#lestat isn't evil

[joefangs]

There are so many discrepancies if we compare season 1 Louis' memories and season 2 recollections of his. He made Lestat look almost bad, devilish in season 1, blamed everything on him, and stayed clean with Claudia. In season 2, we can finally see the issues with his memories of Lestat. Even in season 1 Louis changed his words in front of Daniel. In S2 it kind of proved that Louis' collections were muddled. He changed his memories way too many times. At last he admitted to go on with Lestat's version. I mean, I know and I can confirm that Lestat has always been good as far as the definition of "a good vampire" can go, and all the things Louis said about him are not all true.

If I go according to the books, Interview with the vampire and The Vampire Lestat are two different books with different Lestats to be precise. TV Louis said that Lestat didn't hesitate to kill, but the book Lestat from the second book, said he made a grave mistake of making Claudia ( About who, he said that he loved his dark daughter, and he didn't want that fate for her. He regretted making a young fledgling because Marius warned him about his mistake of creating Armand that young) and other than that he vowed to never kill any innocents. He only killed the damned ones, and the ones who were about to die. Also, got me thinking, how can he kill innocent people, when he took care of his family in France, who were all human. Even his mother opposed his actions, but Lestat didn't listen. So, how can a century old vampire, who still cares about his human family, gives them financial support all along, can kill mercilessly. It just didn't add to my wits. Most important of all, he loved Louis, more than Nicki even and admitted it over and over again. He longed to be with Louis, not because he always felt lonely, but because he loved Louis the most, so much that he rejected Armand in the book.

Louis' recollections of Lestat in season 1 is filled with somewhat hatred, because at that moment he thought Armand was his saviour. In S2, he started to have some clarity, mostly thanks to Daniel, and finally we know what happened.

In the book, Lestat was there at the Theatre the Vampire, he did accuse Claudia for his attempted murder, but let me tell you, he wasn't even in his right mind at that time. Even so, at that time he didn't accuse his Louis, and looked for his love, asked Armand, who (the B***h he is) lied to him about Louis' whereabouts. Lestat was somehow tricked by Armand, his thinking didn't work, as he mentioned that everything went in a trance, and after he accused Claudia, he was taken away forcibly, and he screamed Louis, Louis but with no avail, and they again fed him blood, and he forgot everything. I think Armand used magic, or he fed something to Lestat so he doesn't protest. After all of these, Lestat looked for Louis, and asked Armand to help him, and that BHole said he will not.

So, what I can surmise is, whatever you watched in S1, do not entirely believe it. This is mostly because, Lestat wasn't the one who lost his mind and hurt his Louis entirely. Louis was the pioneer of trouble in their home. He wasn't satisfied, he didn't accept the dark gift completely, and despised Lestat for that. That physical fight between them you can see, Lestat was hurt the most, both physically and mentally. And now I understand, why Louis kept seeing Dreamstat over and over again. Because, his guilt made him conjure Lestat everytime he thought he wanted a "home" with Armand.

Finally, the last episode depicted almost what The Vampire Lestat book has. They didn't show it, but Louis came back to Lestat, which he said was 'you came back to me'. Here, Lestat talks about a world tour, which is his rock concert in San Francisco. Here, Louis asks him to take him, and Lestat complies ecstatically. Also, they hugged compassiontely after meeting each other, just as they showed in the series. However, TV version displayed it as a part of Interview with the Vampire book, which is in reality from the book The Vampire Lestat.

[pirateshelly]

I simply do not vibe with the idea that Louis begging Lestat to make Claudia a vampire was the single worst thing that ever happened to her, and that her fate was sealed from that moment. I just cannot imagine spending two whole seasons getting to know and love Claudia and thinking, maybe it would have been better and less tragic for her if she had just died in that fire at the age of 14. Because in spite of everything there is never any indication that Claudia doesn't still have an immense will and curiosity and desire to live!

