Behold: your hero for the duration, a perfect imitation of a blond, blue-eyed, six-foot Anglo-Saxon male. A vampire, and one of the strongest you'll ever encounter. My fangs are too small to be noticed unless I want them to be; but they're very sharp, and I cannot go for more than a few hours without wanting human blood.
Of course, I dont' need it that often. And just how often I do need it, I don't know, because I've never put it to the test.
I'm monstrously strong. I can take to the air. I can hear people talking on the other side of the city or even the globe. I can read minds; I can bind with spells.
I'm immortal. I've been virtually ageless since 1789.
There is Lestat, first and foremost, the author of four books of his life and adventures comprising everything you could ever possibly want to know about
him and some of us. Lestat, ever the maverick and the laughing trickster. Six feet tall, a young man of twenty when made, with huge warm blue eyes and thick flashy blond hair, square of jaw, with a generous beautifully shaped mouth and skin darkened by a sojourn in the sun which would have killed a weaker vampire, a ladies' man, an Oscar Wildeanfantasy, the glass of fashion, the most bold and disregarding dusty vagabond on occasion, loner, wanderer, heart breaker and wise guy, dubbd the "Brat Prince" by my old Master-yes, imagine it, my Marius, yes, my Marius, who did indeed survive the torches of the Roman Coven-dubbed by Marius the "Brat Prince" though in whose Court and by whose Divine Right and whose Royal Blood I should like to know. Lestat, stuffed with the blood of the most ancient of our kind, indeed the very blood of the Eve of our species, some five to seven thousand years the survivor of her Eden, a perfect horror who, emerging from the deceptive poetical title of Queen Akasha of Those Who Must Be Kept, almost destroyed the world.
Lestat not a bad friend to have, and one for whom I would lay down my immortal life, one for whose love and companionship I have ofttimes begged, one whom I find maddening and fascinating and intolerably annoying, one without whom I cannot exsist.
But there came an end to my long centuries of Satan's service.
Clad in red velvet it came, the very covering my old Master had so loved, the dream king, Marius. It came swaggering and camping through the lighted streets of Paris as though God had made it.
But it was a vampire child, the same as I, son of the seventeen hundreds, as they reckoned the time to be then, a blazing, brash, bumbling, laughing and teasing blood drinker in the guise of a young man, come to stomp out whatever sacred fire yet burnt in the cleft scar tissue of my soul and scatter the ashes.
It was The Vampire Lestat. It wasn't his fault. Had one of us been able to strike him down one night, break him apart with his own fancy sword and set him ablaze, we might have had a few more decades of our wretched delusions. But nobody could he was to damn strong for us.
Created by a powerful and ancient renegade, a legendary vampire by the name of Magnus, this Lestat, aged twenty in mortal years, an errant and penniless country aristocrat from the wild lands of Auvergne, who had thrown over custom and respectabilityand any hope of court ambitions, of which he had none anyway since he couldn't even read or write, and was too insulting to wait on any King or Queen, who became a wild blond-haired celebrety of the boulevard gutter theatricals, a lover of men and women. a laughing happy-go-lucky blindly ambitious self-loveing genius of sorts, this Lestat, this blue-eyed and infinetely confident Lestat, was orphaned on the very night of his creation by the ancient monster who made him, bequeathed to him a fortune in a secret room in a crumbling medieval tower, and then went into the eternal comfort of the ever devouring flames.
-skip a few paragraphs-
Lestat the smasher, the laughing one, the pirate who, worshiping nothing and no one, soon left Europe to find his own safe and agreeable territory in the colony of New Orleans in the New World
He had no comforting philosophy for me, the baby-faced deacon who had come forth out of the darkest prison, shorn of all belief, to put on the fashionable clothes of the age and walk once again on its high streets as I had done over three hundred years ago in Venice. *pg. 263-264
"My strength, my refusal to give up, those are the only components of my heart and soul which I can truley identify."
Lestat was born and raised in Auvergne, France. He was the youngest child of a poor aristocratic family and was the favorite of his father and his mother Gabrielle. While he was a young man his father sent him of to learn at a monastary. When Lestat decided that he wanted to stay there and become a priest, monk, whatever (I can't remember because it's been awhile since I've read the book and right now I can't look it up because I've borrowed it to someone.)his father sent his two brothers to go and bring him back saying that he was sent there to learn and nothing else. Some time later Lestat was at a fair and was watching a group of actors and decided that he was going to travel with them. He had traveled with them for a coulple nights before his father had his brothers bring him back once again.
