Hey! I’m really enjoying your VC fanart. Keep it up!
So, spoiling ppl with plot points, that’s one way to drag fresh blood into a new fandom ;D I know I love being spoiled, I want the plot points before I read a book, so if your friends want that info… I have a few timelines, Idk if any are the definitive one, try my #timeline tag.
One timeline AR published is in the Vampire Companion, but it’s not up to date, but it’s through books 1-5 and you might still be able to find it online or on Amazon or somewhere else.
Lestat turns Louis in 1791. At that time, Lestat’s been a vampire for 10 years, and he was turned when he was 20 or 21 (it’s UNCLEAR, there’s a debate about this)(even AR doesn’t remember).
So Lestat is 30 or 31 in 1791, which would make his birth year 1760 or ‘61 ;D
I got a similar ask a few months back, it’s got a little more thought on the subject. There’s a timeline in the official Vampire Companion (there is some debate about discrepancies of this book to canon, but this book was intended to be the author’s deciding word on canon facts):
It’s a handy resource. I ought to reread it. (Y’all can get it on Amazon.)
It was probably intended to be the answers to questions AR gets alot about VC, plus some behind-the-scenes info and headcanons she had at the time. I’m not sure if it lines up with canon, but a good resource to have with your other VC books anyway!
I got my copy at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, and I deeply regret not ALSO buying a slim hardcover VC book there that profiled VC fans and was published in the 90′s! Argh. I don’t even remember what it was called. I didn’t imagine it though!! It was REAL. I should beg a certain Portlandian to go for me and see if it’s still there… *cough* you know who you are *cough*
HOWEVER, I see the Vampire Companion on Amazon often, I bet it’s on eBay… and it’s in library book sales, but not as often. I think this is a recently printed edition w/ a new cover but not updated info:
Not to be confused with these “vampire companion” books, which hey, might be good on their own! They’re just not VC.
I get why you might be frustrated, I’m not sure how much VC you’ve read, I hope this answer doesn’t spoil you if you don’t want to be spoiled but here we go…
Lestat was born in 1760. Not sure where you got 1780… I believe you are forgetting the almost 10 yrs Lestat and Gabrielle ~wandered the Devil’s Road~ together, which was from 1780-89. There’s a timeline in the official Vampire Companion (there is some debate about discrepancies of this book to canon, but this book was intended to be the author’s deciding word on canon facts):
Here’s a snippet of the time line, sorry for the warping, but it’s a thick paperback book and I didn’t wanna injure the binding!
Worth noting also: AR underscores that Lestat was 20 when he was turned.*
So by 1791, Lestat is actually like 31 mortal years old, and Louis is in fact younger than he is, at 25 (why they made him 24 in the movie is beyond me bc it’s only a year different? IDK).
*Re: Lestat being turned at 20 or 21, that’s a topic that’s been debated for aaaaages, too, since he says in his book, “In the winter of my twenty-first year, I went out alone on horseback to kill a pack of wolves” and more confusingly, in the timeline above, AR indicates that Lestat is 19 when he goes to Paris w/ Nicolas so I am confusion, but taking Lestat’s line from TVL alone, that it’s his “twenty-first year”:
a baby’s “first year” is actually the day it’s born through it’s one-year birthday;
therefore, Lestat’s “twenty-first year” could be his year from his twentieth-year birthday through his twenty-first year birthday.
(Not that his birthday was celebrated in his house anyway, so it’s really just about whether he gets carded at bars, currently, and he totally does.)
I headcanon that:
Lestat kills the wolves in the winter, sometime after his twentieth birthday, 11/7/1779,
and then goes to Paris w/ Nicki that spring (5/1/1780 maybe).
Lestat and Nicki are working at the theatre for only a few months and then Lestat gets his big break in August: “It came in late August at last.”
Lestat only gets to perform for a few months, at least through October (”But in the month of October when Paris was already freezing,…”).
and then Magnus turns Lestat sometime close to, or before, his actual twenty-first birthday 11/7/1780. Maybe in October or that first week of November.
