and another thing!! a huge part of the toxicity between gabrielle and lestat is not that shes a jealous boy mom who needs her son/lover to only have her in her life, but that she's the exact OPPOSITE!! she could give less of a fuck as to what lestat is doing because SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE A MOTHER!!! she loves lestat (or feels a slight obligation to him as her maker) but she loves the freedom that comes with vampirism more. she loves the unrestrained monstrosity of it that she could not get when forced to be a woman and mother.
she only comes to see lestat when hes explicitly in danger. she would not have a phone and she would not show up to help him unless he was actively in danger. i cannot stress how much she does not gaf.
their incestuous relationship in the books is not only born of the two of them living together in an extremely abusive household, as the only two people who wanted more, and developing a perverted relationship as a result of extreme emotional isolation and suffocation, but it also comes from gabrielle's gender envy of lestat, and the freedom and danger he gets to pursue as a result of his masculinity. she wants the freedom he was born with. but once she gets it via vampirism, she has no reason to continue being a mother. the problem is that lestat needs his mother. and since his understanding of what a mother is supposed to be has been perverted due to their emotionally incestuous relationship, he wants her to be both his mother and lover.
on the one hand, lestat is asking her to give him the only affection he had during the loneliest time of his mortal life, again during his lonely immortal existence, something he grew dependant on when there was nobody else who loved him. after nicki dies, he has no one and he wants that comfort of perverted motherhood back in his life. he needs love and companionship and the one person who should be giving it to him, his own mother, cannot seem to give him even that.
on the other hand, by asking for this, he is asking gabrielle to reconfine herself to both of the main roles she found to be so suffocating during her mortal existence at the same time: wife and mother. she has finally got her freedom, her escape, her opportunity to be as monstrous and rabid and animalistic and unfeminine as she pleases, and she is being asked to turn away from it.
she cannot do that, even for lestat, her son and maker. its simply not in her vampiric nature.
