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Observations

Let's start with the facts. These are things we see directly or characters say. The show has a history of reveals, but until we see them, we will assume what we see so far is true.

Lestat doesn’t like the topic of the trial and is particularly sensitive about the idea of him killing Claudia. He shuts down when Gabriella says he “took her back” from Louis. During Armand’s amends letter, he bitterly corrects that it was a real trial with real verdicts. He snipes at Louis for implying he killed her.

Lestat is not a “vampire slayer”. He’s coldblooded about mortals, but has not been shown to premeditatedly kill a fellow vampire nor do we see him show interest in it. Even in the hallway fight where you could say it's justified to kill, he doesn't. It is Daniel who beheads the fang gang.

Lestat can be cruel but is primarily petty vengeful. Case 1, Tom Anderson insults him and Louis for years and gets eaten quick and painless. Case 2, Sam Barclay writes the trial play and only gets verbally berated as his producer. Case 3, Daniel publishes IWTV, antagonizes him for months and gets only a private telepathic trick. There’s a pattern here that while Lestat is mean-spirited with slapback impulse, his vengeance isn’t ultraviolent. He’s only petty and vindictive. Note that his act of immense violence against Louis is an in the moment loss of control, not a premeditated revenge.

Lestat participated in the trial preparation. The trial script has a lot of details only he could have told them. Its cover sheet says “with additions by Lestat de Lioncourt”. We see him rehearsing his lines from both Armand and his POV.

Lestat knows Louis loves him despite the trial. When Lestat has the vision of Paul in 3x7, it’s only hours after the seance where Louis implied Lestat is responsible for Claudia's death. Louis stays with Lestat and says all he does on the bench even with this belief.

Lestat never corrects the record on the trial. He lets us “patrons” listening to failures, Louis, Daniel, ghost Claudia, everyone who reads the book, continue to think he crossed an ocean to rehearse the play to kill his daughter.

Why not share what really happened?

We want to believe he wasn't there because he chose it, because that is easier to square with his remorse and love for Claudia. That's a simpler logical alignment that you and I as reasonable people prefer. The show has consistently been about complexity, so let's set that aside for a minute.

If the in universe assumptions (that he did it willingly) are not true, surely he'd say something. The topic clearly eats at him given how many flashes of the trial we see in his s3 fever dream sequences. Why not set the record straight? Why let everyone think he did it?

Possible Reasons

Option A: There's nothing to correct. He did do it. He got on a boat and rehearsed the play on his own volition.

Option B: He feels too guilty to engage with the topic. Whether deserved or not, he feels responsible and refuses to discuss it, even to correct inaccuracies.

Option C: His memories are tampered with and he doesn't remember what really happened.

Option D: He doesn’t care about what anyone thinks.

Let's go in reverse order. We can cross off Option D immediately. He cares a lot what everyone thinks. His tour and tantrum about the book is because he cares. He’s “doing a rewrite” on even stupid details like the length of his hair. Surely he would insist on correcting slanderous details about the trial. We'll come back to this one a bit at the end.

Option C doesn’t hold up when you think about it. He was not a fledgling at the time (he had the blood of Akasha in him ;) and wouldn't be that easy to control. But maybe Armand is that good and he mind controlled or convinced Lestat to want to do the trial. But this doesn't line up with what we've seen of Armand's victims. Lestat was pretty himself and spry on stage, not stiff like we've seen victims act. The only time we see him out of it is after he's expended the energy to save Louis. What's more, Lestat would have been known and remembered. We see Armand do this with Regina and she is fully aware of it happening. When he sees Armand in present day, he does not bring any of this up. Armand could have mind wiped that, you say. We’ve seen Armand’s ability to remove memory, but not build false ones. He gave Daniel a story about 1973 but Daniel is still consciously aware his memory cuts out. Lestat remembers the trial happening and does not say he's missing any parts. He is pretty crisp in his memory and doesn't indicate otherwise. And let's be real, this is getting into wishful convoluted thinking and feels like we’re bending backwards to try to pin it on Armand.

Option B feels plausible. Lestat doesn’t like to dwell on pain. It's a shame he carries silently. Correcting any part would mean examining the event and his contribution in detail, which, given our observation 1 on how he hates the topic, he likely isn’t keen to do.

And Option A, the controversy, I’d argue is also plausible. Consider the range of complicity. The worst case, he knew the coven would kill Louis and Claudia and wanted it. Observation 2 and 3 of his lack of interest in murder and violent retribution suggests this is probably not true. He had 10 years to go after them and he didn't. Best case, he thought it would just be a humiliating play and didn’t know they meant to execute his fledglings. Maybe, but it wouldn’t make sense to exert the Herculean effort to save Louis if he didn’t think the danger was real. At least when he was on stage, he knew the coven were going to kill them.

The in between case seems most likely. He could have gone to Paris thinking it was only a play, and upon discovering it was more, it was too late in the game. I can see Armand saying they were planning an execution and Lestat not taking it seriously until the trial begins--we have to remember, he thinks Armand was his “friend” up to this point. Surely he's just an overdramatic theater director and not actually being literal. But the moment he sees Louis and Claudia in their battered condition, it’s suddenly real and he internalizes this really is about to happen.

Should he have known better? Yeah, of course, but Lestat is often foolish and willfully ignorant of reality. This is the same Lestat who says he didn’t think Louis would really follow through and attempt to kill him (trial script). This is the guy who didn’t internalize until the bibles and cornstarch on his doorstep that not aging for 30 years in NOLA was a problem. He repeatedly does this. What further supports this reading is his present day anger at Armand and his specific ire with Armand's amends letter callously using the term stage play.

A and B are not at odds with each other. They actually make sense together. Even if Lestat didn’t fully intend everything about the trial, his guilt over any complicit part he had overshadows the need to share his perspective. At the long table, his mind’s most uncharitable self-assessment, muse Louis says Lestat killed her. In his head, his participation in any amount, equates responsibility. And with observation 5 that Louis is willing to reconnect despite believing him responsible, what’s the point of picking at this enormous wound? Correct some details to make him look marginally better? He thinks he deserves the hate on this. Claudia is dead, and he had a part. It’s too painful and there’s nothing to gain.

So there you have it, why I think the signs all point to him as a fully willing participant. He went because he was mad at them, and failed didn't think much further than that. It aligns with Lestat's central character failure of acting on impulse and not thinking things through. A lot of the terrible havoc he has wrought is from his "what's the worst that could happen" attitude. He constantly "opens the batch oven and doesn't know how to close it." The trial may be yet another example. It would definitely align with the larger story of Lestat.