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But that was in another life, That was in another world

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the issue with a lot of those who call themselves lesdaughter fans is evident in the chosen portmanteau. it’s so entirely about lestat and lestat’s personhood rather than being equally about lestat and claudia. claudia, rather than having her own viewpoint and inferiority, is positioned solely in relation to how she belongs to lestat, to her relationship to lestat, rather than their relationship with each other. it becomes about validating lestat’s love for her at the expense of claudia’s feelings and the extent of the abuse he put claudia through. that’s how the idea that lestat only made her watch charlie burn out of tough love and bc he loved her /too/ much becomes a fanon that’s taken for granted, rather than what’s shown on screen, which is that whatever inner feelings or guilt or shame he has after the fact doesn’t change that he chose to make his daughter miserable and that he used his position as the most materially powerful person both within and outside of their home to abuse her, and so focusing on how tough it must’ve been for him to abuse his child is abuse apologia and at best, demonstrates a lack of understanding how power and abuse work.

of course he had feelings about it; bad parents are still people. but not every bad parent tried their hardest/best and just happened to fall short. some parents just suck, and culturally this is often (not only, but often) the father, the patriarch, who takes his position as godhead of the family to act with impunity not in his children’s best interests, and sometimes not even in his best interests, but in whatever demonstrates how absolute his power is. it’s ridiculous to claim that lestat just wanted to toughen claudia up out of love so that she’d navigate a tough life better when he went berserk at the possibility of louis committing suicide and murdered two priests (important figures in the community, something he later scolds louis for), or when the possibility of louis leaving—not even dying, but just leaving!—sends him into a violent abusive rage. but we’re meant to believe that he forced her to watch charlie’s body disintegrate out of love? why is his grief more important than hers?

it is both possible that lestat loved claudia and that he was unbelievably cruel to her. that he loved her and grieved her does not soften his cruelty when she was alive, when she trusted him, when she also loved him and he took advantage of that love to prey on her biggest vulnerability (which is also his biggest vulnerability, curious enough), mock her traumas (that he also had! so it’s not as if he didn’t understand how cruel it was), and then he doesn’t apologize to her during the trial and he saves louis only (even though he’s still fucked up about how his parents treated him centuries later). whatever one might think of what he would’ve done if he could’ve or his regret after the fact, all claudia knew when she was alive is that her father, the person she once thought understood her best, treated her like scum, made her feel like a slave, entrapped her in misery so potent that she had to kill him to escape, and then he stands there and watches her die. the reason why his grief is so potent and unmanageable for him for all those decades is precisely because he knows how absolutely he failed her. lestat didn’t spend the past century being gaslit and having his memories removed, he remembered every moment that he did the worst possible thing he could’ve done, and that no matter how sad it makes him, no matter how much he cries after the fact, he failed her. when you center claudia’s life instead of treating her like a foregone ghost, instead of acting as if she only existed in order for lestat to later mourn her and for lestat to grow from it, that’s when analyzing their relationship becomes full and rich. it’s not just that lestat sees claudia look at him at the end, but that claudia turns to him at the end—at the very last moment, she was a subjective person despite how external factors tried to refuse her subjectivity—her and lestat are two sides of the same coin, both in resilience and willpower and strength; the only difference is that she was a Black woman in a teen girl’s body and he was a white man, and so society punished her for what it rewarded him. when we do the same, define her solely in relation to the white father who failed her and was given the chances she wasn’t, it is another sort of murder I think. sure the tragedy is there was love, but for lestat, that tragedy was self inflicted. if it’s true that he warned that she would suffer, all that really tells us is that he made sure of it. like most fathers

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"It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat and enslaved Armand" is hilarious because it implies that the vampire community is fully aware of the weird thing going on between the 3 of them

I imagine their conversations like-

'Yeah man they have a toxic throuple thing going on. Don't ask them about it'

'I can't find Louis. Which of them has him at the moment?'

They probably had to witness so much drama such as..

Armand: YOU NEVER LOVED HIM! YOU WERE CRUEL TO HIM! I PROTECTED HIM FROM YOU!

The court:

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don't even joke lad

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louis + grounding armand when he starts to spiral

2.04 / 2.06 / 2.05

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interview with the vampire | s01-s02

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— The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

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In regards to Armand portraying himself as the victim always, under any and all circumstances: there is something to be said about how being victimized for long enough will psychologically alter your mind and the way you see yourself forever, but. At this point. I think it’s pathological.