And (possibly controversial opinion) I also can't imagine seeing the flashback in 2.07 of Louis on his knees sobbing and begging Lestat to save Claudia and being like "oh wow Louis is more selfish and horrifying than I realized" instead of recognizing that this is Louis at absolute rock bottom and thoroughly out of his mind

[briar--rising]

It is so funny to me when people try to argue about who's 'worse', Lestat or Armand. First of all, worse by what metric? By the way they treat humans? The way they treat Claudia? Or (as it seems most people are focused on) only the way they treat Louis? And if it's by the way they treat Louis, are you judging based on what you would find worse in a partner, or by what Louis does (bc I would argue he pretty clearly has an opinion on that based on the end of season 2).

And most importantly of all, who cares??? They are both TERRIBLE. Everyone in this show is terrible! You can like morally reprehensible characters. Armand is my personal blorbo, and what he does is horrific. I can feel bad for him, and enjoy watching him, and think that his actions are heinous, and reblog art and read fanfiction of him, and analyze him without excusing him, all at the same time! And so can you with whoever you like!

Pitting these characters against one another is absurd. "Which one is less abusive" is a question I guess you can ask, but it's not a very interesting one. Much more interesting is "Why are they abusive in these specific ways? What about their trauma and personality informs their actions? Why does Louis react the way he does to each of them? What does that say about Louis? What does this show say about domestic violence in general? Are the rules different for vampires? Or is abuse abuse? Do the victims determine who should get forgiveness? Or are certain actions inherently unforgivable? Can you forgive someone when their victim hasn't? Is any of this different in fiction rather than reality? etc etc etc." There are so many interesting questions posed by the juxtaposition between Lestat and Armand and the way they treat Louis, and none of them are "but which one is worse so I can forever villify that one and hold up the other one as the paragon of what's good and right and perfect for Louis"

[winepresswrath]

i am going to wind up on team #justiceforarmand but it's going to be so situational. justice for armand specifically during the period of time louis is all "oooh who needs labels." a very different kind of justice for armand on matters pertaining to claudia.

[and-fishing-equipment]

i've started reading tvl and no amount of posts telling me there's a "huge tonal shift" could have prepared me for this HUGE TONAL SHIFT this is the funniest fucking thing i've ever read it genuinely goes like:

louis, narrator of iwtv: as i wandered the streets of paris, i wished most of all for death. i had called to god, to satan, anyone, to find meaning in it all. but for an evil creature such as myself there is no place in this world. there can be no love where this evil lies. it was as though a veil separated me from all that could be good and righteous. i did not deserve to love and be loved in return, not by claudia, lestat, armand. to attempt it would be a sisyphean task, a fools tale. and yet...... the need for hole from armand was so great. greater was only the need for........ living human blood.

lestat, narrator of tvl: hey guys, my name is lestat, you may know me because i'm really hot and sexy. english isn't my first language so sorry if i make any mistakes!! okay here's my story: after rotting beneath the earth for decades, my hot and sexy body has finally risen from the ground. i used to be depressed, but now i'm slutting it up again in the 20th century! first thing i did was get some (hot and sexy) new clothes and then wore them while riding my (hot and sexy) motorcycle and listening to bach on my sony walkman. while i was watching this super niche indie film (you've probably not heard of it) "apocalypse now" i realized that i'm so evil that i shouldn't exist. but then i realized what could make me deserve to live on this planet: rock n roll music.

[indelicateink]

one must embrace the dichotomy

whenever i see people woobifying lestat and saying he's not to blame etc. i'm just like how can you call yourself a lestat fan. his whole appeal is that he sucks massively but is also so lovable at the same time. you don't get him at all

[brawlingdiscontent]

It's devastating enough that Louis can't say 'I love you,' because they were the last words he said to Paul before Paul walked off the roof, but then you have Florence explicitly accusing him:

"You must've said something to him Louis, you must've said something to him...What did you say to him?... Paul's in hell because of you."

