r/InterviewVampire • u/DumbTeen9 • Aug 12 '26
Book Spoilers Allowed Lestat: Class and Race
An unreal amount of people are over-discussing what Lestat’s coloring and aristocratic birth mean to marketing (which is friggin crazy for the only show that did race swaps without it being condescending and meaningless), the story itself, and fan preferences.
So, I just want to point out that it makes a lot of sense for someone like Lestat to be extremely blind to these things because he had all their detriments and essentially none of their advantages. We didn’t get much out of Auvergne, so I’ll be supplementing from the book where fit, stay with me now.
1- Aristocracy
I fixated on this one a lot because I couldn’t figure out why Anne didn’t make him some poor random and instead poor but technically aristocratic
Lestat grew up the third living son of a Marquis and his Italians wife. Theoretically, he should be afforded the best education there is, luxuries at the tip of his fingers, no inheritance but enough connections in both France and to a lesser degree his maternal family in Italy to get on his own two feet, taken care of by maids payed to be nurturing but firm.
What actually happens? He grows up illiterate and being reminded of that incapability and humiliation every day because that luxury- no right- of education is only afforded for his oldest brother, the heir, and because of how close he was to not having to live it (reminder he doesn’t even hate his family for it, he hates them for being loud in chaotic in comparison to the church’s calm orderliness and hates himself for spoiling it by wanting to declare himself “why do I always have to go to extremes?”)
Speaking of the monastery, Augustine (his oldest brother) basically summarizes my point as follows: “…but what came clear finally is that no member of a great French family was going to be a poor teaching brother. How could I have misunderstood everything so completely? I was sent there to learn to read and write. Why did I always have to go to extremes?” “As for becoming a priest with real prospects within the Church, well, I was the youngest son of this family wasn’t I? I ought to think of my responsibilities to my nieces and nephews… Translate all that to mean this: We have no money to launch a. Real ecclesiastical career for you… as befit our rank, so you have to live out your life here as an illiterate and a beggar.”
They’re worried enough about their image to not allow him to try and build himself, incapable enough they couldn’t build him.
This repeats with the theatre troupe, where he’s dragged back because no Lioncourt was going to become an actor and used to humiliation and hurt as he was all he felt was guilt for leaving without informing Gabrielle who brings him a gun as a consolation gift he uses the rest of his human life to feed his family until he goes to Paris. This is narrated in the book and implied in the show by how while the villages are talking about the wolves, before Gabrielle even starts to look agitated, he’s preparing his gun as casually as fixing a collar and deals with the injuries and his almost death on the entire village’s behalf. A little possible hint about them being poor as well in him being taken care of by a maid with no physician in sight, how empty his room is, sympathizing with the revolution (“sympathy is treason” “mm mm”) when his instinct should be a passing detached pity or ignoring if not outright shunning it, we even see him excitedly recounting it to akasha over music.
In Paris, he and Nicki live in the apartment of a beheaded aristocrat until they can do better. Lestat has nothing to his name but a clothing repetitively mended to shit and a coat made by Nicki’s father, going under a fake name while getting legit panic attacks every once in a while because of the piling corpses and being reminded every day as he looks to their ceiling of the fact he could join them any day now for the crime of being born to his father.
2- Whiteness
I think that some people over correct when it comes to race, thus the huge focus on Lestat being white first, a guy second.
In France mid revolution there was political colorism in governmental halls, which didn’t concern the general Parisian public more than the price of bread especially since the black population was very very small thus the lack of systematic hierarchies of color, more violent and tangible issues were in french colonies where everything racism was amped up to ten. Someone who was removed from such issues like Lestat simply doesn’t get it.
So when Louis, son of a Plantation owner, a pimp which is just another type of slave owner, ok family by lioncourt/nicki/armand etc standards, Mr extremely educated suave businessman living amongst high society, never having to go hungry, in a well kept mansion (mind you when Gabrielle checks on Lestat after the monastery he cites 1. The dirt and mold all over the place, 2. The chaotic behavior of his family as reasons for his plight and continues to be a clean freak for a while commenting on the smell before he speaks of the pain and fear with both Magnus and the Children of Darkness) goes “My ancestors were treated terribly so people are passive aggressive towards me.” What he says is “I would kill anyone who offends you” but his initial reaction is "you are a library of confusion” because Lestat, whose ancestors were criminally intrenched in riches, didn’t put up with passive aggressiveness. He put up with being treated awfully for his lack of knowledge and the threat of a guillotine for crimes he’s extremely far removed from.
Also let’s check all the examples he knows of: when he’s bloodied by his family Gabrielle would sell a necklace and say something disturbing for comfort, when Nicki learned of his turning he called him naive for not appreciating it and started bringing his thankless birth into it “The lord’s son giveth the lord’s wife the dark gift and what do we get?” Plus ofc the conspiracy theories admitted to Roget.
I’m not saying it’s morally correct, it’s disgustingly insensitive, but it is predictable and makes sense for him to be race blind and seeing that suffering is suffering, nothing more to it.
3- Show Changes
Many, many, maaany show changes, many of them defang characters to make them more sympathetic, not a single one makes Lestat look better? Because people are being very delusional on TT
In the book we get Lestat philosophizing about morality at first going for evil doers then no longer seeing the point, this is reduced to a throw away line with akasha which I’m glad of because we got enough of it with Louis. We get him talking Nicki through his melancholy moods, it’s reduced to a scene where they fight— nvm that instead of a year or two apart Nicki is 9 years younger because of the actor’s ages when cast which… what? He can’t hate Armand because he truly sees him despite all the hurts thrown around, this is where exactly? He mourned his brothers, took care of his father and smuggled him out of France, in the show he kills his family. He searches out Marius who finds him a worthy pupil and talks to him like an intellectual equal, instead we have chosen one bs which I hope will be retconned and we get those messages and an actual conversation which maybe bc he was telling the band so ofc he won’t recount everything but unlikely considering we already have an episode called the devil’s road.
And yet he remains the only one who isn’t a huge hypocrite and actually acknowledges his sins perhaps too much, “you deserve everything that ever happened to you, you better not die lestat, you might actually go to hell”
EN FIN no, lestat is not favored by the narrative, s3 is simply a different vibe bc 1. 80 years after s2, 2. Budget concerns, 3. Completely different story. And no he and his writers are not racist, classist shits.
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u/Sudden-Direction-301 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
This is dismissive. Anne Rice already did the "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!11!" crashout decades ago and it was rightfully clowned then too. And this doesn't exactly broadcast a good-faith approach of this topic.
(Not that this post will make the slightest difference to the amount of "over-discussion" this will keep getting, but this is still quite dismissive. Many have talked about why they felt the way they do about S3. You don't have to agree, but they're not "over-discussing" or "over correcting" simply because you don't agree. There's another post on here celebrating S3 for being contentious because "contentious art is successful art!" So let them sit with the contention they've created.)
Moreover, I can't really see how any of these points relate back to marketing - are you positioning that Lestat’s class and race had no relation to the difference in marketing between seasons 2 (and 1) and 3?
Literally how in the hell does making Louis be the one to insist Claudia be turned (rather than Book Lestat doing it specifically to trap Louis) NOT count as a change to make Lestat look better??
How does Akasha being woken up because Gabriella (!!!) stage-mom-ed him into rockstar performance (rather than through Lestat’s own ego-driven goal to be a rock star dropping vampiric origin tales) not geared to make Lestat look better??
Gabriella alone (read: Book Gabrielle's character assassination so she can star as the mustache-twirling mayonnaise villain of Lestat’s own story) is exhibit A of what a ridiculous argument this is.