising to a lone tower that barely emerged from the dark,”
Lestat, TVL: “I ran to the edge of the roof and
looked down. Nothing but a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, and then
to another edge and it was exactly the same. I almost fell! I turned
desperate, panting. We were on the top of some square tower, no
more than fifty feet across! And I could see nothing higher in any
direction.”
^But I don’t think Lestat’s on Magnus’ tower yet, bc that’s the night he’s kidnapped, and maybe Magnus made a stopover for a quick bite first. So I’m sticking with my theory that Louis didn’t visit Magnus’ tower in IWTV w/ Armand.
I was working on a novel called Born for Atlantis, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I thought, “What if I could somehow combine this with Lestat and the vampires?” And it was like, everything worked. Something happens to me when I write from Lestat’s point of view. There’s no question about it. By the time I was done, it felt inevitable, like it always had been…. It was a rare experience.
So, @roselioncourt brings this article to our attention, and I think the relevant quote is above, but there’s a little more about AR’s interest in Atlantis in there.
The relevance is that AR had been working on this Atlantis book and added VC into it later. We’ll see how well that works, but this is an answer to the question, “Atlantis… what?”
Tom riding his horse through the slaves’ fire, and then turning the horse around so that he could face the suspicious mortals. That was on a par with Errol Flynn and Rudy Valentino. It was on a par with the opera greats who have played Mephistopheles. Only a genuine “star” can make a moment like that, and I’m as confused as to why… just as much as anyone in Hollywood. Let’s close this one out with one word: Grand! (No, can’t stop talking about it.)
If I had to settle for one picture in this film, it would be that shot of Lestat on horseback looking back at the suspicious mortals.
That was and is my hero. That was and is my man. Lestat just won’t be afraid of anybody. He won’t stand for it. He hates what he is as much as Louis, but he cannot do anything but move forward, attempt to make existence worth it, attempt to create. He knows the formula for success, and has no patience with the formula for failure. That’s Lestat.”
I-want-my-IWTV 