A whole new level of devastation! Florence assumes he taunted Paul ("you always had to have the last word") not knowing as she drives the knife in that the words he said were "I love you"! She has hit on Louis' fear that there's something rotten at his core. And Louis—with his internalized toxic masculinity and homophobia, his pathological need to not appear weak, his fundamentally Catholic worldview—carries the secret feeling (FOR YEARS! ALONE!), from his queerness, his ties to sex work, his exploitation of others, that he is a creature so sinful, so monstrous, so evil, that his love brings death and he's condemned his brother to hell!!

(When he asks 'is my very nature that of the devil?' (ep 3 title) -- it isn't a question about vampirism, not really, it's a question that's fundamentally about who he is at his core.)

And every further hit—when Florence sees the devil in his eyes, when he almost eats his nephew, when his nieces are afraid of him and Grace loses trust in him—serves as validation that this feeling is right and Paul's death was somehow his fault. And the guilt, and the blame, and the self-recrimination compound.

No fucking wonder he can't say 'I love you' to Lestat! No wonder he needs Claudia, the girl who called him an angel—the one person who sees the good in him, who doesn't see evil in his love—to live so badly!

While Lestat also doesn't see his love as evil, Louis sees Lestat as evil, as confirmation of these ideas about himself—think about how Lestat delights in Louis' act of murder and mutilation right before Claudia is made ("companion of the dark gift, finally"). In that scene, Lestat shares his excitement at finally having a partner to match him and fully embrace vampiric life—and all Louis hears is 'everyone was right about you.' And so the full embrace of Lestat's love, of vampirism, feels impossible for Louis as he drowns in his own sense of culpability and his fundamental wrongness.

[angrybubbles]

This has been said by many many people here before but-

We all know Daniel is not the Good Heroic Character, right?

A lot of those traits that could lead to us assigning him that are are because he's the closest to an audience insert and says things we agree with (confirmation bias), rather than because he's a good guy.

He's the Byronic Hero but that doesn't necessarily mean he's "good." It's a Gothic Fiction character role, which means morals are going to sit at a solid grey.

Him pointing out the racism of Louis and Lestat's relationship isn't done to help Louis. He says it belligerently. The tone is off. He's saying it for the audience as much as just... pointing it out in the worst way possible. He's being a dick, even if he's right.

That's the thesis of his character, really. The truth isn't good, it isn't nice, and it can be spat at you like an insult just as easily as a lie can soothe the pain (thematic mirroring with Armand and Daniel here. Delicious).

And there's also the journalism aspect. Journalism isn't a force for good, and it regularly is used for evil. Daniel knows this, and doesn't really give a shit. Once he puts the narrative out there, it's in the readers hands. There's no "good" he's doing here, past sitting on a couch and asking questions to help clarify why Louis wants to tell him all this.The ethics of journalism is a well-worn topic, and Daniel has the career to show he doesn't really care to fit the mold or be "correct" about it.

Daniel is a tool, he's a wedge used to get to the heart of the matter. When he criticizes Louis' idealism, he's not doing it to help Louis find the truth as a friend (not saying they're not friends, but it's not his motivator). He understands this is Louis' narrative, but he has his parallel narrative as well, the "truth" of the matter isn't about truth so much as it's about comparing realities and supporting it with evidence. Daniel being worldly, experienced, and a journalist isn't him saving Louis. He doesn't even want to do that until Armand pisses him off personally, and even then it's not in the "saving" sense as much as the "proving" sense.

As a Leftist reporter who speaks about things people are likely to hide, he's doing it to expose bullshit. To expose lives that no one looks to think about (the Vietnam Vet with his disabled Vietnamese boyfriend, and the single mom working at the titty bar. Even as a kid, he listened to those no one else would think to listen to.) The help is there, but it's a side-effect, not a goal. He's not a white-knight, he's a white guy with a need to stick it to the man (being the "traditional" narrative).

So keep him an asshole. The truth hurts, especially when you dig at it as voraciously as Daniel does.

Also please don't misconstrue this as me saying he's the most truthful character. Again, Gothic character, he's just a force that includes pushing and idealizing truth.