Children of Darkness -> draw Lestat in with the semi explicit goal to self implode the cult you are the de facto leader of.

Theatres de Vampires -> chase Louis and afford him privileges in plain view of your disgruntled underlings, somehow missing how this will cause riot and mutiny, from the group that, again, you do not want to be leading.

??? Marriage ??? -> invite an award winning journalist into your home, provoke and gaud him until he remembers exactly how much he hates you, making it a personal matter of his to end the relationship you have successfully ( more or less ) maintained for seventy years …which… you… definetely are happy in and want to continue.

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the other thing that's really compelling about their relationship is that armand sees in louis a reflection of himself and thinks finally, i can see and understand myself through you, i can make meaning out of what i see of myself when you see me. and louis sees in armand a reflection of himself and what he sees is his own passivity, his own weakness. and he's repulsed by it.

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Truth is we haven’t even seen Louis’s “true self” yet. Every single version of him has been what someone else needed him to be whether it’s his family, Lestat, Claudia or Armand. When he loses one he molds himself for the next and on and on. Dubai Louis is a weird amalgamation of prior Louis’s (art dealer, extravagantly wealthy but emotionally very vulnerable and softer) but even then his life is so curated by Armand and their co-dependence has made then a bit indistinguishable. “I’m out here finding myself” but he never found himself, he found another man. Maybe if he spent more than a few minutes being single he might have some luck.

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anne rice's interview with the vampire: paris, from page to screen

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In Nola, Claudia and Louis played happy family while planning to kill Lestat

In Paris, Armand pretended to break away from the coven and everything seemed like it was going to be okay, while he directed a play to execute them

In Dubai, Louis and Armand distracted themselves by telling their story while Daniel discovered what Armand really did

Everyone was distracted by their feelings.

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It is so interesting that Louis uses Armand's supposed birth name during the bench scene.

Naming is such a significant part of Armand's life, moreso than any character. His maker named him Amadeo, the cult named him Armand and his birth parents probably named him Arun. Unlike Louis and Lestat and all the other vampires we've seen, Armand's identity pre-vampirism is not concrete. His human life was marked by trauma and memory loss and even parts of his undead life. He tells Louis his story through 3rd person, as if regaling someone else's tale.

His identity is a fluid thing decided by whatever structure he finds himself in, hence the different names he is given at different stages. He portrays himself as someone who is seemingly powerless despite his ancient aura and terrifying powers.

"Who am I?" he asks Louis in the museum. His great comfort is by sticking to the Great Laws which he does not believe in and rituals he does not care about because they offer a comforting routine he can cling to. That is why he easily breaks his own rules when it comes to Louis, because their romance offers him another purpose.

When Louis asserts his presence in Paris, he tells Armand to let go of the coven. Once Santiago runs it to the ground, then Armand can return and decide if he wants to be coven leader or not.

Louis offers him something different: choice. No one ever gave Armand a choice. Everything that ever happens to him as been someone else deciding for him. This is new territory because the concept of free will is so unique to Armand. Even Lestat's shake-up was not a choice, but more of a coup—Armand knew Lestat breaking up the coven was inevitable the moment they met.

By calling him Arun, Louis shows Armand he is acknowledging the vulnerability offered to him. He's telling Armand that whoever you are, I will accept, even the most fragile and scariest pieces you hide from everyone else. And Armand says "Yes, Maitre," because for once, someone is really teaching him how to live. Not forcing or commanding, but teaching.

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loumand divorce vs fight 1973

It's so interesting to see the dissonance between them fighting in 1973 and their final divorce because the fight is so personal, they wanted to attack each other so badly, they knew where to hurt, and they screamed with so much hate. armand could barely pronounce lestat's words before, now he says them like it's nothing "he loved you". in 2022, at the end of it all, they don't care anymore who is next to them, they could be saying all this to anyone, "we would be teachers of each other" "you need to be gone" no has any meaning to either of them. the relationship has become empty to the point where there is nothing to hurt, nothing matters

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The Power Of Touch.

Films in Frame - My own private Idaho, Maurice, Call me by your name, Moonlight, Brokeback Mountain, Kill your Darlings, Another country, Dorian Gray, I killed my mother, Happy Together