#or what you take as canon. given. anne rice's retcons.

[camellia-thea]

one thing the show didn't really touch on is why armand is so against claudia in the books. this is definitely linked to casting and backstory changes, especially related to age, but i think it's really important and still rings through in the show.

armand in the books was turned at seventeen. his ambivalence to claudia's death, his dislike of her, are both completely intertwined with his perception of himself. in the books claudia was turned at five years old. he saw his inability to age, his permanent youth in her, and saw his sire within louis. a benevolent savior turned captor, lover, father. he resents her because she was turned too young, like he was turned too young, but displaces the blame onto lestat and claudia, rather than louis.

louis, who dragged a dying claudia to lestat for her to be turned. compared to amadeo, dying of sickness (or poison) and being turned so a father does not lose a child, a lover does not lose his beloved.

i think it makes his jump to maître with louis even more complicated, especially when you consider that armand was bought by marius from a brothel, and was frequently "donated" to marius' venetian contemporaries, and louis' status as a former pimp.

this comparison between marius and louis becomes more complex when you look at claudia's desire to leave and how armand was taken away from marius by the roman coven. i think armand in some sense overlays his own traumatic separation onto claudia and louis. this could make bruce's presence a comparison to the children of darkness(/satan) and the torture armand received at the hands of the roman coven. if you leave, you get hurt. i think he resents claudia wanting to leave louis, wanting to join the coven, wanting, wanting, wanting. armand is so stuck in himself and his history, his need to have purpose that the idea that claudia wants to and is trying to create herself a space away from louis is practically unthinkable.

"without the burden of her" weighs a lot heavier, i think, when you also consider that marius lived through the fire, immediately made a new fledgling, and did not follow armand. and it's unclear of how much armand knows about marius post-fire in the show, but armand has been left behind so many times, by marius, by the roman coven, by lestat.

i think he is caught up in both his idea that a maker and fledgling will, no matter what, hate and ruin one another, and his longing for someone to step into that role for him again. but he also so desperately wants control over his situation in a way that claudia mirrors. both lacking agency for reasons outside their control, with dependence on external figures who are a significant part of their lack of agency. he hates her, i think, because she has the courage to do what he does not.

another thing to note about armand is his certainty that claudia will cast herself into the fire. his conversation with madeleine was as much a conversation about himself as it was about claudia. armand has spent almost the entirety of his vampire life at the very least passively suicidal. he cannot commit the act himself because he desperately wants to live and connect with the world, but if something were to harm him, it is unclear whether he would try to stop it. madeleine's certainty that she would be enough to stop claudia from feeling the same way was, i think, extremely confronting to armand, as his desperate attempts to attach himself to people have all been attempts to live again. except; they've all left him in the end.

it's easier for her to die, in the end. to assure himself that louis will want him forever without the barrier, to assure himself that he can live where she doesn't, to prove to himself that he is right about everything, than it is to consider that her circumstances -- the want to leave and love and live -- could've been his.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I've been trying to read the whole vc series, but school and work just keep preventing me from getting really far! Is it ok to ask you to write a little summary for each book so I can catch up with the fandom until I have the time to read them all thoroughly?

Yeah, I understand, time is limited :P 

I don’t know that summarizing VC will allow you to “catch up” with the fandom, you really only need to read the first 3 books and the Vampire Armand to get most of the jokes on tumblr, bc most of the jokes seem to center around:

Louis being a pyromaniac,

Lestat being an obnoxious but somehow lovable glittery murder machine,

Lestat and Louis being awesome and shitty murder dads,

Claudia being an ungrateful spoiled brat,

Armand being a little brat, or a slut, or an evul coven master, or all of the above,

Daniel Molloy just wanting to vampire plz!!!11!,

Marius being a pedo, or too bossy, or both,

Gabrielle is a bad mom and an ice queen,

Nicolas is spelled NICOLAS and he is NOT DEAD!,

Secondary characters not getting enough love from anyone!!

There are often spoilers in summaries tho, do you really want to be spoiled? I LOVE being spoiled.