[licncourt]

Something I think is really interesting about Lestat's reasons for turning Louis in the books is how it sets up the primary point of conflict between them even before they've actually met. He tells us more than once that his initial attraction to Louis was his similarity to Nicolas, most importantly his ability to act as both a punishment and a conscience for Lestat, but this isn't really where the pattern starts.

Darkness is familiar to Lestat, something that's plagued all the formative people in his life and defined how they relate to him. Of course the Marquis and Armand have a great deal of violence in them, but so did Nicki and so did Gabrielle. By the time he comes to New Orleans, he's craving love, familiarity, and belonging. All of those things, to him, are synonymous with darkness. He looks at Louis and he sees the Marquis' anger, Gabrielle's coldness, Nicki's despair, Armand's hysteria, and all of it feels like home in a fucked up way.

By the time he turns Louis, the cycles Lestat is stuck in have driven him half insane and his reactions to his new companion show how unsustainable it's all become. Once the darkness he saw in Louis is directed at him (like he supposedly wanted), it makes him painfully, maddeningly aware of how different he himself is from the boy he once was. He's not a shining beacon of light in the same way he used to be or the kind of person who can rise above the darkness again and again, but he doesn't know any other way to live.

He claims that he understands and accepts his own evil, but his attempts to show the audience just how good he is at being bad seem rather pathetic and insincere, desperate almost. I think the whole idea of finding an "externalized conscience" to punish him for his sins is very Lestat, but it also drives an immediate rift between them. Louis being what Lestat thinks he wants and wants to want completely prevents him from being what Lestat actually needs, things that defy Louis' fundamental nature.

Lestat simply wants things that are incompatible with goodness by the time of IWTV, meaning that he's incompatible with the version of Louis that he brought into his life in spite of what he says in TVL about conscience and punishment. He makes Louis to “fix him”, but then hates Louis for doing the thing he was made to do because of how his sense of self has disintegrated. It's as if Lestat's body and mind are finally rebelling against the cycle of trauma that he seems to be unable to let go of. Half of him wants to be kept accountable so he can hold onto the past version of himself, but the stronger half is the one that has come to crave intimacy and understanding of what he currently is to such a degree that it seems to hijack that desire for punishment.

This is one of the ways that I think Louis IS a victim in the story. He's not the first or the last person to be chosen by someone who fetishizes darkness (mental illness, grief, violence, inner turmoil, whatever it may be) for one reason or another and then gets in over their head, turning on them for falling short as a partner because of it. Louis is acutely aware of this and mentions frequently that Lestat made a poor choice of companion, but at that point they're stuck and creating brand new cycles unique to them as Lestat fights his own. Lestat wants Louis to turn back the clock, to restore his humanity, but that's just not possible, and it dooms them in the first part of their story.

[thevtuberlestat]

list of possible good reasons armand isn't in the s3 promo:

they're committing really hard to his vanishing act

under-qualified intern doing the promo posters asked chat gpt to summarize the show instead of watching it and chat gpt didn't bring him up

armand is a fiction we have all collectively dreamed up on tumblr dot com, unrelated to any real world character or concept

armand is a real person who sued amc and now they're having to respect his privacy

they're replacing him with a different, more evil vampire that has bigger bug eyes and a sadder backstory

lestat would be jealous

they've realized that armand's character arc has reached a perfect conclusion when he got dumped and thrown through that wall, so there's really nowhere else to go with the character

the ghost of anne rice bought his copyright back

they wrote a whole storyline in which armand becomes a pop diva and then belatedly realized they're doing the exact same thing with lestat. after this they wrote a second storyline for armand in which his memoir getting published led all the vampires in the world to try to fight him, but that was kinda redundant because louis was already doing that. they're hurriedly trying to come up with a new storyline for armand and i'm hearing it's going to involve him interviewing vampires

this is all a clever misdirection. armand is actually the only character in season 3

