TRUST: Louis was asking himself those same questions, which is why he broke down so badly when Daniel confronted him about it.
Louis couldnât handle the fact that as much as he looooooves his daughter (and he really REALLY loved Claudia), and as bad as Lestat was to them (an absolute MONSTER by the end), Louis loved Lestat more than he loved Claudia OR even himself. U_U
The brutal truth is that some people actually do stay in abusive relationships because they LOVE their abuser. Itâs not strictly Stockholmâin the sense that theyâre abused first and THEN fall in love out of necessity/proximityâbut rather that theyâre in love with someone FIRST who THEN ends up abusing them. Theyâre stuck, not necessarily because their abuser wonât let them leave (although that is ofc very often a factor), but also because thereâs a part of them that wants to stay and make things work and go back to the good days. We see this in Loustatâs rekindled affection during the murder plotâthe seed IS there, but the environmentâs toxic AF; nothing healthy can grow there anymore. Loustat just needed a truly fresh start: hence, the other books after IWTV, as they VERY slowly got their ish together.
Now, if this was still ONLY about book/film Loustat, then TBH I struggle with those questions myself. Iâve long-since accepted their relationship as-is cuz itâs canon: Lestat never shuts up about how much he loves Louis, and Louis accepted him in the final trilogy, so hey. 𤡠I liked the IWTV movie for the fun campy horror, as itâs just a really good movie IMO, and rare for its homoerotic undertones from A-list actors. But I never actively likeâŚship-shipped Loustat. Cuz in a lot of ways it kinda does feel more like Stockholm in the book and especially the film; they were little more than strangers that quickly got married after a bender in Vegas, and since theyâre Catholic just stayed together cuz Catholics donât divorce. All that on top of Lestat baby-trapping Louis with Claudia just had me like OK, Loustatâs one of those old-school shotgun wedding couples (my parents, jfc đ) that justâŚ.stay together âfor the kids,â and either learn to love each other, or learn to keep the infidelity discreetââlocked together in hatred.â
AR was in a DARK place when she wrote IWTV. She IS Louis. She had lost her own daughter, and was deeply depressed and desperate for an outlet to express her conflicted and complex emotions and fragile mental state. Which is part of why Louisâ own thoughts & actions donât really make much logical sense either, cuz IWTV was not operating logically; it was raw emotion. Louis IS an unreliable narrator. IWTV as an interview was little more than a hit-piece, and Daniel was SHITE at his job and did eff all for journalistic integrity or investigation (which is exactly why Lestat clapped back in TVL).
Iâve said a million times how Lestat was deliberately painted as THE VILLAIN in IWTV, cuz thatâs what Louis wanted to get across more than anything. Hell hath no fury like a (wo)man scorned. IWTV was the ex-spouse venting/ranting to the tabloids about their p.o.s. husband. Itâs literary skulldragging. Itâs Louis stuffing Lestatâs corpse in that Rolls Royce from Ep6 and lighting a cigarette in the flames.
Itâs the (self-)righteous fury of the embittered ex who is clearly NOT over it yet, and lost their religion strictly to serve those papers, demanding everything in the divorce, First Wives Club style! đ¤
Unlike AMCâs version, the book/film Louis published that interview, letting the whole world know all the horrible things Lestat had done, or Louis felt heâd done. In the book/film Louis dumped Lestat in the swamp to get nommed on by alligators, and then set Lestat on FIRE when he dared show his face & threatened Claudia again.
Louis de Pyromaniac du Lac went completely SCORCHED EARTHâsetting Lestat and their townhouse on fire caused half of NOLA to burn the night Louis & Claudia left for Europe! When Louis gets mad, it becomes EVERYONEâS problem.
What did Bernadine tell the cops banging on her door about not being allowed to burn anything but trash in her own backyard?
This is the killer: Louis loved Lestat, and thatâs why he was so dang mad to begin with.
Book/film!Louis learned to love Lestat through proximity, time, and circumstance. Vampires ARE inherently lonely, and Lestat with all his mysteries & big personality & worldly/foreign experience filled a major void in Louisâ empty life. Living together, learning from each other, and having literally no one else to turn to, and nothing really to live for but each other, Loustat leaned/lived on each other. But ofc itâs unhealthy & unsustainable, especially cuz theyâre effing vampires, and Louis hated being one. (Marius was 100% right when he told Lestat that Catholic guilt ruins vampires like Louis.) Louis is the type of person who needs distractionsâdonât let him sit & stew in his depressive moods. When the charm & novelty of Lestat wore off, here came Claudia, giving Loustatâs relationship the second wind it SORELY needed when Louis had his feet out the door. And ofc this is where everything went dead wrong: having a baby as a bandage on a crappy Vegas marriage between the living dead.
IWTV is a sad AF gothic horror story, but I commend AMC for going the distance to really emphasize the ROMANCE between Loustat, that Louis tried SO HARD to bury in the book/film.
