You are not alone, there are others out there. People: Comment/Reblog if you ship Lestat/Armand *u* It’s an AU ship for me, I can ship almost anything AU.
They have a bizarre kind of chemistry, don’t they?! If they weren’t both so obsessed with being alpha, they could really enjoy each other.
This is one of the only fanarts I’ve seen of them in any kind of shippiness, and even then, I think it’s the scene in TVL where Lestat is succumbing to Armand’s illusions.
“You know it was the damnedest luck!” I whispered suddenly. “I am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go home.”
[Source unknown, even reverse-image searched. Tell me the source if you know it!]
Anyhow they have referred to eachother in canon as being brothers of a sort, so I tag them #murder brothers, if you want more Lestat/Armand action.
As always, #Your Headcanon May Vary, these are just my own opinions, and I am SURE other ppl have other excellent answers for this.
I’m focusing on Louis’s strength at turning and the first few years after, since he does grow more powerful over time on his own (and he also gets *~upgraded~* later in canon, idk whether you accept later canon but it happens!).
TL;DR: I don’t think Lestat purposely made Louis weak, it was a combination of factors, but mostly that the procedure isn’t an exact science*, Lestat was a young maker and turned Louis too soon after making two fledglings before, and the fact that Louis was malnourished** (refusal to kill ppl) for those first few years might have been a contributing factor.
**So Lestat does talk about Louis being weak in IWTV, but not that he purposely made him that way, just that he allowed it to go uncorrected; he didn’t force Louis to kill ppl, or force Louis to embrace his vampiric gifts and learn how to use them:
“Lestat looked at me. ‘I expected you to feel these things
instinctually, as I did,’ he said. When I gave you that first kill, I
thought you would hunger for the next and the next, that you would
go to each human life as if to a full cup, the way I had. But you didn’t. And all this time I suppose I kept from straightening you out because
you were best weaker. I’d watch you playing shadow in the night,
staring at the falling rain, and I’d think, He’s easy to manage, he’s
simple. But you’re weak, Louis. You’re a mark. For vampires and
now for humans alike. This thing with Babette has exposed us both.
It’s as if you want us both to be destroyed.‘”
^Lestat is saying Louis is weak by choice, and he’s describing weakness of character more than physical strength, so I believe he was physically weak bc of the Dark Gift. The Dark Gift is not an exact science*, despite all good/bad intentions, it’s the vampiric form of pregnancy. But there are things about the procedure that can affect the strength of the fledgling:
Whether the blood is transferred once (for Louis) or multiple times (for Marius) between maker and fledgling – Multiple times seems to make a stronger fledgling. Why didn’t Lestat do it multiple times for Louis? I think Louis was already in such bad physical shape that Lestat didn’t want to risk it. Plus, he had already turned 2 fledglings using the single transfer procedure, he probably felt like that was good enough.
Age, power, and timing of making previous fledglings of the maker – it seems like power is outweighed by the other two factors.
The fledgling’s diet after turning – Louis was feeding on animals for the first 4-ish years of vampiring, which is like bad junk food, and probably not drinking
the volume of blood he needed, either.
Yes, post-QOTD (and pre-Merrick), Louis refused to drink Lestat’s blood. I headcanon that that felt like a rejection of Lestat bc blood-sharing is a major expression of intimacy for vampires. He might have refused it bc he saw how it had changed Lestat and he didn’t want that to happen to himself, but I think he also wanted to preserve his own vulnerability, in case he wanted to suicide ;A;
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
“So I’m confused, was Louis weak because Lestat made him that way on purpose?”
I don’t think it was on purpose. It’s not an exact science* and Lestat had only done it 2x, had only heard about the procedure from Armand and Marius. There is some speculation that the blood transfer needs to be exchanged more than once to ensure a stronger fledgling. Marius, for example, exchanged blood with his maker multiple times when he was turned, but with Louis, Lestat only did it once. I think that’s because Louis was so weakened by the bloodletting he’d been forced to undergo (”When
I was subdued finally, and exhausted then almost to the point of death,
they bled me. The fools.”) that Lestat didn’t want to risk exchanging more than once? Idk.
Also, Louis was feeding on animals for the first 4-ish years of vampiring, and that’s like bad junk food. He was probably not even drinking the volume of blood he needed, either. That might have had an impact on his strength. It probably contributed to his attitude at the time, being underfed and undernourished for so long ;A;
“Or was he weak because he was Lestat’s third fledgling in a decade?”