[most-screwed-by-writers-tourney]

Propaganda:

Harrow and Gideon; the power imbalance and pining and inability to communicate and understand each other and oh god the pining they just want to be loved and they're so bad at it

Juri and Shiori: They both love eachother right but shiori is insecure and has comphet and hates juri for being better than her!! It was confirmed in the original dialogue and by the series creator that Shiori does return Juri's feelings, but was antagonistic towards to her because she held Juri in such high regard that when she found out that Juri loved her it made Shiori feel powerful and on more equal ground with Juri than she initially thought, so she tried to maintain that power in the hopes of having Juri to herself

Louis and Lestat: In the original book Lestat literally turns a 5 year old little girl into a vampire to trap Louis in their loveless, abusive relationship, because he knows Louis will worry about Lestat (whom Louis now recognizes as a remorseless monster who sees humans as nothing but food) using this child (Claudia) as a tool and creating the most evil and messed up surrogate child of all time. (He was right, btw, bc she grows into a woman trapped forever in a child's body and hates them both for it. but this isn't about Claudia.)

In the TV series, Lestat is a white devil offering aid, sympathy, and love to a gay, closeted black man in the 1900s. He offers him company, capital, a friend who sees him as an 'equal' Once he turns him into a vampire, his desire to possess and control Louis becomes apparent. He displays TEXTBOOK narcissistic and abusive partner behaviors, apologies for how awful he was, promises to change, makes romantic gestures to try and smooth things over. They start having an 'open relationship' where Lestat loses it over Louis taking advantage of being able to see other people. Lestat writes a love song for him and sends Louis a recording sung by the woman he's having an affair with; Louis confronts him at the singer's apartment and they have angry sex in her bed.

Late in the TV series, they get in another fight, and Lestat literally drops Louis out of the sky and leaves him paralyzed, with Claudia (in this adaptation, a young woman who is more like a sister/mother to Louis) to nurse him back to health and re-teach him how to walk. Louis still takes him back.

In both the book and the TV series, Claudia convinces Louis that the only way they can be free is to kill Lestat. In both, they poison him, slit his throat, and dump his body in a swamp. In the TV version, Louis sobs over Lestat's dead body, refusing to allow Claudia to burn him and ensure he can't come back from it. (Spoilers: he gets better. and he's pissed about it! He follows them to Europe.) Their gay divorce drama eventually results in the destruction of an entire enclave of over 400 vampires in Paris and the death of their surrogate daughter.

[the-quiet-youve-been-longing-for]

Okay time for another small (I hope) analysis on IWTV, mainly the way it's written and its place on current television. I'll try my best to format this so it's not ramblings all over, I promise.

IWTV and plot points

I watched a good amount of television in my time, and one thing I noticed here is the fact that it doesn't hold your hand. It doesn't tell you "hey, this thing x is important, now we will tell again why x is important, now here see x being used, the important thing we talked about so far, did you remember, audience?".

Let's take as an example the "don't drink the blood of the living" thing. It's said to a young Louis (telling also to the audience in the 2nd episode how vampirism in this setting works) and then every time it's brought up it's indirectly (Lestat spitting out the sick man's blood, we see Claudia buying Laudanum and we know what it will be used for, but they don't tell us "Hey, Claudia is planning to poison someone so that Lestat drinks it, because remember audience, dead blood kills them"). Sometimes not only it doesn't hold your hand, but shoves you in a different direction, especially in S2. It contradicts himself, backtracks and then it's up to you to spot it.

For example, attentive viewers may have noticed that Sam was in 2 places at once in the trial, one episode before the actual reveal. It isn't a gotcha they came up with in the finale to give more gravitas to the revelation. When they tell us Lestat mass manipulated the audience, it makes sense for the storyline too because we already saw him do that with the soldiers, we have a previous example to refer to, Armand never used that particular power.

In a time where we see so many social media adopt the "short videos" gimmick, like reels and shorts etc, having a piece of media that references back in this way is super refreshing.