Louis does not approve of making vampires himself, that’s for sure! But yes, Louis wanted to be with Armand and Armand didn’t want Claudia as part of that equation and she knew it.
So, right, IDK what Louis was thinking about how it could possibly work out w/o making her a new adult vampire companion. He had little choice in that. He couldn’t bear to think of her out there on her own, she clearly wasn’t going to be invited to join the Theatre des Vampires, and she couldn’t make an adult vampire herself. There was a line in book!IWTV where she tells Louis: “ ‘Can you picture it?’ she said, so softly I scarcely heard. “A coven of children? That is all I could provide…” <– whether she could actually turn a child is not known. We don’t know of it happening successfully anywhere else in canon before or after that point. Louis probably would not have approved of that, either.
Worth noting here is that in the first version of IWTV, Claudia wasn’t killed off by the Parisian coven (from the Vampire Companion):
“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.”
-My poor baby didn’t have the oportunity to leave her own life and be genuinely happy-
Actually, in the first version of IWTV, Claudia wasn’t killed off by the Parisian coven (from the Vampire Companion):
“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.”
One could say that killing her off for the sake of Louis’ development was harsh, and it is known as the Stuffed into the Fridge trope. Just bc it’s a trope doesn’t make it any less effective, tho!
“A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks.”
-What if Claudia wasn’t killed by the Parisian coven. Would Louis leave her for Armand anyways?-
That was his intention, that she was satisfied with her new companion and that he would still see them, still communicate with her. You don’t go through that kind of relationship (I think the word “beloved” in movie!IWTV was perfect, bc they’re closer to eachother than those in a brother-sister or father-daughter relationship).
Louis always wanted to see Claudia happy and satisfied, and he beat himself up a lot for his failures in that. When it became clear that he was torn between her and Armand, it was Claudia who brought Madeleine into the picture and it was only after a lot of argument (and Armand’s influence, which Armand admitted to later) that Louis gave in to Claudia’s request to turn Madeleine for Claudia.
Louis and Claudia’s last real conversation in IWTV together was about this (under the cut, for length, abbreviated here), and you can see that they’re both not thrilled with the separation but that it has to happen.
Claudia: But do you
truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?
Louis: It’s meant to be. It’s almost
that sort of direction… He alone can give me the strength to be
what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery.
Either I go with him, or I die. And it’s something else, which is
irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me…
Claudia: Which is?
Louis: That I love him
Claudia: No doubt you do, but then, you could love even me.
Louis: Claudia, Claudia.
Claudia: I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me… That I can get back to you…I’ve hurt you so often,
I’ve caused you so much pain.‘
Possibly a very unpopular opinionbut: I don’t think Madeleine and Claudia were sexual w/ each other in the mortal sense, but there was more to them than a mother-daughter relationship. So Yes, I think she and Madeleine could have been happy together in a way that was impossible for Claudia and Louis.
I don’t think Claudia’s pursuit of Madeleine was purely for a platonic mother-daughter relationship. That may have been part of it, and it was how she sold it to Louis because he couldn’t perceive Claudia as more than his daughter or as an adult trapped in a little body who would be capable of being involved in a romantic way with anyone, and she needed him to actually do the work for her since she was unable to perform the Dark Gift herself (and I do think she tried before asking him).
While it may not have been a relationship in a more conventionally romantic sense (I don’t believe they had anything sexual, in the mortal sense, going on), I do think Claudia/Madeleine was a ship of sorts, more of an emotional relationship. Claudia was the one in control, she was comparatively older and stronger in personality.
Hit the jump, cut for length.
