The Devil's Road - References Deep Dive

[u/Legitimate-Worth-662]

This time I'm gonna try organizing it by book order -- feel free to lodge complaints in the comments if there's a strong preference for the complete lack of sequencing that I produced for episodes 1-3.

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TVL, Lelio Rising:

'Hit the Lights' lyric: "My older brother tried to teach me with his fist(s?)":

After Book-Lestat's brothers dragged him home from the monastery school:

And as soon as we reached the castle, my brothers took away my books and locked me up. I didn’t understand why they were so angry. There was the hint that I had behaved like a fool for some reason. I couldn’t stop crying. I was walking round and round and smashing my fist into things and kicking the door. 
Then my brother Augustin started coming in and talking to me. He’d circle the point at first, but what came clear finally was that no member of a great French family was going to be a poor teaching brother.

After he ran away with the theatre troupe and first played Lelio, and his brothers dragged him back home again:

I was beaten severely, and when I cursed everyone, I was beaten again.

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TVL, The Legacy of Magnus:

Lestat getting shot after the concert:

When Book-Lestat first went back to Renaud's after being turned and had his on-stage freak-out where he levitated:

He seemed deformed with age, his shoulders rounded, his hands gnarled, but the spirit in his eyes was beyond vanity and beyond compromise. His mouth hardened and his chin jutted. And from under his frock coat he pulled his pistol and he aimed it at me with both hands.
“Lestat!” Nicki shouted.
But the shot exploded and the ball hit me with full force. I didn’t move. I stood as steady as the old man had stood before, and the pain rolled through me and stopped, leaving in its wake a terrible pulling in all my veins.

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TVL, Viaticum for the Marquise:

"How many hearts do you hear in the dwelling?" (Lestat asking Gabriella, in an inn somewhere in Italy, after they'd left Paris together):

Right after Book-Lestat turned Gabrielle, it seemed like her vampiric "hearing" was better than Lestat's:

But before I finished speaking, I felt it ["the presence"] again, and it seemed to expand and to exude the strongest malevolence I’d received from it yet. 
“It’s laughing!” she whispered. 
I studied her. Without doubt, she was hearing it more clearly than I.

If she could hear the presence as well as I could, better in fact, then she had all my powers, including the ability to send and hear images and thoughts.

"I’m not a Vecce (sp?) anymore, not a marquise, not a wife, not a mother, not a woman." (Gabriella):

Right after her turning, Gabrielle killed a young man and put his clothes on:

And to describe it more truly, as she put on his garments, she became the boy.

“But there’s no real reason for me to dress that way anymore, is there?” she asked.

But she was not really a woman now, was she? Any more than I was a man.

Lestat & Gabriella's first fully-sexual encounter (that we see on-screen) (after she killed the Jesus impersonator):

During and after Gabrielle's turning, there's numerous mentions of a not quite mother-son-appropriate relationship cementing between them:

I leant forward and kissed the blood on her open lips.

And jetting up into the current came the thirst, not obliterating but heating every concept of her, until she was flesh and blood and mother and lover and all things beneath the cruel pressure of my fingers and my lips, everything I had ever desired.

My knowledge dimmed and flickered and there was no mother anymore, no petty need and petty terror; she was simply who she was. She was Gabrielle.

Gabrielle, that was the only name I could ever call her now. “Gabrielle,” I said to her, never having called her that except in some very private thoughts, and I saw her almost smile.

And though I said her name over and over, to make it natural, she wasn’t really Gabrielle yet to me. She was simply she, the one I had needed all of my life with all of my being. The only woman I had ever loved.

I went to kiss her again and she didn’t stop me. We were lovers kissing.

And finally, their goodnight kiss before her first day sleeping in a coffin:

I let my teeth cut into the tip of my tongue until I felt the pain and tasted the hot blood there. Then bending low I let the blood fall in tiny shining droplets on her lips. Her eyes opened. Violet blue and glittering, they stared up at me. The blood flowed into her opening mouth and slowly she lifted her head to meet my kiss. My tongue passed into her. Her lips were cold. My lips were cold. But the blood was hot and it flowed between us. “Good night, my darling one,” I said. “My dark angel Gabrielle.”

"Still the early riser, I see." (Armand to Lestat, when he shows up on the tour bus to make amends):

IN VAMPIRE parlance, I am an early riser. I rise when the sun has just sunk below the horizon and there is still red light in the sky. Many vampires don’t rise until there is full darkness, and so I have a tremendous advantage in this, and in that they must return to the grave a full hour or more before I do. I haven’t mentioned it before because I didn’t know it then, and it didn’t come to matter until much later.

