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murfpersonalblog · 1 year ago

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Lestat's Fledglings, and the Brides of Dracula

I've previously made references to the 1996 movie The First Wives' Club (X X), where Louis is derided as Lestat's second wife, and Lestat as a heartless cheating philanderer.

I've also been thinking about how Lestat's fledglings/lovers compare to Dracula's Brides. When considering vampirism as an allegory for sexuality; bites as penetration; and the Faustian degrees of seduction at play when people agree to be turned; vampirism can also be understood as marriage and childbirth all wrapped into one bloody mix. So it's interesting to think about the dynamics between vampires and the loved ones they turn into their dual eternal children and spouses. This is particularly the case for Lestat, and the figure I think Anne Rice picked up a lot of cues from: the OG himself, Dracula.

Loustat is canonically endgame, but Lestat had several other major loves and important fledglings whom I am considering his "vampire brides." In chronological order, they are:

Gabrielle (his biological mother)

Nicki (his Human Era boyfriend)

⭐ Louis (his canonical husband/endgame) ⭐

Antoine(tte) (his sidepiece/bait for Louis)

Akasha (NOT his fledgling, so I won't discuss her here, but still a very important lover)

Although Claudia is Lestat's fledgling/daughter, I don't consider her his "bride," as Louis' bond with Claudia I think supersedes anything she shared with Lestat--not to mention AR's allusions to Louis & Claudia's whole pseudo-incestuous-pedophilic thing in the novel, which I am SO glad AMC took out (let's pray they do the same w/ Lestat & Gabrielle--incest is actually A Thing (TM) in vampire literature, but we already had the Lannisters, thanks but no thanks). Also, David was nothing but a diversion--specifically AR's, as she tried to distance Lestat & herself from Louis.

And then there's Dracula, who has his 3 official vampire "brides" (aka the "Weird Sisters"), who have no individual names; plus a few other notable love interests. In chronological order:

The Blonde bride (the oldest/official "wife"/ringleader in the book)

The Brunette bride (the ringleader in the 1992 movie)

The Redhead bride (the youngest & lesser consort)

Lucy Westenra (the bait for Mina)

⭐ Mina Harker/Elisabeta Tepes ⭐ (the reincarnation of his 1st wife Elisabeta ONLY in the 1992 movie)

Nothing's really known about who Dracula's Brides actually were, or how they were made (willingly or otherwise). In the 1992 film, there's a brief but dramatic/creepy exchange between the vampires when Dracula catches the brides feeding off of his tour guide Jonathan Harker, and he swoops in to save Harker (for later, lol):

Blonde Bride: "You yourself never loved!" Dracula: "Yes... I too can love. And I shall love again."

In the book is a similar scene, where the Blonde Bride also argues:

The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him: "You yourself never loved; you never love!" On this the other women joined.... Then the Count turned...and said in a soft whisper: "Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will...." (Dracula, 37).

According to the Blonde Bride both in the film and in the book, Dracula didn't/never loved his brides, but in the book at least he denies this. In "the past" he did love them, if not anymore. (The travesty that was the Van Helsing movie played on that when Dracula heartlessly reacts to the Blonde Bride being killed.)

In the 1992 film, Dracula's instead mourning his original wife Elisabeta, who committed suicide back when he was still human centuries ago. He later learns that she's been reincarnated as Jonathan's fiancee Mina, and crosses "the "oceans of time" from Transylvania to London to find his destined soulmate.

"Dracula's pursuit of Lucy and Mina is motivated, not by the incestuous greed at the heart of Freud's scenario, but by an omnivorous appetite for difference, for novelty. His crime is not the hoarding of incest but a sexual theft, a sin we can term excessive exogamy. Although the old count has women of his own, he is exclusively interested in the women who belong to someone else," (Stevenson, 1988: 139).

-- Stevenson, John Allen. “A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula.” PMLA 103, no. 2 (1988): 139–49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/462430.

"The novel primarily shows us Dracula's attempts to reproduce and the struggle of the band of young men under Van Helsing to stop him. The tale horrifies because the vampire's manner of reproduction appears radically different and because it requires the women who already belong to these men," (Stevenson, 1988: 142).

In the book, the Blonde Bride is implied to have seniority over the other 2 brides, when they all descend upon Jonathan Harker to drink his blood:

The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. One said: "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin." ...The fair girl advanced and bent over me.... (Dracula, 36).

Them agreeing that she is "first" might imply that the Blonde Bride was the first Dracula turned, thus making her the eldest of his fledgling brides. Which brings me to Gabrielle de Lioncourt.