The IWTV movie broke Loustat up, implying that Louis rejected Lestat once and for all. And the QotD movie effed around and paired Lestat up with Jesse of all people wtf, completely erasing Louisâ existence from Lestatâs ENTIRE story to try making him heterosexual. 𤎠Ofc we know NONE of this is the case in the books, where despite everything, Loustat reconnected over & over again after ITWV, on & off again, especially in QotD (which includes one of their most romantic reunions during Lestatâs rockstar!era).
Sure, it can be argued that Loustat only stayed together cuz there was always an emergency forcing them back into each otherâs orbitâAkasha, Raglan James, Memnoch, ghost!Claudia, Replimoids, Rhosh, etc. But NO, Lestat is VERY clear in TVL and the other books that Louis regularly sought him out, staying in Lestatâs house, as they just netflixed and chilled! Even during Louisâ bum!era living in a shack in the woods! Even after running away to Europe after Lestat tried to kill Claudia (and him on the show ofc), even living all that time with Armand, even with Lestat lying comatose for YEARS after Memnoch effed him up, even with Lestat giving Louis that vamp upgrade after Merrick, even with an entire alien lifeform living rent free in Lestatâs head, Louis still MISSED and LOVED Lestat.
Louis said it himself: Lestat made him feel SEEN.
Lestat was Pyromaniac du Lacâs âcoal fireâ after the looong winter of Louisâ cold & miserable & empty life; touch-starved & LONELY as all hell; everyone from his family to his community to his business associates/competitors making Louis feel inadequate & inferiorâthe walking dead hating absolutely everything about himself. Then in swoops Lestat, this MAGICAL uber-rich foreign entity who could have anyone & everything he wanted, but for some strange reason Lestat only had eyes for LOUIS.
And YES, Lestat had the wildly unfair advantage of hunting Louis down and reading his every thought so he could know EXACTLY what Louis wanted most. Louis was incredulous when he said âYouâre gonna make me BEG!?â cuz yeah, Lestat spoiled Louis rotten! ANYTHING FOR LOUIS.
From the gorgeous and specifically curated townhouse, to the very best anal gay sex âaround the rings of Saturn,â to the Azalea, Claudia, the Rolls Royce & Book of Hours & all those giftsâeven that SONGâLestat has each and every key to unlock Louisâ deepest wishes & desires. Louis would say he wanted something, and boom, there it was. Lestat was down horrendous for Louisâwilling to live in FILTH, just so he could make Louis happy (and so Louis could look at HIM and he could be SEEN by Louis in kind). And Louis KNEW THIS.
Iâve said this before: Louis was well aware of the power he had over Lestat, and the lengths Lestat would go to to get & keep Louisâ attention. In a world where Louis felt increasingly invisivbleâremoved from family & humanityâLestat foaming at the mouth for just a crumb of Louis attention mustâve made him feel like he was on Cloud 9, and all the more empowered when he withheld attention/affection whenever Lestat was (deservedly) put in time-out.
I said before that Louis NEVER talks about the things that hurt him the most. Heâs done being vulnerable! Heâs not doing the interview to gush about how great his man was (Mr. âhe had a way about him!â du Lac), Louisâ on a mission to list all the failures in his life, and how vampirism made him more miserable than ever. Lestat is ofc tied up in Louisâ vampirism as his Maker, but Louis often contradicts himself about who or what he hated more: the fact that Lestat was in his life, or the fact that Louis welcomed him into it, and was gladâLOVEDâthat Lestat was always there for him. (In Merrick, the second it seemed Lestat really might not make it, and ghost!Claudia had really gotten in Louisâ head, Louis finally tried to kill himselfâand that was the moment Lestat finally woke from his coma, just to save Louisâ life. Sure, Louis was pissed he got that vamp upgradeâbut he was HAPPIER Lestat was alive, and eventually took him back.)
Louis sat there and explained in vivid detail just how bad Lestat beat the breaks offa him, and then turned right around and said he wasnât abused, but you know what? In Louisâ view, he was telling the truth. Cuz as crazy as this sounds to us SANE people: for Louis, Lestat losing his effing mind and beating Louis crippled just to keep Louis from running away with Claudia just reinforced that Louis was still loved; that he was still the center of someoneâsâLestatâsâuniverse. All Louis wanted was Lestat to stop effing cheatingâit made him feel inadequate and inferior and âNOT ENOUGH.â (Likewise, Lestat was relieved to see that Louis still wanted him even at his WORST, both in Ep3 & Ep5.) Their daughter Claudia didnât need Louis anymoreâshe was all grown up, and just wanted to get AWAY from the BOTH of them, and she stayed away, too. But Lestat NEEDED Louis, and that was the REAL high that kept Louis happiest of allââwho is my Lestat? who is my Louis?â In Lestat, Louis had his own special person, someone who wouldnât die (Paul & Lily) or abandon him (Florence, Grace, Claudia); and he fell for that vampire-bond/cord speech hook line and sinker. And thatâs why he could still love Lestat despite everything elseâhe wasnât ALONE. Even living in squalor for 7 years, Lestat was STILL THERE, trying to get Louis to eat and go outside and LIVE.