This is probably more of the reason. As Marius tells Lestat in TVL:
“Well, for one thing, ” he said, “your powers are extraordinary, but
you can’t expect those you make in the next fifty years to equal you or
Gabrielle. Your second child didn’t have half Gabrielle’s strength and
later children will have even less. The blood I gave you will make some difference. If you drink… if you drink from Akasha and Enkil,
which you may choose not to do… that will make some difference
too. But no matter, only so many children can be made by one in a
century.And new offspring will be weak. However, this is not
necessarily a bad thing. The rule of the old covens had wisdom in it
that strength should come with time.And then again, there is the old
truth: you might make titans or imbeciles, no one knows why or how.
In Ricean vampire physiology, a maker needs to wait a good long while between making fledglings; too much frequency will make subsequent fledglings weaker than they could have been. Plus, even though Lestat had the blood of a much older and stronger vampire when he was turned (Magnus), Lestat himself was only a decade into vampiring himself. It seems the vampiric spirit discourages the transfer of powers from young vampires to their fledglings. If anyone got the bulk of that power, it was Gabrielle, Lestat’s first.
“Wouldn’t he be stronger because Lestat had Akasha’s blood in him?”
Marius said that that would make “some difference” but I think the fact that Lestat had already turned 2 vampires, and was young still himself, prevented that power from being transferred.
“I know Louis refused to drink from Lestat, was he ultimately weak because he chose to be?”
He was weak by vampire standards at first, and yes, I think he chose to remain that way. But he’s still stronger and faster than a mortal. He’s also able to defend himself and kick a lot of ass. What he lacks physically he makes up for mentally, he’s strategic in the way he attacks when he does attack, and he can hold his own against much stronger and older vampires (he took out most of the Theatre des Vampires on his own in IWTV!).
*Re: the Dark Trick is not an exact science:
Armand mentions in TVL:
But let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided as well as those who have none.
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 ❤
Poor Madeleine! Did not deserve to die like that ;A; Unfortunately, I’d say she was condemned to die by proxy, being so attached to Claudia.
I don’t think Madeleine’s death was totally under Armand’s control. He was not really the leader of the TdV (see more quotes on that below the cut); in TVA Armand says: “For the record, [Claudia] was slain by my Coven of mad demon actors and actresses,… it became all too clear to too many that she had tried to murder her principal Maker, The Vampire Lestat. It was a crime punishable by death, the murdering of one’s creator or the attempt at it”
^“slain by my Coven”but not that he ordered them to do it. Just that he didn’t stop it from happening.
This is an #unreliable narrator situation again, as there are at least three different accounts of the trial that was held under TdV (see more below the cut)(four if you include the above statement from TVA). In all instances, the important part of the “trial” was that Claudia was the one who had to be convicted and sentenced to death. Louis and Madeleine were secondary concerns.
There was no explanation for why Madeleine was also condemned to death, I would suggest that Santiago (and/or Armand) wanted to kill Madeleine bc she was mad (the extent of which we don’t really know) and/or they didn’t really know what else to do with her. Santiago probably wanted to do it bc it’s thrilling to kill another vampire, as Armand pointed out in book!IWTV: “`You see,’ he said, `killing other vampires is very exciting; that is why it is forbidden under penalty of death.’
Movie!IWTV – Armand is not part of the “trial,” we see him close the door against the whole scene, and he waits until later to free Louis from his (upside-down!!! SO MEAN) imprisonment in the walled-in coffin o’ doom. So one would guess that Armand at least negotiated w/ Santiago to have Louis’ life to be spared in this way.
Book!IWTV – Armand was not present at the “trial.” Santiago seemed to be the one running that show.
Again, one would guess that Armand at least negotiated w/ Santiago beforehand.
TVL – Armand was present at the “trial” and seemed to be the one running that show, and Madeleine is not even mentioned.
In movie!IWTV, we see Armand closing the door on the screams of the condemned, and the explanation as to why he didn’t come out to help when Louis called for him? He had told Louis that he wasn’t really the leader of this coven, “But if there were a leader, I would be that one.”
In book!IWTV, similarly:
“ `Are you the leader of this group?’ [Louis] asked him. ” `Not in the way you mean leader,’ [Armand] answered. But if there were a leader here, I would be that one.’
Armand knows that to exert power, you have to defend it:
[Louis says:] “ `Stop them if you will, advise them that we don’t mean any harm.
Why can’t you do this? You say yourself we’re not your enemies, no
matter what we’ve done… ’
” I could hear him sigh, faintly. [Armand says:] `I have stopped them for the time
being,’ he said. `But I don’t want such power over them as would be
necessary to stop them entirely. Because if I exercise such power, then
I must protect it. I will make enemies. And I would have forever to
deal with my enemies when all I want here as a certain space, a certain
peace. Or not to be here at all. I accept the scepter of sorts they’ve
given me, but not to rule over them, only to keep them at a distance.‘
Well I found it! In TVL, when Armand is telling Lestat and Gabrielle his story:
“In quiet allegiance to the Dark Ways, Armand
continued to serve. Yet in the centuries of his long obedience, Armand
kept two secrets to himself. These were his property, these secrets,
more purely his than the coffin in which he locked himself by day, or
the few amulets he wore. The first was that no matter how great his
loneliness, or how long the search for brothers and sisters in whom he
might find some comfort, he never worked the Dark Trick himself.
