#🪐 — madeleine / headcanon.

[musecraft]

hi, i'm gonna talk about madeleine & why she is the perfect vampire, the thematic antithesis of louis, & (as she herself says) exactly what claudia needs to survive.

fair warning: i'm going to talk in some depth about her experiences as a mortal, including sleeping with a n*zi soldier during the german occupation of france during wwii, so just be aware & please take care of yourself !

madeleine eparvier was the perfect vampire. if louis is the reticent vampire who rejects his nature due to his shame, then she is the natural vampire who rejects shame & embraces herself exactly as she is. i've talked about louis & his overwhelming sense of shame a little bit already, & i think it's relevant here because despite being louis' fledgling, madeleine has none of that shame. so, why ?

there is a theory in the rice-peyer universe that the emotional state that a person is in when they are turned will be their baseline emotional state throughout their immortal life. so this is why louis, being turned at a moment where he was at his lowest point, hating himself deeply & considering su*cide, will tend towards depression & struggle with his sense of self forever. & yes, louis consented to being turned, which means to me that there is hope for him to improve if he does the work to accept himself. but madeleine didn't just consent to being turned — she chose it. she made the decision not in a moment of violence, but in a moment of love, when she was feeling truly seen, protected, even hopeful for the first time in of her life. when she was certain that what she was giving up would be nothing compared to what she would gain. & she absolutely carries that quiet self-assurance with her into her immortal life.

but the truth is that this kind of self confidence that madeleine displays as a vampire is not just a result of meeting claudia & feeling confident in their relationship; it is a direct continuation of the themes that have shaped her mortal life.

when she was still fairly young, madeleine's entire family, including both parents & her sister, were killed by tuberculosis. she was left an orphan. & while her family had left behind enough money for her to survive on, she was forced through loss to grow up to be entirely reliant on herself & herself alone. then, the war. we know that during the german occupation, there was death & violence & fear everywhere. louis & claudia say that you can taste it in the blood. madeleine recalls watching her neighbor literally starve to death in her home. & in this time, madeleine starts sleeping with a german soldier.

now, madeleine says to claudia that the soldier gave her food, but she also freely admits that wasn't the real reason she slept with him — rather, it was for a sense of companionship. she wanted the sensation of another warm living human body against hers to help stave off the despair & horror of war. & to be honest, i think that's a very human impulse a much more compelling reason than simple hunger. the world around her had become nothing but death & violence & pain, & she wasn't certain any of them would survive it, & she wanted something — anything — that would make her feel alive, even for a moment. & all the french men were killed or taken away, so she slept with a timid young boy who was also far from home & seeking some form of comfort.

& i do want to say here that fucking a n*zi soldier is objectively morally wrong — obviously. & while it is very possible that he was simply a young boy who was coerced into fighting abroad as a way to get food sent back home to his own family, there is still no way to morally excuse the act of being a n*zi soldier, or for sleeping with a n*zi soldier. i understand madeleine's reasoning entirely, but it was also unambiguously a morally bad thing. she did & you know who i think agrees with me ? madeleine herself.

as mentioned, madeleine watched her neighbors starve to death. she, meanwhile, got food via her relationship with a member of the occupying army. that alone is Bad, morally speaking. & doing an objectively immoral action (that maybe also feels really good btw) to take for yourself what could be the difference between life & death to your neighbor ? it's almost... vampiric. do you see where i'm going with this ? lmao.

when armand warns her that she will be a monster if she is turned, madeleine says "if you turn me into a monster, you'll only be making me into what i already am." & what she means by this is that in a very real way, madeleine is already something sub-human. she has been exiled from human society due to her actions. after the end of the war, she endures a trial by mob & is publicly shamed for years, ostracized from her society, & ultimately violently attacked in her own home while multiple neighbors stand on & watch. so it's clear that she is no longer considered "one of them" long before she is ever turned.

madeleine knows that what she did was immoral, was wrong, but that she also doesn't necessarily apologize for it. she was publicly shamed, but she did not come to internalize that shame. she did something wrong, but she also understands that war is a living nightmare, & she grasped whatever specks of life she could find in the midst of all the death. & she's honestly not really sorry for that. she says to armand that she "found the love she needed to survive," & i think that resonates really beautifully with claudia's search for companionship & belonging throughout the show.

so, all of this is to say that madeleine has already come to terms with the cost meeting her own survival needs, even before she is turned. which means that upon becoming a vampire, madeleine would absolutely excel at vampirism in a way louis never could. she will kill & eat humans. is that morally wrong ? yes. will she do it anyway ? absolutely. because she knows, just as she has always known, what she needs to survive. & she refuses to hate herself for what she needs — even if the world at large condemns her for it.

& let's remember that claudia does morally wrong things all the time, too. she kills people, & she loves it. & so too does basically every other vampire in the show. & that's... kind of the point, right ? to return back to where we started, some vampires (like madeleine) can live with that moral ambiguity of needing to take life from others to survive, & others (like louis) can't, & internalize it, & struggle, & suffer until they are able to come to terms with it, or they go into the fire.

but you know who else can live with moral ambiguity of vampirism ? claudia. now, sometimes, loving yourself isn't enough on it's own, as claudia shows us. sometimes, you also need a companion who can see you in all your moral complexity, & love you even when you don't love yourself. & i sincerely think that staying with louis, whose shame is so all-consuming that it often draws those around him into it, would probably ultimately end in her implosion.

but a companion like madeleine ? one who accepts the darkness & violence in claudia even before she knows that she is a vampire, who hears her fears about exploding & encourages her to embrace them (referring to the "then go bang!" conversation here), who assures her that she will be ok even if she does explode ? that might allow them both to live without shame, without fear, without feeling like they have to suppress a part of themselves. & that really might have been enough to save claudia, to let her live with herself & have someone who loves her in all her beautiful moral complexity.

& so to finally wrap up, i'm thinking about lestat's 'be all the beautiful things you are, & be them without shame' line he says just before he turns louis. i really love that line, it's one of my favorites in the show, & i think that a profound tragedy of the first two seasons is that louis has not (yet) been able to live up to that line, has never been able to accept himself without holding onto the deep shame he feels at who he is & what he needs. but madeleine ? madeleine has been so deeply shamed by the outside world that in order to survive, she has learned how to not hold onto & internalize shame, how to feel it without succumbing to it, & how to accept herself, good & bad, in her entirety. & because of that, she's capable of doing the same for claudia.