#With how TVL goes this telling of events makes some sense in my mind

[dxxtruction]

can I say something controversial?

[camaelczarka]

So, I think we all know that there’s going to be quite a bit more to the 2x07 trial and the 2x08 tower scene when Lestat tells the story. If you’ve read the Vampire Lestat, you already know what I mean; TVL is almost a wrapper for IWTV, and provides much of the context around Claudia’s death. I’m definitely going to spoil some events in that book in this post so watch out. Under the cut for spoilers.

The bulk of TVL describes Lestat’s mortal life, his relationship with Nicolas de Lenfent, his non-consensual turning into a vampire by Magnus who then shortly after jumps into a fire, his meeting Armand, his forming of the Theatre des Vampires, and Nicki’s eventual death by suicide that Armand greatly facilitated. There’s a lot more to it but basically it’s the backstory for why everything that happens to Claudia and Louis in Paris goes as horribly as it does.

Near the end of the book, Lestat revisits the trial. It picks up with him being extremely weak and sick for years after his ‘death’ at the hands of (mostly) Claudia. He doesn’t condemn her for it, or seek revenge, and says he understands why she did what she did. But being alone and having no one to turn to, he eventually decides to ask Armand for some of his blood so that he can recover, having no idea that Louis and Claudia are already in Paris. Still in his weakened state, Armand takes advantage of him to get information about Louis and Claudia and how they tried to kill him. Armand is reading his mind but it’s unclear how much info he gets there. Then, he traps Lestat under the theater and starves him until he’s forced to drink dead blood. He’s extremely disoriented and sick and is dressed up to look good and brought out to testify against Claudia. Then he’s taken away to Magnus’ tower (he also has the yellow dress here) and Armand flips out on him for breaking up his former coven and starting the theater, tells him Louis is also dead (a lie obviously), and pushes him out of the tower.

The key difference between the show trial and the book trial is the fact that the show makes the trial into a play with rehearsals that Lestat is (apparently) present for. So my question, knowing the book canon, is why would Lestat participate willingly, or did he even willingly participate?

Going on the book canon, it might simply be that Lestat is super fucked up in this moment, that Armand is controlling his every action except for the few times where he manages to break out of it and go off script. And I do think that’s possible if he’s weak enough- Armand is very powerful in that way, and Lestat might be unable to fend him off. I think this is possible- Armand explicitly states in the book that he wants Lestat to look presentable, and maybe that was enough to fool Louis.

But I actually think the show might have added another even more nefarious layer to this already fucked up event- I think that Armand has made some sort of fucked up deal with Lestat for Louis’ life. Because otherwise, none of this makes sense.

Why does there need to be a trial play with a human jury? Legitimately, there doesn’t. There’s no good reason for it- the coven was going to judge them as guilty no matter what, and the audience is going along with the play because they think it’s a show. Armand and the coven will have Claudia dead one way or another, they really don’t need a bunch of mortals to weigh in on it. So who was Armand trying to convince? The only answer is Louis.

Armand may have written into the script that Louis was supposed to die with Claudia, but I think he made a deal behind the backs of the coven with Lestat. That deal was maybe something like- “I let you get him banished, then I will take him out of the wall. Say nothing about your involvement or he dies.” Lestat is made to give up personal details of their lives together, seemingly freely. Why would be do this? Why would he willingly put himself in the position of the bad guy to Louis here? Even Louis wonders this in the interview. And there are even a bunch of moments where Lestat stalls in the middle of talking- and I think he’s fighting with Armand telepathically, or being reminded of the terms of this agreement. Louis and Claudia wouldn’t be able to tell what was happening, but Madeline would, so they keep her hypnotized until later.

Because, the coven DIDN’T spare Louis. Lestat getting him ‘banished’ didn’t spare his life at all, he was just dying slowly. Because again, the coven didn’t actually care about the audience jury, they just took him offstage for the main event. He was 100% still going to die. But Lestat DID still save him- by agreeing to let him go with Armand.

Lestat doesn’t answer when Louis accuses him of getting revenge during the trial. Lestat doesn’t provide any explanation in the tower in the next episode for why he participated. He allows Louis to hold him responsible for his participation and how it resulted in Claudia’s death. I feel like Lestat CAN’T dispute it, as per the terms of whatever arrangement he and Armand had. Armand takes Louis out of the wall, and the price of Lestat saving him from that is letting Louis decide to leave him. He can’t say anything otherwise, and he truly doesn’t think he deserves to anyway.

This also could explain why Lestat participated to begin with. He actually IS really weak and fucked up, so he couldn’t do much to save Claudia or anything really past getting Louis put into that coffin. Armand puts him into the impossible position of relying on him to get Louis out while also trusting that Armand can handle his suicidal husband, knowing that Armand is responsible for Claudia AND Nicki’s deaths already. This is why he is terrified that Louis is dead in 1973, because Armand has a track record and he knows that Louis has been suicidal before. But what other option does he have? Giving Louis up is the only way to save him.

This achieves 3 goals for Armand. He get Louis and finally (he hopes) severs Louis’ ever present love for Lestat. He gets rid of the coven, or at least gets out of it. And, perhaps most importantly, he injures Lestat in a way that he will truly never recover from. Nicki is dead, Claudia is dead, Louis hates him.

I think this is partially why Armand is so gleeful when he tells Daniel how long he and Louis have been together versus Louis and Lestat. His ultimate goal is to punish and hurt Lestat. Kill his daughter, make him watch, make him responsible. Make Louis hate him. Make Louis stay with him ‘forever’ of his own free will.

It also recontextualizes the line in the last episode where Lestat explains to Louis that he “gave him to Armand” and questions whether or not that was actually saving him. Which implies there was a goal beyond simply getting him offstage, and I think means more than just exchanging a boyfriend between the two of them. Louis had already left Lestat at the point, and while maybe they would have gotten back together already without Armand’s involvement, Louis wasn’t really ‘his’ to give. I think it means something more along the lines of he LITERALLY gave his bodily safety to Armand, knowing how much he couldn’t trust him. But, he had no other choice, because Armand left him with none. Let me have him or he dies.

I do actually wonder if Lestat was still imprisoned and starved by Armand, and I think there’s a high likelihood of that. I do think Lestat would have to be in a weakened state to agree to any of this. But it does add another psychological element to the original story that also explains some of the weirdness in Armand’s version of events. This is the part of the story that Daniel can’t totally decode, because only Lestat knows exactly what happened besides him. And Lestat may still assume that Louis has ‘figured it out’ in the present day, because all Louis says is that he knows Lestat ‘saved’ him. Lestat still is going to clarify events going forward, and the trial is a big reason WHY he he writes TVL, because he wants Louis to understand what happened there.