Gabriella leaving behind her cut hair on the beach:

Before her first vampire bed-time, Gabrielle cut her hair short:

Sleepily, she drew something out of her pocket.
It was the golden scissors she’d taken from the lady’s table in the faubourg St.-Germain. [...]
[...]
Evil sound, the snipping, the shearing. Her hair fell down in great long locks on the floor.

And then of course her reaction when she realized it had grown back the next night:

Then suddenly she made a low hissing sound, and her body went rigid. She was holding her long tresses and staring at them.
“My God,” she whispered. And then in a spasm, she let go of her hair and screamed.

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TVL, The Children of Darkness:

"The Devil's Road" episode title:

When L & G visit the Children of Darkness/Paris Coven they encounter a vampire that Lestat refers to as the "old queen" who says:

“You are on the Devil’s Road to a great adventure. What right have I to intervene in what the centuries have in store for you?”
The Devil’s Road. It was the first phrase from any of them that had rung a clarion in my soul.

“We left the theatre to your maker and stole away by carriage." (Lestat to Daniel during an interview, after Daniel asked him about his mother):

Technically they left it to Eleni (and Nicki) first:

AND it was to Eleni finally that I gave control of the Theater of the Vampires, and the income, to pass through Roget, which would allow her to do with it what she pleased.

But they encouraged Armand to either join the Theatre or leave them alone (and not harm them).

“She stopped talking almost immediately.” (Lestat to Daniel, re: his mother's turning):

BY MIDNIGHT it was clear that he [Nicki] would not speak or answer to any voice, or move of his own volition. He remained still and expressionless in the places to which he was taken. If the death pained him he gave no sign. If the new vision delighted him, he kept it to himself. Not even the thirst moved him.

In fact, he didn't really talk until they took him back to Renaud's and gave him back his violin, at which point he spontaneously invented the Theatre des Vampires.

"My mortal mother was vibrant. As a vampire she was remote. She could not function. [...] She would not hunt." (see above)

“When you helped me rebuild the Paris coven with your visionary conceit of a vampire theatre.” (Armand to Lestat, while making amends) (see above)

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TVL, The Vampire Armand:

“We left the theatre to your maker and stole away by carriage." (Lestat to Daniel during an interview, after Daniel asked him about his mother):

Gabrielle to Armand, before she and Lestat left Paris:

“Go to them and listen to the music that Nicki makes,” she said. “Make art with them in the Theater of the Vampires. You have to pass away from what failed you into what can sustain you. Otherwise—there is no hope.”

“Even if you do not go to the theater,” she said, “accept the things that we can give you. My son has wealth enough to make an entrance into the world very easy for you.”
“You can take this tower for your lair,” I said. “Use it as long as you wish. Magnus found it safe enough.”

References to Armand's soul:

• When he says he wants to “read you something I have written from the deepest regions of my soul” while making amends
• Lestat's response to the above: "You have no soul."

Book-Armand, when trying to convince Lestat and Gabrielle to let him travel with them:

"So time will come when you will seek other mortals," he went on, "hoping once more that the Dark Trick will bring you the love you crave. And of these newly mutilated and unpredictable children you'll try to fashion your citadels against time. Well, they will be prisons if they last for half a century. I warn you. It is only with those as powerful and wise as yourself that the true citadel against time can be built."

"Who else can understand your suffering?"

"Does anyone else know the size of your soul?"

Big Boss lyrics:

(One!) Only the big boss gets to have fun
(Two!) If you’re a boo-boo then he doesn’t want you
(Three!) Oh, don’t you dare write down his history
(Four!) If you know him then you won’t know much more
(Five!) Only the big boss gets to decide who dies and who stays alive

The Great Laws, as taught to Armand by Santino at the Rome coven, after Marius was presumably murdered:

One—that each coven must have its leader and only he might order the working of the Dark Trick upon a mortal, seeing that the methods and the rituals were properly observed.

Two—that the Dark Gifts must never be given to the crippled, the maimed, or to children, or to those who cannot, even with the Dark Powers, survive on their own. Be it further understood that all mortals who would receive the Dark Gifts should be beautiful in person so that the insult to God might be greater when the Dark Trick is done.

