there's really something to be said about book louis (amc louis doesn't have this problem as much since he is much more complex and well-rounded and dealing with his experiences with racism and trauma) being able to lament the difficulties of the vampiric lifestyle in the way that only someone who chose it can. he can long for escape, feel crushing guilt, even long for death because, in the end, there was part of him that chose this because he wanted to die but feared the finality of "true" death, because he wanted to "damn himself" as an act of self-punishment for the grief he felt over paul. he can linger for hundreds of years in that sorrow and grief and depression and philosophize about mortality and morality and monstrous natures because he is both the victim and the monster. he's the punished and the hand of justice. so you can see how this would give him complexes on complexes lol. but this is where the fundamental differences in experience between louis and lestat really come through, because as much as i'm a fan of louis, in a way, it's a luxury that he is in the position to ponder all this. in giving consent and retaining his autonomy, he allows himself the mental space for exploring his tether to humanity, the grief of losing it, the depression at a (partially self-imposed) eternity of damnation. obviously in some ways he grows out of this mindset over the years. but for lestat, someone who had his humanity forcibly ripped out of him, who was kidnapped and turned in a scene very intentionally meant to represent assault, who said no over and over and was still changed, how could he look at louis punishing himself and not feel resentment and pain in some way? lestat was robbed of his choice (death) and the only way through that trauma was to allow himself to enjoy the freedom and control and "evil" that vampirism offered. a way to be extravagant, be powerful, be violent in response to all the ways he'd been taken advantage of over the years (on top of symptoms of ptsd and other mental illnesses) and it's just so easy to see how in their ignorance of each other's experiences they grew to resent each other so much
