#as if the truth of it would condemn or exonerate Lestat for what he did

[the-breath-in-air]

So much discussion about the revisit in the trial to Louis & Lestat's fight and whether or not Louis made that very detailed threat to kill Lestat at the end of it and....my friends...it doesn't matter.

I mean, it matters in that it's a multilayered bit of storytelling. It matters in that it's another moment in which the coven uses racism to condemn Louis.

I mean, it could be real - we've seen Louis get quite unhinged before. We've seen him enact truly horrific violence - even by his own version of events. Always pushed to it by external forces (not just for the joy of it)...but still. It is not completely out of character for Louis to threaten to kill Lestat and feed his head to a lion. And previously in Dubai, Louis' had refuted (or corroborated) Letat's version of events - yet here we don't have Louis' perspective on Lestat's version.

However, we also have seen how Santiago and the coven have twisted events (and outright lied) in order to portray Louis as a racist caricature of a violent, predatory Black man. And although we've seen Louis get extremely violent, it's always in response to something...and here the trial has conveniently left out what prompted the fight. There's no mention of Lestat grabbing Claudia by the throat. Plus, we haven't seen Louis ever be quite that unhinged...and certainly not that unhinged with Lestat. It makes little sense for Louis to be quite so maniacal in his threats to Lestat after he'd told Claudia "it's over now."

So, did Louis threaten to kill Lestat and feed his head to lions? Entirely possible (though we know Louis wouldn't have been able to go through with it...not with Lestat). Did Santiago and the coven lie about and embellish whatever threats Louis may have made in order to portray him as a violent predator? Oh absolutely.

But also, like I said, it doesn't really matter in the context of the saga of Lestat & Louis' relationship.

Because the thing that prompted Lestat to go after Louis wasn't that threat. The thing that prompted Lestat to go after Louis and string him along by the neck and drop him from (at least) 2km in the sky was Louis potentially leaving with Claudia. Like, that's by Lestat's own admission. He couldn't control and own Louis, so he broke him. And what's more horrible than that?