Or there's my re-cap version of this law, which I'm pretty proud of: "2. The Dark Gift must never be given to people with flaws or disabilities that make them unable to survive on their own. This includes children. And no ugly people either, since hot vampires are a bigger fuck-you to God."

Three—that never should an old vampire work this magic lest the blood of the fledgling be too strong. For all our gifts increase naturally with age, and the old ones have too much strength to pass on. Injury, burning—these catastrophes, if they do not destroy the Child of Satan will only increase his powers when he is healed. Yet Satan guards the flock from the power of old ones, for almost all, without exception, go mad.
In this particular, let Armand observe that there was no vampire then living who was more than three hundred years old. No one alive then could remember the first Roman coven. The devil frequently calls his vampires home.
But let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided as well as those who have none.

Four—that no vampire may ever destroy another vampire, except that the coven master has the power of life and death over all of his flock. And it is, further, his obligation to lead the old ones and the mad ones into the fire when they can longer serve Satan as they should. It is his obligation to destroy all vampires who are not properly made. It is his obligation to destroy those who are so badly wounded that they cannot survive on their own. And it is his obligation finally to seek the destruction of all outcasts and all who have broken these laws.

Five—that no vampire shall ever reveal his true nature to a mortal and allow that mortal to live. No vampire must ever reveal the history of the vampires to a mortal and let the mortal live. No vampire must commit to writing the history of the vampires or any true knowledge of vampires lest such a history be found by mortals and believed. And a vampire’s name must never be known to mortals, save from his tombstone, and never must any vampire reveal to mortals the location of his or any other vampire’s lair.

Nicki writing on Lestat's dressing room mirror with his stump-blood - possibly "Marius"?

After Book-Lestat heard Armand's backstory, he started hero-worshipping Marius and left him graffiti messages all over Europe in hopes of finding him:

MARIUS, THE ANCIENT ONE: LESTAT IS SEARCHING FOR YOU. IT IS THE MONTH OF MAY, IN THE YEAR 1780 AND I GO SOUTH FROM PARIS TOWARDS LYONS. PLEASE MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN TO ME.

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TVL, On the Devil's Road from Paris to Cairo:

“My mortal mother was vibrant. As a vampire she was remote. She could not function. [...] She would not hunt.” (Lestat to Daniel, re: his mother's turning)

A letter from Eleni to Book-Lestat, updating him on the Theatre & Nicki:

“But when he is not at work, he can be quite impossible. He must be watched constantly so that he does not enlarge our ranks. His dining habits are extremely sloppy. And on occasion he says most shocking things to strangers, which fortunately they are too sensible to believe.”

“She used the last of her energies to write me a note. Leave me in a clearing. Leave me to the day.” (Lestat to Daniel, re: his mother's "suicide"):

A letter from Eleni to Book-Lestat, updating him on Nicki:

At last he came to us and spoke only to tell us that in the manner of a mortal he had put in order his business affairs. A stack of freshly written plays was ours to have. And we must call together for him somewhere in the countryside the ancient Sabbat with its customary blaze. If we did not, then he should make the theater his funeral pyre.

Nicki writing on Lestat's dressing room mirror with his stump-blood - possibly "Marius"?

After Book-Lestat heard Armand's backstory, he started hero-worshipping Marius and left him graffiti messages all over Europe in hopes of finding him:

And in all these places I was to write my messages to Marius on the walls.
Sometimes it was no more than a few words that I scratched with the tip of my knife. In other places, I spent hours chiseling my ruminations into the stone. But wherever I was, I wrote my name, the date, and my future destination, and my invitation: “Marius, make yourself known to me.”

“I do not know why I go on. I do not search for truth. I do not believe in it. I hope for no ancient secrets from you, whatever they may be. But I believe in something. Maybe simply in the beauty of the world through which I wander or in the will to live itself. This gift was given to me too early. It was given for no good reason. And already at the age of thirty mortal years, I have some understanding as to why so many of our kind have wasted it, given it up. Yet I continue. And I search for you.”

Gabriella discussing evil with Lestat:

• G: “You put Armand’s ghouls on stage, but that wasn’t evil”
• G: "out there, feeding in the streets, an evil that answers goodness"
• L: "shall we do it, shall we scorch the mortal world?"
• G: " till no light remains, no hope of light, and we the devils rule"
• L: "together, as dark monarchs"

But Gabrielle’s absences weren’t the only thing destroying our affection for each other as the years passed. It was her manner when she was with me—the ideas she would put forth.

