When it’s good, there’s sort of nothing like it. When you’re in the moment, and the audience is with you, and you’re telling that story, and it’s alive, and it’s happening… and it feels like it’s never happened before, there’s nothing better. It’s just like flying.
There were many things, as I mention, which Lestat might have said and done. He might have made the experience rich in so many ways. But he did not.
Louis – Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
“No need to tell him what to observe, or what to remember. He always knew such things. Years ago, when I’d
done the dark magic on him, I hadn’t had to tell him anything; he had savored the smallest aspects of it all
on his own. And later he’d said I’d failed to guide him. Didn’t he know how unnecessary that had always
been?” – Lestat, Queen of the Damned (Anne Rice)
Yes, he is! I would bet that he currently loves to learn about Italian culture, interior decorating, and he definitely loves the fashion. I imagine he’d have several wardrobe changes during his wedding, but this suit would definitely be in the rotation LOOK IT EVEN COMES W/ A TOP HAT AND CANE:
Lestat’s resentment doesn’t necessarily last forever. He talks about sending gifts and money to his family, and he even has a dream about turning all of them into vampires whether this is really more of a nightmare is left up to our interpretation 😛
It’s strange, while it’s true that he resents his male family members, he had a kind of resentment towards his mother, too (TVL):
I wanted to
tell her a lot of things, how much I loved her particularly. But I was
cautious. She had a way of cutting me off when I spoke to her, and mingled with my love was a powerful resentment of her. All my life I’d
watched her read her Italian books and scribble letters to people in
Naples, where she had grown up, yet she had no patience even to teach
me or my brothers the alphabet. And nothing had changed after I
came back from the monastery. I was twenty and I couldn’t read or
write more than a few prayers and my name. I hated the sight of her
books; I hated her absorption in them.
It appears that he would have loved to learn about her side of the family during his childhood, but for her own reasons, she chose to withhold that information ;A;
I think that’s a valid theory! I’m not sure I would use the word “concubine,” since that would imply that she was coerced into it due to her status on the plantation. My headcanon is that if she was in a relationship w/ him, she was willing, and not coerced into it, based on fanon that she was raised w/ him, and they were always very close and mutually respectful, even though he was her plantation master in title.*
We see little of their interaction in the movie, so it’s impossible to say definitively, but it appears that she was not afraid of him before he was turned, could sense the change in him, and was genuinely concerned about him with more than a servant’s required amount of care.
Unfortunately we can’t talk about Louis/Yvette w/o bringing up the way he ended that relationship – rather badly (and I’m using a little levity in the pic below bc it’s very grim, upsetting, so many other words for how awful it is, but if anyone is offended, I apologize in advance. This is the way I choose to engage w/ the material, so Unfollow if you need to, I understand)
After he kills her, Louis carries Yvette out of the house bridal-style, a reversal of the carrying-over-the-threshold tradition that newlywed men do w/ their living wives to signify that she is welcome and a necessary part of their home and life together.
Louis carries Yvette OUT before he burns down the big house, so that she can be returned to her people (and family members, probably) and given the proper religious rites, funeral arrangements, etc. Conversely, he knows he doesn’t deserve any of that since he’s going straight to Hell; he intends to pay for her life (really, taking her life is the worst thing he’s done so far, especially considering their implied ship and the way he took her life) with his own. He knows that killing an innocent is terrible, even worse that she was someone he loved! He succumbed to desire, fed his vampire nature, and that finally sealed his damnation: “This place is cursed. Damned! And yes your master is the Devil!”
Fun fact: Brad Pitt and Thandie Newton (Yvette) were dating during the filming of IWTV. They are both professionals, but if my boyfriend had to basically act like he metaphorically raped and murdered me, or I had to do the same to him, pretty sure it’d kill the romance somewhat. [X]
Hit the jump for moar, cut for length.
There is some fanon out there that Yvette was raised along with Louis, that they had real history together and cared deeply for each other ❤ So the idea of them becoming closer than that would make sense. Yvette NOTICED his daytime absence in the fields, and seemed to want him back out there. She seems to genuinely care about him: “Are you still our master at all? You must send away this friend of yours… they’re frightened of him. And they’re frightened of you.” I headcanon that they had a good relationship prior to his turning, maybe the best possible relationship between two ppl of such different stations at that time.
This doesn’t seem like the face of someone required to be concerned for her boss, it seems like the face of a lover or family member, someone very close who senses something is very “off” about Louis, more even than when he was drinking and throwing himself at whores; she wants to help and probably thinks she knows him well enough to be able to talk some sense into him ;A;
In movie!IWTV: Louis’ killing of Yvette seems to also be a metaphor for giving in to sexual urges, basically a metaphorical rape in how it’s nonconsensual :[
We see him struggling with it and trying to make Yvette leave him alone, even ordering her to leave: “That will be all, Yvette.” (which he can barely even say, so consumed w/ hunger) but she deliberately disobeys: “I will not go unless you listen to me!” Again, does not seem like the kind of interaction between a plantation owner and his servant.
He looks like he’s about to receive Holy Communion in the shot above, his eyes closed almost in prayer, he’s probably thinking about everything Lestat’s told him, and How wrong can this be when it seems so right? VERY WRONG.
*So my answer is based on their 100% consensual relationship, but books could be (and have been!) written on the pressures of a slave being coerced into a relationship with the plantation’s owner, and I’m not going there.
Well yeah, there have been trapdoors in theatres for ages. A trapdoor wasn’t necessary for this since Lestat got the info of Nicolas’ death from a letter. If you mean that even Eleni was fooled, then, yes, that’s possible. But I think Eleni was close to Nicolas and would be in on the scheme.
So who knows, maybe Eleni wrote the letter at Nicolas’ request, or Armand’s request… maybe Nicolas himself asked her to do it. We don’t know his reasons for suicide just as we don’t know why he’d fake his death. If he faked his death, we can probably assume he didn’t want Lestat to know he was alive or try to search for him, EVER. Eleni and Armand are both still in canon as far as Prince Lestat, so only they can answer these questions.
@devilsviolinistwrote a good post on Nicki survival theories here. Check it out.
Did AR intend that death to have been faked or real? We have unreliable narrators *shrug* She hasn’t made any hints as to Nicolas resurfacing in the next book, but at this point IT WOULDN’T SURPRISE ME. In fact, I would love for us to have our very own Civil War
As I get older I’m finding that a lot of the “intellectuals” I used to admire are actually just condescending and pretentious. And also realizing how much more important it is to be present, considerate, and empathetic because nobody really knows what they’re talking about and anyone who claims to know everything about anything is feeding you bs.
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
I-want-my-IWTV 
