The Vampire Lestat

Gabrielle, the Marquise and Lestat’s mother, is the only person in Lestat’s family that he is close to. Her family is from Italy, so Gabrielle reads and writes both French and Italian. She voraciously consumes books while living in her husband’s castle and “never said anything ordinary” (30). She is blunt and not a typical maternal figure. Gabrielle is the one who encourages Lestat to hunt and to leave for Paris. She is about to die of consumption at the age of 50 when Lestat turns her into a vampire.

After becoming a vampire, Gabrielle becomes an equal with Lestat; he no longer sees her as just his mother. She dresses in boy’s clothes and “became the boy” (171). She also tries to cut her long blond hair, but it grows back in one day. She presents as androgynously as she can.

Gabrielle has no trouble killing humans: “She had become a pure predator, as only a beast can be a predator” (165). The discussion of animals in this quote foreshadows how Gabrielle eventually leaves human society altogether to roam through jungles and forests. She says, “I need no name” (348). In this way, she is a foil to Lestat, who is desperate to have his name known and who clings to human society.

Armand was born in the steppes of Russia and was enslaved and sold into sex trafficking by the Tartars. While working in a brothel in Constantinople, Armand is sold to Marius, who takes him to Venice and makes him a vampire while he is still a teenager. Rice frequently describes Armand as a “god out of Caravaggio” (202), alluding to the paintings of Michelangelo Caravaggio. More generally, Armand is “indescribably beautiful” (201) with auburn curls.

The Children of Darkness attack Marius and take Armand into their coven. Armand obtains the psychic power to call to people who want to die and kills only those humans who seek out death. He goes from assisting Marius with his paintings to rejecting all forms of making art. After being with the coven, Armand becomes nihilistic: He “craved nothing, cherished nothing, believed nothing finally” (304). However, he remains loyal to his coven until Lestat defies their rules.

When Lestat first meets Armand, he is living underground in cemeteries with the coven, wearing rags of clothing, and leading Satanic rites. Armand “did not appear to walk in a human way. Rather he moved so swiftly from one bit of shadow to another that he seemed to vanish and reappear” (202). However, Armand changes dramatically after Lestat proves to the Children of Darkness that Satan has no power to enforce the rules that they follow. Armand turns against his coven members and starts killing them.

Eventually, Lestat convinces Armand to lead the Theater of the Vampires. Armand becomes skilled “at pretending to be a living being” (503), dresses well, and learns about the culture of the times. While Armand repeatedly asks Lestat to be his companion, Lestat always turns him down, believing that Armand is too treacherous. Armand is frequently Lestat’s antagonist, such as when he pretends to seek love, but ends up fighting Lestat, as well as when Armand condemns Claudia to death while imprisoning Lestat.

Marius was born in ancient Rome, but his mother was Celtic. He is 40 years old when a group of Celtic Druids turn him into a vampire. His identity as a human was as “the scholar and the chronicler” (397), and his coloring is similar to Lestat and Gabrielle’s, as Marius has “full white blond hair” (368). His clothing is somewhat similar to Lestat’s as well: Lestat has his red velvet cloak lined in fur, and Marius wears red velvet in all eras.

When the Druids take Marius to the forest, Mael educates Marius about their beliefs. Marius is turned into a vampire shortly after most elder vampires were horribly burned. His creator, the God of the Grove, lived in a tree, and the Druids brought him sacrifices. Once the God of the Grove turned Marius, he was killed by the Druids. Marius and Lestat lost their vampiric creators in similar ways.

After Marius escapes being imprisoned in the tree by the Druids, he learns how the vampires were all burned. The original vampires, Akasha and Enkil, were left out in the sun by a vampire who is only referred to as “the Elder.” When Marius meets this vampire and learns about the history of the vampires, Akasha asks Marius to take her and Enkil away from the Elder who burned them. After he drinks from her, Marius becomes a “creature of impossible whiteness and perfection” (376) with incredible powers.

Marius becomes a painter in Venice, but keeps Akasha and Marius in a secret location away from his home there. This prevents the Children of Darkness from harming Those Who Must Be Kept when they attack Marius. Marius introduces Lestat, but not Armand, to Akasha and Enkil. However, Marius refuses to be Lestat’s companion and mentor until Lestat has lived a full lifetime among humans.