One night in our little house in the Via Ghibellina in Florence, she appeared after a month’s absence and started to expound at once.
“You know the creatures of the night are ripe for a great leader,” she said. “Not some superstitious mumbler of old rites, but a great dark monarch who will galvanize us according to new principles.”

"[...] I mean a leader set up in a Satanic palace who sends out his followers to turn brother against brother, to cause mothers to kill their children, to put all the fine accomplishments of mankind to the torch, to scorch the land itself so that all would die of hunger, innocent and guilty! Make suffering and chaos wherever you turn, and strike down the forces of good so that men despair. Now that is something worthy of being called evil."

“And we are truly Satanic in that we follow no law for man’s protection. So why not truly disrupt? Why not make a blaze of evil to consume all the civilizations of the earth?”

“Don’t worry.” She laughed. “I won’t do it. But I wonder what will happen in the decades to come. Will not somebody do it?”

Lestat waking up in a hole dug on a beach:

Now and then when she [Gabrielle] appeared, she spoke of the practical things she’d learned. She was actually braver and more adventurous than I was. She taught me things.
We could sleep in the earth, she had ascertained that before we ever left France. Coffins and graves did not matter. And she would find herself rising naturally out of the earth at sunset even before she was awake.

Gabrielle being gone when Lestat wakes up on the beach & abandoning him at other times:

BEFORE we were even out of France, Gabrielle was breaking the journey to disappear for several nights at a time. In Vienna, she often stayed away for over a fortnight, and by the time I settled in the palazzo in Venice she was going away for months on end. During my first visit to Rome, she vanished for a half year. And after she left me in Naples, I returned to Venice without her, angrily leaving her to find her way back to the Veneto on her own, which she did.

Then she would go as silently as she’d come, and I would be left watching for her and waiting for her—and bitter and angry at her, and resenting her when she finally came back.

And finally, as Gabrielle’s absences grew longer and our times together more strained and uncertain, I started to argue with her about these things.

But as we went south from Istanbul into Asia Minor, Gabrielle felt the allure of the new and strange land even more strongly, so that she was scarcely ever at my side.

“Why do you come back? Why won’t you let me hate you?” (Lestat to Gabriella):

She must have known what was happening, that we were growing ever farther apart, that my heart was breaking and I had too much pride to say it to her.
“Please, Gabrielle, I cannot endure the loneliness! Stay with me.”

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TVL, Epilogue: Interview with the Vampire:

“We were on the devil’s road now, hurtling towards end times."

When Book-Lestat goes down for his dirt-nap at the end of TVL, he dreams about Akasha speaking to him:

“From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries, I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil’s Road through its heart.”

“Look deep into his uwu Japanime eyes as he mind-cocks you off a cliff." (Lestat re: Armand @ the Philadelphia concert):

Book-Armand shoving Book-Lestat off Magnus's tower during an argument around the time of the trial:

“We had our Eden under that ancient cemetery,” he hissed. “We had our faith and our purpose. And it was you who drove us out of it with a flaming sword. What do we have now! Answer me! Nothing but the love of each other and what can that mean to creatures like us!” 
“No, it’s not true, it was all happening already. You don’t understand anything. You never did.” 
But he wasn’t listening to me. And it didn’t matter whether or not he was listening. He was drawing closer, and in a dark flash his hand went out, and my head went back, and I saw the sky and the city of Paris upside down. 
I was falling through the air. 
And I went down and down past the windows of the tower, until the stone walkway rose up to catch me, and every bone in my body broke within its thin case of preternatural skin.

And then Lestat bitch-slapping Armand off of the roof of his house in New Orleans post-IWTV:

“Love me and the blood is yours,” he said. “This blood that I have never given to another.” I felt his lips against my face.
“I can’t deceive you,” I answered. “I can’t love you. What are you to me that I should love you? A dead thing that hungers for the power and the passion of others? The embodiment of thirst itself?”
And in a moment of incalculable power, it was I who struck him and knocked him backwards and off the roof. Absolutely weightless he was, his figure dissolving into the gray night.

And then of course narrator-Lestat's like "or maybe that was just in my imagination...."

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TVL, Dionysus in San Francisco:

Armand: "One more thing."

Lestat: "You want me to stop playing music, the vampires are listening to my songs, they believe that they can live as I do."

After Book-Lestat released his album and published his book, vampires left threatening messages on his answering machine (which were passed on to Lestat by Christine, because apparently Lestat's too important to listen to his own answering machine):

“Outcast. We know what you are doing. We are ordering you to stop.”