2. Character complexity

Complex characters are the backbone of this show. It's easy to place a character in a box and leave them there. You see it with the stereotype of the villain, the best friend, the hero. Some tv shows may have the character shift into a different box, but it's almost never permanent (think of the times where a hero gets corrupted by the Evil Power, but then reverts back to their hero status after Defeating the Evil Power because they remembered the Power of Friendship).

We have Louis, well meaning vampire who is capable of horrible deeds when pushed to the brink. Lestat, who feels so much to the point it hurts the people around him. Armand, whose trauma and fear bring out the need to control, but at the same time he needs to do that without actually controlling. They are all these things at the same time, and it's impossible to see them in a black and white perspective.

3. Details

A line almost always has its parallels to another line in the show, gazes always mean something, props are detailed and shown (I made a post looking at Daniel's notes in 2x05, which were shown for a second only, but you can also think about Claudia's diaries, all handwritten, or the astonishing amount of folders that were in Daniels computer from the Talamasca. That is all prop work done to be shown for a few seconds at most).

4. Analysis

This is more of a fandom thing than the show itself, but I was suprised by the amount of deep analysis that people here on Tumblr did (but also on other social media). Long essays on the meaning of a scene, or on the many many topics the show brings to light (the fallacy of memory, the impact of trauma, the meaning of free will and agency).

Similarly lots of people said that the show brought them back the urge to start creating, whether it's gifs, video essays, edits, fanart, fics, what have you. I started going back to Tumblr after years (last time I was here was during S4 of Sherlock).

And I feel like this is only possible if you give your audience something to work with, something to talk about and to dissect, rather than simple "entertainment".

5. Final thoughts

Of course, this isn't to say IWTV is error free, all perfect, without flaws. Nor is it the only one that has had this amount of labor and impact. But it's still miles ahead from most media we have available at the moment in my opinion, and I really hope its success brings other showrunners or directors to want to try and dare, to trust in their audience, to avoid shortcuts and to pour love in their creation.

If you got this far, I just want to thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings again! Have a cute Louis as a reward, and see you next time :)

[wizardpink]

Thinking about the fear that Armand experiences in QOTD when all the Shit Is Going Down and there's a fair to middling chance they're all going to die, and the way the show has set up events going forward with Armand and Daniel already seperated post turning and how I just

really

want

post Akasha plot line, when Daniel and Louis and Lestat have all made it out alive, for Armand to just start laughing, until it devolves into crying. Like fully fucking SOBBING, maybe in front of all of them, maybe just with Daniel, who is like "...are you okay?" and Armand chokes out that he's just so happy. Like the last 80 years have just been so stressful and eventful and then the last five years were just a fucking marathon of crisis after crisis after clusterfuck, and all the stress just built and built until it crescendoed to "I and everyone I love is about to die," and then they didn't! And Armand and Louis aren't trapped in a loveless marriage, and Lestat is back in their lives again, and Daniel isn't dying anymore and he's finally one of them, and the evil queen of vampires is dead, and Armand is so RELIEVED.

[anime-villian-irl]

I feel like every ship in with is unhealthy and we are fools to believe otherwise. They have all harmed or hurt each other in terrible ways.

Louis , lestat , Armand , and Daniel are all shitty people. Claudia is a shitty person so is Madeline. Same with Antoinette.

Every vampire in this series is a horrible person.

So for the love of fucking god stop being weird about them.

Stop trying to make Louis this big evil controlling man. "Oh but he was a pimp" lestat has killed a sex worker claiming her life doesn't matter because she was a sex worker.

Stop making Armand some one dimensional manipulator who only subs as a act if control "oh but he killed Claudia" Claudia is literally a serial killer she has killed for fun not for food several times.

It's okay to hate a character god knows how much I hate Antoinette and lestat. But stop pretending your other characters are perfect little angel babies.

They are vampires by nature they are fucked up and shitty people. Stop pretending otherwise.