Which (finally đ
) brings me back to OP and the Opera Scene.
LOUIS LOVES OPERA. He loves music, and he loves to tap dance. But Louis couldnât even be genuine in front of his mom & siblings!
Louis, in many ways felt like a MONSTER, waaaaay before heâd ever become a vampire (hence: his vamp upgrade body dysmorphia post-Merrick). Louis being FREE to be anything soft & vulnerable wasnât allowed on LIBERTY Street. All those hats society made him wear, and none of them his true nature, etc. So Louis felt a real CONNECTIONâthat cordâbetween himself & Lestat, and opera was obviously something they could bond over (music taming the beast within, as it were); a surefire way to lift Louisâ spirits when he was feeling SO depressed because of his vampirism.
âLouis is grasping for humanity, heâs trying so hard. Heâs âskipping mealsâ at this point. Thatâs why his restraint here is so thin, heâs hungry. Because he doesnât want to eat humans anymore. Heâs vulnerable and heâs unhappy and heâs struggling, and Lestat knows. He knows he needs to reach for him, give him something to grab onto, something to focus on. But what Louis wants, what Louis desperately wants. Is humanity. So Lestat shows him, his humanity.âÂ
They not only love each otherâthey LIKE each other, too. They like being in each otherâs company, bonding over things they enjoy doing together, and spending time TOGETHER. This is the problem with so many failed relationships, where sure, theyâre in love/lust, but can they EVER happily do something wholesome & nice together for 30 frikkin minutes without sex?
Every. single. time. Lestat did something awful, heâd 180 by doing something sweet and suave and sexy and vulnerable to get back in Louisâ good gracesâallllll the way back to the DPDL dinner, to their wedding vows in the blood-soaked church, to all of his speeches & soliloquies in Ep2-3, to making Claudia, to his Grovel Era and Magnus backstory/sob story, to âIâm glad it was you.â And ultimately, to TVL itself.
Cuz what is TVL than Lestatâs biggest appeal for Louis (and us) to see his HUMANITY?
The ONE thing Lestat didnât give Louis (and this is what screwed him up) was INFORMATION. Louis is a giant nerd and bookworm. Louis struggled for so long with speaking up and being honestâhe needs CONVERSATION. For all the physical and material things Lestat gave him, Louis also wanted someone to he could TALK TO; he wanted those long walks with Paul, the paid hours talking with Lily, the park benches with Lestat, the book club with Claudiaâhe needs someone to meet him intellectually, and dragged Lestat for filth once he realized how easily Lestat had read HIM.
Unfortunately, once Lestat had him, he didnât keep up pretenses anymoreâLestat got too comfortable in their relationship, as many people do once the chase is over and the novelty settles down. Most importantly, Louis (and Claudia) wanted ANSWERS. And all that withholding made Lestat look mighty sus. Which was the MAIN appeal Armand would have, as the âoldestâ vampire around.
Again: This is why Lestat clapped back in TVL. It gives ALL the deets, more knowledge & information than was even SAFE or ALLOWED under Mariusâ gag-order. Itâs also Lestatâs version of the juicy tell-all, giving his side of the story; what REALLY went down at 1132, spilling all the tea on what their relationship was actually like, underneath Louis spiting him in IWTV.
Even though Lestatâs Ep6 outburst was about Claudia, remember that Lestat sees himself as Claudia AND Louisâ MAKER, too. They are his fledglings, his responsibility, and essentially his CHILDRENâhe is their FATHER. So Lestat was equally mad at himself, and his own timid child-rearing spoiling LOUIS, letting Louis starve himself & spiral into depression & compromise on living like humans: SPITE.
Just as people question the degree to which Claudiaâs diaries are the âmost vs moreâ accurate/honest rendition of their life, Louis himself admitted that the book/film IWTV was defamatory, made in malice:
But again, Louis is unreliable. Heâs not a LIAR, but heâs nowhere near impartial or a neutral partyâand neither is Lestat, or even Claudia. Just like Daniel said about Claudiaâs diaries being published, at the end of the day, it really is left up to US, the audience (reader, viewer) to decide what is real and what isnât, whoâs being more or less honest/accurate. Because at the end of the day, Loustatâs story IS an effed up Gothic romance, but itâs still just a storyânot a documentary of cold hard facts, or even the kind of investigative journalism Danielâs interviews are touted to be. And lord have mercy, we havenât even addressed what role Armand mightâve played in this whole thing, either. đ