We have these unreliable narrators, there is a lot of disagreement as to what canon really is, and some fans choose to ignore parts of (or entire books) in the series. We bring our own experiences to the reading, and we choose what to connect with, so I think we can agree on some things about each book, but you will probably get a different summary from any given reader. Even AR has told us to disregard the hybrid Mayfair/VC books (Blood Canticle, possibly Merrick and Blackwood Farm) when moving onto the more recent VC additions (PL and PLROA). So, for example, I have a friend who has only read the first 3 books. She doesn’t even know what happens after that bc she prefers to think it ended after QOTD. So any new vampires made after QOTD do not exist to her. #Your headcanon may vary.

Anyway, you want summaries.

http://vampirechronicles.wikia.com has a pretty good write-up for each of the books (they don’t have PL and PLROA currently, maybe they will eventually). It contains spoilers.

@vraik​ has thorough VC analysis in their series called The Consulting Analyst over on vraikaiser.com. Spoilers there, too.

@hyperbeeb‘s capsule reviews are pretty gr9 [X]:

Lestat’s Adventures with a Progressive Family

Lestat’s Bisexual Adventures in 18th Century France

Lestat’s Adventures with the Queen of the Vampires

Lestat’s Adventures as a Human

Lestat’s Adventures with Satan

Lestat’s Adventures in a Coma

Lestat’s Adventures with Polyamory 

Lestat’s Adventures in the Deep South

Lestat’s Adventures with Not Being There At All

Lestat’s Adventures with Witches and Other Weird Shit

Lestat’s adventures with Being the Vampire Head of State

Lestat’s Adventures with Literal Fucking Aliens

(Note, Pandora and Vittorio are technically stand-alone “New Tales of the Vampires” books, but Pandora would be No. 6 of the 13 book series).

You can check my #VC Synopsis tag, which has more capsule humorous summaries.

Gonna try to do a little summary for each VC under the cut as a personal challenge. 

Spoilers ahead! I’ll try to do this with as few spoilers as possible, as factually as possible.

1. Interview with the Vampire - Louis tells the story of his life and unlife to Daniel Molloy. Louis starts at the point in his mortal life just before he meets Lestat, and how his life up until that meeting influenced the unlife that followed after he became a vampire. Lestat’s reasons for choosing Louis are unclear to Louis, but he wants Louis to choose to be a vampire. Louis is under so much duress (failing health, still in emotional distress over his guilt re: a close family member’s death) that the choice is not 100% legit, Lestat can’t wait for a more opportune time and proceeds to turn Louis anyway. 

The whole story could be seen as Anne Rice’s exploration of the role of religion and the reasons why terrible things happen to innocent people, the concept of punishment. 

For me, it was also eye-opening bc I was 11 when I read it and it introduced the possibility of love between a same-sex couple, even if that was in more of a read-between-the-lines way. 

It also has a child vampire and I hadn’t seen any media even attempt to tell a story with a child vampire before. Few media that attempt it seem to have captured the beauty and tragedy of such a creature as in this story, and she reappears in a few of the other VC. Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series.

^ok that was too long, I’m going for shorter.

2. The Vampire Lestat - Lestat seeks to “correct the record” that Louis laid out in IWTV by giving us his own backstory, starting at his mortal youth and how that influenced the unlife that followed when he became a vampire, against his will (hence the “I’m going to give you the choice I never had,” line from movie!IWTV). There is more exploration in the role of religion and reasons why bad things happen to basically innocent people, and whether you really can make the best of a shitty situation or just give up. More about punishment. A very unique take on the origin of the vampires as a species is revealed. And the reasons why Lestat behaved the way he did (basically all secretive) in IWTV. Unreliable Narrator thing that continues throughout the series, who are we to believe? Lestat or Louis? And the author’s retconning which is perceived as “making excuses later in canon for behavior that’s already happened.” Some readers really despise this. Personally, I like having the options and trusting one version of events, or none of them.