With Lestat's fledglings/brides, his most infamous relationship is the thinly veiled incestuous love/Oedipal complex he feels for his very first fledgling, his biological mother Gabrielle. A great breakdown is here:

The Stevenson 1988 article I cited above denied the Freudian/incestuous threat Dracula poses to his vampiric love interests, but Anne Rice certainly had other ideas when she wrote some of Lestat's scenes with Gabrielle, especially after she was turned. It's all wrapped up in how vampire Makers/Masters essentially and fundamentally become both the parent and spouse of their fledglings, who are reborn into a new living death.

"'Wives' become daughters in an extraordinarily condensed procedure in which penetration, intercourse, conception, gestation, and parturition represent, not discrete stages, but one undifferentiated action. Dracula recreates in his own image the being that he is simultaneously ravishing," (Stevenson, 1988: 143).

Lestat's desperate for affection from his distant & disassociative mother, whom he loved and admired, envied and desired. Her childlike features and androgynous fashion are often emphasized, and the parallels between Lestat's mother-child and actual child ("daughter-sister") Claudia are striking--particularly since Gabrielle ultimately left/abandoned Lestat, just as his nemesis Claudia would.

The only other fledgling Lestat (and Gabrielle) knew from his human years was Nicholas de Lenfent, as they were childhood neighbors before befriending/falling for each other in earnest after Lestat earned his "Wolf Killer" moniker. Sadly, theirs was a doomed love, as Magnus soon after abducted Lestat from their home together and made him a vampire, and not long after that Armand abducted Lestat AND Nicki, showing them the horrors of the Children of Satan.

"For every aspect of our proposed damnation you found exuberance, and there was no end to your enthusiasm and the passion coming out of you-and the light, always the light. And in exact proportion to the light coming out of you, there was the darkness in me! Every exuberance piercing me and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair! And then, the magic, when you got the magic, irony of ironies, you protected me from it! And what did you do with it but use your Satanic powers to simulate the actions of a good man!" (TVL, 201).

Already deeply depressed and resenting/hating Lestat's vivacity, light, and bright optimism in the face of looming poverty & failure as musicians/actors, Nicki's abrupt exposure to the the undead world's literal underbelly thoroughly traumatized him, making him a terrible candidate for vampirism, even as he ironically founded the same Theatre of Vampires which would doom Lestat's later fledgling, Claudia. Despite Armand playing a major role in Nicki's mental decline, Lestat felt deeply responsible for Nicki, not only as his fledgling/lover, but also as his link to his human past; the boy he convinced to come to Paris and risk it all chasing stardom, only to find disaster instead. Thus, Nicki's suicide would traumatize Lestat for pretty much the rest of the VC.

But for all Lesat's lust for "variety," he clearly has a type, as he next fell in love with a man who both physically and emotionally reminded him of Nicki--dark-haired, beautiful, and deeply depressed:

"He had grieved for me, I'll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears become him like jewels," (TotBT).

Louis is the tragically "human" vampire Lestat loved most, and would eventually officially marry in Blood Communion, the final VC book. Based at Chateau de Lioncourt (basically the Dracula's Castle of the VC), Prince Lestat is the leader of the vampires, and Louis is by his side as the official Prince Consort. 🤴🏽 AMC cut right through the earlier books' gay subtext to plainly show Loustat as a married couple from the offset--from Lestat's wedding vows in the bloody church; to him carrying the half-burnt Louis over the threshold and into their bedchamber; to Claudia outright calling Louis the "housewife;" to Louis reading books about marriage while they were separated; and so much more.

Lestat remade Louis, his vampire blood giving Louis new green eyes; the Mark of Cain looking like "church windows" into his now-damned soul. (Y'all ever notice how much GREEN Mina wears in the movie?)

"Kin or wives…[Dracula's Brides] have occupied both roles--not simultaneously, as in incest, but sequentially, because of the way vampire reproduction works…. According to the count's description, he and Mina are like husband and wife (he uses the 'flesh of my flesh' from Genesis and the marriage ceremony), but through the very fact of their union, they are also becoming 'kin,'" (Stevenson, 1988: 143).