He wouldn’t give that to Satan, no Child of Darkness made by him.”
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
Still in TVL, that quote above is right after he’s gone over how he’s seen so many vampires die:
In this particular, let
Armand observe that there was no vampire then living who was more
than three hundred years old. No one alive then could remember the
first Roman coven. The devil frequently calls his vampires home….
He had witnessed
the inevitable dissolution of covens, seen immortality defeat the most
perfectly made Children of Darkness, and it seemed at times some
awesome punishment that it never defeated him. Was he destined to
be one of the ancient ones? The Children of the Millennia? Could one
believe those stories which persisted still?
He’s also mentioned that the Dark Trick is not an exact science (also TVL):
But
let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is
unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and
with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born
to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more
than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with
skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided
as well as those who have none.
So Armand’s reasons for refusing to turn Daniel, if you trust him to be honest about the ones he’s giving, seem to be that:
Not everyone has the stamina for vampiring
Mortal life is better and Daniel should appreciate it more!
The Dark Trick is unpredictable and could leave Daniel in worse condition than mortal life ;A;
Armand really underscores that mortal life is better, also bc of the tragedy he’s experienced in his own vampiring.
Armand has his own enemies to deal with (“I’m like any beast on the prowl. I have enemies who are older and
stronger who would try to destroy me if it interested them to do so, I am sure.” – QOTD)
There’s also the threat of extermination happening to alot of vampires in QOTD so... bad timing. (”What matters is that the end
may be at hand…
There is a vague repeated cry of
danger, but no one seems to know whence it comes. They only know that we are being sought out and
annihilated, that coven houses, meeting places, go up in flames.“ – QOTD)
Later, in QOTD, Daniel refers to it as a vow, maybe that’s he terminology Armand used when he told Daniel about it:
[Daniel says:] “Of course I believed you. The vow you made, you explained everything. But Armand, this is my question, to
whom did you make this vow?"
Laughter.
^He made the vow to himself ;A;
[Armand says:] "So you would have me break my vow. You would have what you think you want. But look well at this
garden, because once I do it, you’ll never read my thoughts or see my visions again. A veil of silence will
come down.”
1. I think this is definitively where Daniel realizes Armand’s not going to turn him:
Then the realization had come to Daniel as they stood together in the ruined dining room with its famous
murals of ritual flagellation barely visible in the dark: He isn’t going to kill me after all. He isn’t going to do it.
Of course he won’t make me what he is, but he isn’t going to kill me. The dance will not end like that.
2. Then Armand starts trying to get Daniel to understand his reasons for not wanting to give him the Dark Gift
“Give me what I want,” Daniel had demanded.
“I’m giving you everything you could ever ask for."
"Yes, but not what I have asked for, not what I want!"
"Be alive, Daniel.” A low whisper, like a kiss. “Let me tell you from my heart that life is better than death.”
3. … which intensifies:
Ugly fights, terrible fights, finally, Armand broken down, glassy-eyed with silent rage, then crying softly but
uncontrollably as if some lost emotion had been rediscovered which threatened to tear him apart. “I will not
do it, I cannot do it. Ask me to kill you, it would be easier than that. You don’t know what you ask for, don’t
you see? It is always a damnable error! Don’t you realize that any one of us would give it up for one human
lifetime?
(2/2) moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which God made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe.”
Are you homework anon? I got this ask right around the same time as the homework ask… part of your assignment (if you are homework anon!) is probably to practice critical thinking on your own and figure out what you think this passage means.
It doesn’t have to mean the same exact thing to everyone, and that’s what makes discussion about canon interesting, all our varied opinions. It’s great when we agree, but we don’t always on all topics 😉
But of course I wrote out a long answer despite the fact that I didn’t want to! Oh well.
“The great adventure of our lives.”
I’d suggest that the opening line is the topic sentence on which he’s going to build support or undermine the statement, or both. Louis has already had a number of great adventures (or so it appears to the reader!), so what makes him call THIS one the great adventure? Only now, embarking on the great Looking for Other Vampires: European Tour w/ Claudia, does he feel the freedom Lestat wanted him to feel when he was first turned. Louis didn’t embrace his vampire nature then, he fought it, he fought Lestat, he was not having a good time at all, and although he did reluctantly admit to enjoying some of the aspects of vampiring, he was holding back. Claudia shows up and Louis has a new purpose, he loves her, and she helps to inspire in him a hunger to be alive. ❤
“What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world?” – He’s not saying that he can’t still die, bc he’s seen a vampire be killed (at least, he thinks so). But now he’s really considering immortality as a possibility, maybe he wants to be with Claudia forever!
