Well, you’re not wrong…

(Digging up an oldie from the archive, wow, this one is almost 4 yrs old, can you believe I’ve been on here over 4 yrs! *keanu reeves voice* woahhh)

[X] 

Some thoughts on this under the cut, cut for length.

It is, admittedly, always fun to deride Lestat for this

screwup

decision when Marius (for all his own f*cked-upedness, he does have a little decent advice to give at various points) specifically told him: DO. NOT. TURN CHILDREN. INTO VAMPIRES. EXCEEDINGLY NOT COOL.

In TVL, Lestat says he wanted to do it just because he wanted to see what would happen:

^I don’t think this is the reason (or at least not the MAIN reason), I think this is Lestat’s bravado, and knowing that he’s writing the book FOR LOUIS, really, knowing Louis is going to be reading it, and this is the answer he’s putting out there to make himself look that much more callous, bc the real answer is too painful to share. 

Someone (she’s not on tumblr, I’d tag her if she was) once suggested that Lestat made Claudia to keep Louis’ conscience clear; after all, Lestat is essentially ‘saving’ her from death. The line in the movie is, “Your conscience is clear.” If Louis had actually killed a child (a Holy Innocent!) that night, it would have been the worst crime he’d committed in vampiring, and Lestat didn’t want Louis to bear that burden of guilt. Louis might have even felt guilty enough to kill himself over it, also something Lestat did not want to happen.

So I think Lestat would prefer that Louis think of this as just another gross, horrible act to add to the list of gross, horrible things Lestat has done, and he’d prefer that we write him off as an antagonist, which is easier than being confronted with what he does and why he does it. 

I know it’s a bit of a reach, but I feel like Lestat admitting that he made a child into a vampire, knowing it was a crime against nature, and condemning her to the body she was turned in, was a sacrifice he made to prevent Louis from bearing the guilt of her death, it’s all too painful, and could invite questions about it, and he just can’t let anyone in that close. 

I understand that it’s a very problematic book, but this is also why I can’t throw the entirety of TOBT out, because Claudia comes back to haunt Lestat to confront him with the decision of turning her. He reflects on it off and on throughout the book and finally admits that even knowing what he knows now, he would still do it all over again, and that’s taking into account the joy they all experienced as a little family, but also the pain and suffering she felt as she became aware of the trap of her own body.