3. The Queen of the Damned - Lestat’s modern-era rock career wakes the Queen of the Vampires and she has this awesome Radical Feminist idea for world peace. She’s already gotten started on it! She upgrades Lestat physically so that he can help her accomplish her goals, but he’s not really on board. They meet with the vampires she has allowed to survive her purge and it doesn’t go very well. Also in this book, we have different narrators, more about the vampire origin story, and the Armand/Daniel ship is sailing at its best here.

4. The Tale of the Body Thief - Having suffered so much through the past 3 books, Lestat is a suicidal hamburger-brained moron and makes some very bad choices. Despite everyone advising him NOT to, Lestat makes a terrible trade with a body thief and learns quickly that he had idealized being human. He does some horrendous stuff, and wants off the Being Human ride. He has one friend who helps him set things back to the way they should be, and then he betrays that friend in a spectacularly cruel way. More importantly, Lestat also gets a wonderful cuddly doggo. 

5. Memnoch the Devil - Lestat Goes to Heaven and Hell, meets Jesus Christ, meets God, meets Satan (who prefers to go by “Memnoch”) it’s all a huge interview process to decide if Lestat might work for God or Satan and it’s basically fanfic of the Bible. Some people hated it for those reasons. I found it really intriguing, bc it presents a reason why God created the earth, and why there’s suffering, why God allows suffering to go on, and where religion comes from. Like Lestat, Memnoch says he’s not the antagonist, but really the good guy in all this. When Dorothy gets back to Kansas Lestat returns to earth, there is disagreement about whether he went on a real trip or he was just fooled by a really talented spirit. Lestat is so confused that he throws a huge tantrum and then gets solitary confinement, then slips into a coma.

6. The Vampire Armand - Armand gets his spotlight and gets to really tell his story, do we believe everything he tells us? Lots of good Italy times stuff. Armand visits Lestat in his coma-state, and talks about that, too. 

7. Merrick - Merrick is a Mayfair witch in NOLA who bewitches Louis in pursuit of his request for closure with Claudia, and hilarity ensues. Louis gets the most screentime he’s had since IWTV, but the whole book is told from a 3rd wheel’s POV, it would have been so much better from Louis’ or Merrick’s POV. Major fatal thing happens but fortunately Lestat wakes up from his coma in time to save the day.

8. Blood and Gold - Marius tells his story, as does the vampire Thorne tell his own story. Marius talks about his artistic influences and his experience with the early Talamasca and Santino and the Children of Satan. We see Daniel (now living with Marius) under a kind of spell, which Marius says is temporary. 

9. Blackwood Farm - Lestat goes to the Deep South and hears the story of vampire Quinn (his story defies summary) and, with Merrick’s help, saves the day.

10. Blood Canticle - More vampire and Mayfair mixing. And Taltos. It’s a very big WTF book. But it has some very funny scenes and lines in it. It ends with Lestat promising the Dark Gift to someone. 

11. Prince Lestat - Vampire scientists. A clone. Someone gets kidnapped. Ultimate Vampire Coven Gathering. Lestat is cranky, saves the day anyway. Ghosts apparently can linger on earth after death and make bodies for themselves. Characters from past books reappear. New characters are introduced. Louis writes a chapter about how OK fine, he does love Lestat. FINE.

12. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis - I haven’t finished this but basically… the REAL vampire origin story, and it involves bird-like aliens, who were sent to earth bc the aliens feed on the suffering of mortals. The bird-like aliens didnt want to create Atlantis. in fact they were pissed because this one creature of theirs, Amel, made Atlantis with the Luracastria (i dunno i think thats how it’s spelled) and their viewing tech couldn’t see through the material. Amel made Atlantis to spite the bird-like aliens omg i cant believe im typing this. Louis and Lestat finally have some legit canon cuddletimes.

- Pandora - the story of the vampire Pandora, and why Marius is bad at relationships. Lots of good Roman times stuff.

- Vittorio - is not a VC vampire, and wants nothing to do with that dysfunctional pile of fanged crazies. @monstersinthecosmos and @vittoriathevampire could give you a better summary of that one, since I didn’t absorb it too well :P