“And what is `the end of the world’ except a phrase, because who knows even what is the world itself?” – Now he’s asking questions of his topic sentence, he’s unsure of the excitement he feels about this new chapter in his life. Is it legit? Can he actually give himself over to enjoying it and being excited about it? Keep in mind that he’s never mentioned traveling before (except for the fact that he came to America from France), he’s lived an isolated life in NOLA and probably expected to die there. He might really have mixed anxiety and excitement about everything and everywhere outside of NOLA.
“I had now lived in two centuries,” – it’s around 1860 when he leaves NOLA with Claudia, he was alive at the end of the 18th century, and experienced half of the 19th century. Obviously a lot of things changed, as he says he’s “seen the illusions of one utterly shattered by the other,”
Then he goes on to talk about himself, and how he’s had internal changes of his own, probably re: embracing his nature, finding a will to live, and I don’t want to translate each piece for you bc it seems fairly self-explanatory: “been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions,”
This is Louis being poetic:
“living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which God made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe.”
^but it seems to relate to him feeling outside of nature, outside of religion, and yet still touched by God’s light, being a vampire, like something that can’t affect anything but can watch and take notice of all the things evolving around it. Something Marius later calls a continuous awareness:
“And for no apparent reason, I was possessed of a strange idea about life, a strange concern that amounted almost to a pleasant obsession… That it came to me in these last free hours as a Roman citizen was no more than coincidence.
The idea was simply that there was somebody who knew everything, somebody who had seen everything. I did not mean by this that a Supreme Being existed, but rather that there was on earth a continual intelligence, a continual awareness.
…My idea of who or what it was, was vague. But I was comforted by the notion that nothing spiritual – and knowing was spiritual – was lost to us. That there was this continuous knowing…” (TVL)
^It seems like something Anne Rice has always been passionate about, how the vampires exist in this world, and how they are dependent upon it, fascinated by it, and yet kept apart from it, how they absorb and contain all this historical knowledge of this world that they’re obsessed with by their very nature… and she has carried through to some extent in even the most recent VC.
When he woke up, it was with a smile. Already unsettling enough, but he found that the smile didn’t leave so easily either. His head was always full of too many thoughts, but today was different. It was his heart that was full and his head seemed unable to hold on to anything.
Back in Paris, Nicolas had friends who seemingly fell deeply in love with someone new every week and he’d always felt removed from it all, looking on with a sarcastic sneer and that roll of his eyes that was almost as feared as the sharpness of his tongue.
What would they say if they could see him now? This wasn’t him. He couldn’t be the one to keep thinking about eyes that seemed to change their shade when passion overtook them, kisses from an all too generous mouth and feeling as if he was still set aflame just from the memory. It was ridiculous.
And who was the cause? A noble pauper, who’d already fucked more than half the girls in the village and then some. No idea of the world, but a laugh that brightened it nonetheless and a head filled with naive nonsense that somehow still showed more intelligence than all his learned friends back in the city. No wonder he was captivated. But did his heart have to beat like this whenever he thought of him?
Everything else faded into the background, the whole day and whoever he had to talk to, he barely paid any attention to it. He couldn’t focus on eating, couldn’t focus on a single thing, even the violin only distracted him for moments at the time, because his fingers hadn’t yet learned how to dance to the music that played within him now.
By the time it was dark, he still had no idea what to think and was getting a bit too much of an idea about what he felt. He sat in his chair, one knee drawn up to his chest, kicking his other foot against the chair’s legs. He was ridiculous.
Yet when he heard the sound of pebbles being thrown against his window, it only took him a moment to get up and open it up. He wasn’t surprised to see Lestat standing downstairs, as if he’d expected to see him there. As if they had arranged for it.
“Do you want to come down and go on with our Conversation?”
Nicolas didn’t hesitate. He gave no reply and simply closed the window, but only to throw on his coat, grab his violin and literally run down the stairs as he hadn’t done since he was a young boy. There had been no reply needed. The smile was back and it said it all.
The door fell shut behind him and he was already by Lestat’s side, hoping that his eyes didn’t give it all away, yet putting a hand on his hip at the same time. Oh, to hell with it all.
Lestat tells us in QOTD that they survived and moved on w/o him:
“[The Coven was] relieved that the Vampire Lestat had died in the pages of the newspapers; that the debacle of the
concert had been forgotten. No provable fatalities, no true injuries; everybody bought off handsomely; the
band, receiving my share of everything, was touring again under its old name.”
IDK what made me want to draw this quote from Venture Brothers with Armand and Lestat in Paris (u know the part) but it’s already done and I can’t take it back
I-want-my-IWTV 