Akasha and Enkil are a royal couple who are initially referred to as “Those Who Must Be Kept” (296). Their names are revealed later in the novel: Akasha is named for the first time on page 394 and Enkil is named for the first time on page 437. They were born and ruled in ancient Egypt.

One day, King Enkil decides to investigate a haunted house and communicate with the demons in it. While he and Akasha are inside, they are attacked and their wounds give the demons a way to enter their bodies, making them the first vampires. By the time the Elder cares for Akasha and Enkil, they look like statues and are very difficult to move. He leaves them out in the sun and learns that when their bodies are harmed by the sun, the bodies of their vampiric descendants are also harmed.

Akasha moves from her statue-like position for the first time in many years to ask Marius to take her and Enkil away from the Elder who left them out in the sun. Marius introduces Lestat to Akasha, and he finds her “incomparably beautiful” (394). The second time Akasha moves is when Lestat plays the violin for her. She responds to his music by standing and singing, then offering him her blood. Enkil violently opposes this and Marius has to send Lestat away from Enkil.

At the very end of the novel, Akasha moves for a third time, inspired by Lestat’s new rock music, to trap Marius in the ice and come for Lestat. This is the cliffhanger at the end of The Vampire Lestat that is not resolved until Queen of the Damned.

Nicolas, also known as Nicki, is the son of a merchant who lives in the village near the Lioncourt castle. He is the one who presents Lestat with the gift of a red cloak lined with the fur of the wolves he killed. After that, Lestat and Nicolas become close friends. They have long drunken conversations about the time that Nicolas spent in Paris, and plan to move there together. Nicolas gets a position as a violinist in Renaud’s theater after they move to Paris. Nicolas resents Lestat’s success in the theater and his unrelenting belief in the importance of the arts, as Nicolas is much more cynical and world-weary than Lestat is.

After the Children of Darkness kidnap and drain Nicolas, Lestat turns him into a vampire. Nicki, as a vampire, is repulsive to Lestat. Lestat “couldn’t stand the sight of him now” (240). As a newborn fledgling, Nicki is barely mobile and conscious. He is “little more than a resuscitated corpse” (254). However, once Lestat gets Nicki to play his violin in Renaud’s theater, Nicki becomes talkative and dances. Lestat describes this transformation: “From a mute he had passed into mania” (263).

Nicki creates the Theater of the Vampires with members of the Children of Darkness after their coven is dissolved. However, he is unable to keep his vampirism a secret, tries to make other vampires, and generally endangers the vampires in the theater. Armand cuts off Nicki’s hands. Although his limbs eventually regrow, Nicki becomes mentally ill and dies by suicide by jumping into a fire.

Several ancient vampires have very minor roles in The Vampire Lestat. Magnus, an alchemist, only appears briefly to create Lestat. Magnus imprisons many young men who look like Lestat before choosing Lestat to be his only vampiric offspring after 300 years of being undead. Another vampire who is about the same age as Magnus is the vampire queen of the Paris Children of Darkness coven. She is never named and eventually also goes into the fire when Armand destroys the coven. A different former member of Armand’s coven, Eleni, helps him run the Theater of the Vampires. She writes letters to Lestat, keeping him up to date about the actions of the Paris vampires.

A couple vampires who are older than Magnus are Mael and Pandora. Mael is a Druid who taught Marius the literature and legends of his Celtic tribe that serves the God of the Grove. He assists in turning Marius into a vampire and later becomes a vampire himself. Pandora was made into a vampire by Marius, and he compares her to Gabrielle. However, she is only briefly mentioned in The Vampire Lestat; her story is fully told in Rice’s later novel, Pandora.

The main characters of Interview with the Vampire appear briefly in the Epilogue of The Vampire Lestat. Lestat compares Nicki and Louis: Louis “seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas […] Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicholas had ever had” (497). Lestat continues to love Louis after turning him into a vampire, which contrasts with how Lestat hates Nicki after he becomes a vampire. Lestat also mentions that Claudia was still only five years old when he made her into a vampire. Therefore, he understood why Armand’s coven killed her—she was a monstrosity.