-Bc I feel like her searching for answers was her equivalent of teenage years, she was angry with the world.-
She had every right to be angry! Not their intention, but her “parents” condemned her to an eternity of body dysmorphia and being perceived as smtg she was not, potentially worse than death. Similar things happen in real life, too, ppl are born with syndromes that cause them to appear “disfigured” or “underdeveloped” to society at large, and they too, may be angry with the world or their own parents for that. Teenagers going through puberty AND adults long past that phase can have body horror and be frustrated that their external physical vessels do not match who they are inside. From what I understand of it, there are many forms of body dysphoria.
Even w/o the body issues, she still would have sought answers to the questions Louis had asked. He didn’t seem to have any body dysphoria but he had plenty of questions beyond any equivalent of a teenage phase. They were both extremely frustrated at the lack of answers.
-But towards the end she has accepted that not all her questions have answers and she seems less frustrated with her condition, for me this is when she reaches adulthood.-
That’s life! Not all of our questions will be answered, but she at least seemed to have achieved some inner peace with not having the answers.
She may have reached adulthood long before that, when she decided to assassinate Lestat for his treatment of her. She wanted revenge on the world, so she took it out on the one who seemed most responsible for her existence. That seems like an adult decision to me, to kill the person who gave you life. But then, she may not have been physiologically capable of ever “reaching adulthood” since the human brain doesn’t finish development until around 20-25 yrs old [X].
Louis and Claudia’s
last real conversation in IWTV together:
“`But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?’ [Claudia said.] I turned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious in her dislike of [Armand], in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn’t realize what I realized: he could not want her death, because I didn’t want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. `It’s meant to be. It’s almost that sort of direction,’ I said, as if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. `He alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him, or I die,’ I said. `And it’s something else, which is irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me… ‘ “
`Which is?’ she asked.
`That I love him,’ I said.
`No doubt you do,’ she mused. `But then, you could love even me.’ ”
`Claudia, Claudia.’ I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up close to my chest. “
`I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me …’ she whispered. `That I can get back to you … I’ve hurt you so often, I’ve caused you so much pain.’ Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, In a little while, I won’t have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
^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.“
I have never seen a post or heard smne mention anything like this… that would damn or save my soul, and as far as I know, after 20+ yrs in our fandom, I am one of the – oldest – living – members of it on tumblr! <— d’ya see what I did there? bwah so damaged…
So I’ll answer by opening it up to the group, has anyone heard of this? Could be legit.
[meme by @vampchronfic, this was the most appropriate pic I could think to add]
Oh and thanks for the lovely wishes from the future! If the end of ‘15 is any indication, Sweet ‘16 is looking like it’s gonna start out a fine year indeeeed.
When I read this it kind of ringed a bell, but I guess the bell must have been underwater because I found quite the opposite in The Vampire Companion
For the “meant to be an unlikable villain” I only found that he was supposed to be evil enough for Akasha’s dreams but really wasn’t lol
And from the way she is “disappointed that people liked him”, I actually found quite the contrary…
Went back to the facebook archives to find out if maybe Anne had said something more akin to what you mentioned, but I couldn’t find anything there, or in the several written interviews I found in the bowels of the internet.
Hope this helps…? And yes, I kinda am defending my stale cinnamon roll. Oh, and Happy New Year, Anon & @i-want-my-iwtv 😀
Thanks again @luthi69 for digging up this info! omg I get to use this ancient thing…
I am a bad fangirl, I own a copy of the Vampire Companion and have not memorized it with the detail I have absorbed canon… another item I’d like to do this year. Can you guys imagine what AR had in mind for Armand in QotD (does anyone else here not like AR’s abbreviations for the books?) if she wanted him to play a central factor in the plot?
I think it also says something about the power of Daniel. What AR was doing with Armand/Daniel overrode whatever her initial plans for Armand were, his feelings for Daniel basically outshone whatever evil AR was gonna have him do! And that makes their ship that much more powerful and precious in that story, don’t you think?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a source for viewing/downloading it online :-
It’s for sale on Amazon, do you not have access to that in your country? Message me off-anon, if so, and I’ll see how I might be able to help u buy it legally!
I-want-my-IWTV 