And motherfucker this started with ships. Okay let's go back to that

Is loumand unhealthy?

Yes Armand killed Louis's daughter and was pretty willing to let him die. Armand also only got with Louis because he saw his own depression and misery inside Louis and he was lestats fledgling.

But don't act like loustat isn't also unhealthy.

Lestat physically abused Louis. He tries to isolate him from his family. He saw his own fuckin daughter as a love rival (I do not give a flying fuck about his dark daughter and belladonic beauty bullshit he saw her as a romantic rival for a while)

No vampire ship is going to be 100% healthy.

Claudia and Madeline would of been unhealthy if they were given time to grow in their relationship.

Like I said in the tags of a post.

They are the victims and the abusers and so much fucking more and I love them for that.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

When it comes to interview with the vampire is that I don't understand why some fans keep on trying to moralize these Fucked-up Vampires.

Like every single one of these characters, aren't what you call " Good People " or " morally Pure" okay, there damned vampires for crying out loud!? Each of one of these characters are Monsters in their own right.

Seeing the way some people or certain fans of the series keep on trying to moralize these messed-up vampires and acting like one character is more evil than the other or even going as far as treating a character like a cartoony one-dimensional Saturday morning villain archetype, takes away the many complexities and nauauces of these characters.

All of these vampires are all extremely Fucked-up and have some kind of severe trauma and are again MONSTERS! & KILLERS!

Louis , Lestat, Claudia, and Armand are all some forms of highly questionable morality and have showcased just how cruel, violent, and ruthless and just plain vicious each of them can be at times.

Even Daniel himself, the one human character, is also not exactly 100 percent " innocent " neither and has shown how deeply flawed and just as equally messed up and pretty much of a asshole he can be at times.

For real, though, none of these characters, especially the vampires, are what you call "Morally good "

If some of ya'll can’t handle a Dark Gothic TV show were equally all of the characters aren’t “Good people ” and dealing with highly morally questionable /awful and at times ruthless toxic vampires that kill humans for a living and see them as just food. Where every single one of these characters are monsterous in their own ways, and where no one is a “ hero ” or ever truly "innocent."

Then maybe this series isn't really meant for you and should stick with media that you're far more comfortable with if dysfunctional fucked-up monsterous violent vampires aren't your thing.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hey! Different anon here, but based on Rolins interviews ( and Sams to an extent) they've spoken many times about Lestat needing to change, to have an arc where he realizes his mistakes and come closer to his humanity. The books had many arcs, but in this case shouldn't we take rolin at his word that this is what he has planned for the character?

The thing is... they want to lead Lestat "back" to where he is at the end of the "Prince Lestat" arc.

THAT is what Rolin has been hinting at again and again with the "hint of the prince in him", or "the arc of becoming the prince" and so on. There's quite a lot of interviews with phrases like this.

Rolin created a Lestat that is not Anne's Lestat, Sam's words.

And yes, in a way that leads him "back" from the jaded, hardened self that he showed aspects of in the tale so far.

But it is not a returning to "humanity" per se, this isn't the Vampire Diaries. This isn't Twilight. These vampires do not strive to become human again, or find vegan alternatives, like in True Blood.

These vampires arrive in the last books building dungeons to put evil doers into for more easy feeding. I'm not kidding. They create blood rituals for themselves, the titular "Blood Communion" of the last book. They accept the thirst. And the guilt.

When Rolin speaks of Lestat needing to return to (some) humanity, then he speaks of THIS Lestat, who is a hardened, older and very jaded version of his book counterpart. Which is why Louis had to beg him to turn Claudia. Which is why he can fly. And so on.

But it is not a return to humanity's moral shackles.

I would be very surprised if Rolin meant something like a literal return to "the good vampire searching for his ethical and morally good feeding", especially since he, too, has said in an interview that this isn't... Twilight or the Vampire Diaries :)) (in a Spanish interview a while back.)

So yes, humanity... but not in the sense that so many seem to expect, confusing humanity with a rather specific human morality I think.