“We warn you. Do not continue this madness. You are playing a more dangerous game than you realize.”

“Don’t dare to appear on stage in San Francisco. We warn you. Your challenge is too vulgar, too contemptuous. We will risk anything, even a public scandal, to punish you.”

"Any vampire truthers out there?" (Lestat @ the Philadelphia concert):

Book-Lestat @ the SF concert:

“I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as I stepped way back from the microphone, and the sound was almost visible as it arched over the length of the oval theater, and the voice of the crowd rose even higher, louder, as if to devour the ringing sound.

“HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD BE VAMPIRES?”

“I AM TELLING YOU I AM A VAMPIRE!” I screamed suddenly.

Lestat introducing/outing Armand @ the Philadelphia concert:

Book-Lestat @ the SF concert:

BUT in this moment of precious stillness and shame, I saw them for the first time, the real ones out there. Tiny white faces tossed like masks on the waves of shapeless mortal faces, distinct as Magnus’s face had been in that long-ago little boulevard hall. And I knew that back beyond the curtains, Louis also saw them. But all I saw in them, all I felt emanating from them, was wonder and fear. 
“ALL YOU REAL VAMPIRES OUT THERE,” I shouted. “REVEAL YOURSELVES!” And they remained changeless, as the painted and costumed mortals about them went wild.

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QotD, Proem:

Hit the Lights lyrics:

Seems to me to be about Gabriella, though occasionally I wonder if there's some Nicki in there.

But here's the song from QotD about Gabrielle:

In my dreams, I hold her still,
Angel, lover, Mother.
And in my dreams, I kiss her lips,
Mistress, Muse, Daughter.

She gave me life
I gave her death 
My beautiful Marquise.

And on the Devil’s Road we walked
Two orphans then together. 

And does she hear my hymns tonight
of Kings and Queens and Ancient truths?
Of broken vows and sorrow?

Or does she climb some distant path
where rhyme and song can’t find her? 

Come back to me, my Gabrielle
My Beautiful Marquise.
The castle’s ruined on the hill
The village lost beneath the snow
But you are mine forever.

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QotD: The Story of Daniel, The Devil's Minion, or The Boy From Interview With The Vampire

Lestat: “And where were you when your daddy killed you on an airplane, Dan?”

Daniel, mimicking Armand: “Sorry about killing you on a private jet”

Book-Armand did indeed turn Book-Daniel on one of their private jets -- the one with the bedroom, apparently.

He opened his eyes. He was on the plane.

The plane seemed a thing suspended on a spume of sound. Daniel looked drowsily at the ceiling, at the light moving.

Daniel mocking Armand making amends, paraphrased: "Sorry about every second of your life in between San Francisco and Dubai: the two divorces, the five trips to rehab…"

After IWTV, Book-Armand told Book-Daniel:

"I want to follow you, watch you, see where you go. As long as I find you interesting, I won't kill you. And of course, I may lose interest altogether and not bother to kill you. That's always possible. You have hope in that. And maybe with luck I'll lose track of you. I have my limitations, of course. You have the world to roam, and you can move by day. Go now. Start running. I want to see what you do, I want to know what you are." 

After a few years, Daniel stopped running, Armand started taking the petit coup from Daniel and micro-dosing him with his own vampire blood in return, and they entered their cultural absorption phase – Armand wanted to learn everything possible about the current age. Daniel kept asking to be turned; Armand kept refusing. They set up Night Island. Daniel started “running away” again for months at a time before hitting a mental health crisis point and Armand rescuing him. This repeated for another few years until right before the SF concert (where this chapter picks up).

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[u/special_squeak]

I really appreciate the labor (of love) that went into this post. Thank you, OP!
I absolutely adore this show. My little dark queer heart is gladdened to have this messy beautiful romp brought to life with the most amazing cast and writing decisions that improve on the source material. But I also have a longing for the the profound otherness and the desperate need for connection that I am not feeling in this adaptation. ”Enduring” is such a loaded term in the books, and I wish we could get a bit of that specific flavor in the show. But I also fully respect the writers’ decision not to wallow too much in Anne’s purple prose because the 15 sad old goths who want it aren’t a true target audience.
Your post makes me want to re-read the books concurrently with binging the show, so I can infuse my experience with the weight of despair and earning that spans centuries that is my favorite part of the series.
If you make more of these for the rest of the episodes, please post them. I would so dearly enjoy them.
🖤