For all that Louis was indeed "hunted" by Lestat during their winter-long courtship (which doesn't exist in the books--Louis was just jumped and Lestat turned him while he was on the fast track to alcohol poisoning), AMC heavily emphasizes that Louis was still seduced; "let the tale seduce you, just as I was seduced." Classically elegant Draculas like those portrayed by Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and of course Gary Oldman embody the allure of hyper-seductive & sensual post-Gothic vampires who broke away from the more monstrous rendition of the Eastern European undead. Vampires went from being ugly grave-lurking ghouls, to suave gentlemen callers. The quintessentially modern vampire Lestat took this to the 'nth degree, becoming a literal rockstar sensation. But vampires never fully lose their eerily predator aura as dangerous monsters hunting their prey--even when they look as beautiful as ever, they still unsettle their future fledglings, cluing them in to their underlying inhuman nature. Because vampires are beasts--they can turn into all manner of nocturnal "children of the night" like bats, wolves, owls, rats, etc--and even "Wolf Killer" Lestat shared a strong affinity for dogs, a la his childhood hunting mastiffs in TVL, and his pet dog Mojo in TotBT.

They're both Venus flytraps; vampiric magical seduction is the bait.

In order to gain their future fledglings/brides, the vampire must seduce their prey with a good enough sales pitch so they're either turned willingly (the wedding vows for AMC!Louis, the "promises made" to Antoinette); under considerable duress (Gabrielle at death's door from TB, Nicky post-abduction by Armand, the half-dead Claudia wasn't asked); or in the most extreme cases rape, turning them by force (Lestat, David, even Petronia turning Quinn Blackwood--which was...uhhh.... 👀😅).

Louis said that "vampires are made out of trauma," often under emotional/psychological stress/duress, if not outright bodily harm--if they consent to being turned at all. This was certainly the case for Gabrielle (terminally ill), Nicky (mentally ill), and Louis (emotionally compromised through grief & booze). And it is patently so for Akasha, who was transformed into the very first vampire by Amel during a fatal assassination attempt.

Antoine(tte) had a relatively "better" transformation--Antoine was made similar to Bianca with Marius: to help Lestat recover from his injuries inflicted by Louis & Claudia, and was discarded not long afterwards to fend for himself. Antoinette, however, seems to have begged Lestat to turn her, after faking her own death--but she too was made in order to help Lestat against Louis & Claudia. Lestat was only interested in Antoine(tte) as the BAIT to make Louis jealous, strung along as the sidepiece as Lestat cheated on his husband, only to be caught in the literal crossfires of Loustat's lowest point in their relationship--as Antoine was almost burnt to death in the fires Louis' set, and Antoinette was actually burnt to death by Louis & Claudia. However, LOATHE as I am to feel any sympathy for her, Antoinette's transactional relationship with Lestat is horrible because she's just the means to an end; he doesn't HAVE to really seduce her or keep up the pretenses that he is anything but a MONSTER.

Dracula had viciously stalked and hypnotized Mina's bff Lucy Westenra first, her transformation tantamount to a brutal & bloody rape-homicide (here, Miss Lily also fits the bill of a Lucy-type bait as Lestat smoked his REAL quarry out--but she was never turned, just killed). But Dracula's conquest of Mina was more of a seduction, as with Lestat's seduction of Louis. But despite this, Mina was resistant to Dracula's barrage of sensory charms. Lest her husband & friends stop them, her incomplete transformation was finally ushered in by Dracula "forcing her face down on his bosom [to drink the blood from his chest in] a terrible resemblance to a child...His eyes flamed red with devilish passion" (Dracula, 271), where "Dracula, in a breathtaking transformation, is a mother as well, engaged in an act that has a "terrible resemblance" to breastfeeding," (Stevenson, 1988: 146), amongst other things.... But he is also "the father or furtherer of a new order of beings" (Dracula, 291), the hyper-masculine patriarchal overlord dominating men AND women alike. With the bait-brides--Lucy Westenra, Antoin(ette), and even Miss Lily, the vampires could do as they pleased, and these women ended up dead with Dracula & Lestat caring not at all--as implied in the Van Helsing scene mentioned earlier. But with their REAL targets, once they'd run out of time to seduce them, they finally had to show their demonic, true face.

But with Lestat & Antoinette, he was free to disrespect her at every turn--making her dress as a man so she could spy on his husband and daughter-sister, when she wanted to be a vampire to continue being a singer! Even when she was still human she was just his pet songbird, singing songs Lestat used to win his prior spouse Louis back. 🤦 He sneaked around with her like a dirty secret, when he wanted to be out and proud with Louis. She even turned to Lestat for help after Louis kicked her out of her own house, only for Lestat to order her to leave, knowing full well he and Louis were going to have sex under her own roof without her permission--as opposed to when Louis told Lestat to "enjoy himself" with her under their roof. But having failed to consult the Side-Chick Commandments beforehand, Antoinette naively thought she and Lestat would finally be a real couple once he turned her and left Louis, only for her to be relegated to little more than Lestat's errand boy and convenient hole who wouldn't ever complain or talk back; her wings clipped and her own voice silenced, only good for parroting LOUIS & Claudia's telepathic speech for Lestat to hear.

"Flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin...my companion and helper" (Dracula, 277).

Because ironically, Louis astutely linked the power imbalance between vampire Makers and their brides/fledglings with slavery.

"Dracula is thus doubly frightening--he is the foreigner whose very strangeness renders him monstrous, and, more dangerous, he is an imperialist whose invasion seeks a specifically sexual conquest; he is a man who will take other men's women away and make them his own,"(Stevenson, 1988: 144).

The lack of autonomy/agency Lestat's fledglings/brides had is very interesting. Unfortunately for Louis, he did not know--or realized too late--how to properly wield the power he had over Lestat, to keep his husband in check. Louis felt very much like a slave under the man who was supposed to be his "equal in the quiet dark," yet held every socioeconomic, racial, and vampiric advantage in their relationship. In the books, Louis finally tried to leave Lestat, only for Lestat to baby-trap him by turning Claudia.

On the show, Louis' the one who asks Lestat for a daughter, but she was not enough to mend their broken relationship. Claudia rightly told Louis that Lestat's love for him was "a small box he keeps you in, don't stay in it!," a coffin slowly killing him. But when Claudia asked Louis to leave Lestat and come with her instead, Lestat showed them both exactly who held all the cards--and the keys, "back in your cage, sweetheart."

In Dracula, Mina Harker alludes to a similar situation when she tells her husband Jonathan what to do if Dracula comes for her and she turns into vampire:

"Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy.... It is men's duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial!" (Dracula, 310).

Louis bore the brunt of every violent impulse Lestat had internalized regarding his mother-daughter-wife abandoning him, and Nicki killing himself. Lestat couldn't put his hands on Gabrielle--she was after all his mother, and she clearly didn't take ANY of Lestat's BS or temper tantrums, not after having been liberated from her own abusive husband, Lestat's father. And Nicki was too fragile and mentally unstable. Hence, just like with the DPDLs when Louis' biological mother Florence took out all her resentment on Louis, so did his vampiric father-husband, Lestat. But ultimately not even Louis' own suicide was in his hands.

Louis suffered a series of mental breakdowns, when he was with Lestat, when he lost Claudia to Armand's Theatre, and when he was interviewed by Daniel. Most importantly, Louis suffered his worst break during Merrick, while Lestat was trapped in a coma and Louis feared he'd never recover (on top of being harassed by ghost!Claudia); to the point that he decided to end his own life.

Likewise, Nicki was mentally ill, and after suffering a psychotic break after being kidnapped by Armand and then turned under psychological distress, Nicki had utterly disassociated himself from Lestat, to the point that Lestat could do nothing to reach or influence Nicki anymore. (Foolishly) leaving Nicki in Armand's care, Lestat eventually learned that Nicki had gone completely insane and committed suicide. In Merrick, Louis' suicide woke Lestat out of his coma so that he could save Louis by giving him a vamp upgrade. But in Dracula, it's Elisabeta's suicide which drives Vlad Tepes to sell his soul to the Devil for vampiric power. He only finds release/death when her reincarnation, Mina Harker, delivers the killing blow, stabbing & decapitating him, and freeing herself from his clutches in kind.

For Louis, however, this was only the first step in a long and winding reconciliation between himself and Lestat. In Europe, and with Armand, Louis finally regained a sense of independence away from his Maker/husband. And after recuperating in the earth and in his coma after Memnoch, Lestat was able to reevaluate all of his poor life choices (including how he chauvinistically treated Gabrielle & Claudia; and what it truly meant to take responsibility for fledglings--from Nicki to Mona, and NOT turning Rose and his biological son Viktor). But most importantly, Lestat learned how to WAIT on Louis, and better appreciate Louis as a man he could learn to become WORTHY of. Through this, rather than his outright death as in Dracula's case, was Lestat able to be redeemed, and happily marry Louis by the end of the Vampire Chronicles, taking him as his Prince Consort--the ultimate Vampire "Bride"/Husband.

#the vampire lestat #louis de pointe du lac #loustat #dracula #bram stoker's dracula #vampires #mina harker #justice for claudia #must see tv #iwtv tvc metas #lestat de lioncourt

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