One winter there was a pack of wolves invading the town and one day he set out to kill them wich was something that he had achieved. He however was sick for a few days and when he was better he was sent downstairs to meet a merchant and his son who had made him a cloak lined with the wolves fur. This is where Lestat first met Nicholas de Lenefent and the two of them spent alot of time together getting drunk in inns. After awhile the two of them decided that they were going to run away together to Pairs. Before leaving he spoke to hs mother who told him to write to her and she gave him some jewelry to sell for some money and off the two of them went.
Once they got to Paris Nicholas and Lestat got jobs working at a small bolevard theater. Nicholas was a violinist and Lestat basically cleaned up and helped out the preformers. Eventually Lestat got into being an actor himself and got the leading role as Lelio wich was the same character he played when he was traveling with the group of actors from the fair. Not too long afterwords he caught the eye of a vampire named Magnus who kidnapped Lestat from his flat and brought him to his castle where he turned Lestat into his heir against his own will before leaping into the flames himself.
Lestat spent some time wandering the streets of Paris before he eventually turned his ill mother Gabrielle and Nicholas both into vampires. Eventually he had to kill Nicholas because he went insane.
Some time later he met Marius who taught him how vampires had come to be. Marius later took him down to see Those Who Must Be Kept, Akasha and Enkil. Later that night when Marius went out he took his violin down to their lair to play it for him. He had somehow awakened Akasha who had him drink from her.
Now we skip to where he ended up in New Orleans. While in New Orleans he turned Louis into a vampire. Louis the whinny little vampire who doesn't want to be a vampire yet doesn't have the courange to end it. The second is Claudia a child vampire who latter grew to have huge hostilities towards Lestat.
The three of them lived in New Orleans together for many years until Claudia decided that she wanted to be free of Lestat and tried to kill him. Once she had achieved this goal she had him thrown in a swamp. However he didn't die and on the night that they were planning on a trip to the Old World to find others of "their kind" he showed up at the doorstep and tried to kill Claudia. It did not happen though because Louis set him on fire.
Years later he met up with them in Paris and had Claudia destroyed by the Theater des Vampires. If you seen the movie and havn't read the book the two of these versions of her death are different because the movie doesn't give any mention of Lestat having anything to do with it.
Now we'll skip to where Queen of the Damned comes in at. Alright Lestat eventually got a band together and they called themselves The Vampire Lestat. The music he played gave away the secrets of the vampires and how they came to be. Now many vampires didn't agree with this and were planing on killing him at a concert that was to be held in San Fransico. However at the concert things went totally wrong and vampires everywhere were being inflamed. Except for about twenty or so. The cause of all this mess was the Queen Akasha herself. Lestat's music had awakened her and she had a devious plan in mind. Later that night when Lestat was back at his house she kidnapped him and demanded that he be her lover. She began telling him of her plan to kill of the male sex and She would rule the world as a godess and Lestat would be her lover. However Lestat didn't really agree with her but because he loved her he kind of went along with it a few times.
Later on all the vampires gathered to gether along with Akasha and she told all of them her plans and told them she let them live because they were to rule along with her as her angels. Like Lestat none of them agreed to this and then she decided that all who opposed her woud die. She was going to start with Lestat first. But before she cold kill him an old enemy named Mekare killed her. Lestat wept at this but understood it. After this for a short time all the remaining vampires lived on an island resort owned by Armand called the Night Island.
After the vampires living on the Night Island went there seperate ways Lestat had spent some time in Miami and was spending time with David Talbot the Superior General of the Secret Order of the Talamasca. Eventually Lestat got board and wanted to end his life so he went out into the desert sun for three days but basically all he ended up with in the end was a really good tan. Anyway he starts missing what it's like to be human so when someone named Ranglan James gave him the opportunity to trade bodies with him after some agreements they made the deal. However Ranglan now had Lestat's body and had no plan on giving it back after so many days as was the plan. During this time Lestat rapes a women, falls in love with a nun while he is ill and eventually does the deed with her, gets attacked by Louis and ten million other things. Finally David helps him with a plan to get his body back wich is successfull. And in the end of that David ends up with the human body that Lestat had possessed. Lestat not beingable to resist the temptation anylonger turns David into a vampire against his own will. And then he decides he's going to restore his old house, the one he lived in with Louis and Claudia so many years ago and Louis, David, and himself would live there. Oh through all this mess he gets a German Shepard named Mojo. When he finally gets his real body back and reveals his true self to the nun she goes insane.That part is actually quite intresting.
Awhile later after that was done and over with Lestat is being followed by someone or something whom he believes to be Satan. When he meets him it is the devil himself and he request that he be called Memnoch. Memnoch decided that he wanted Lestat to be his 2nd in command and Lestat. After much debat Lestat decides that he'll let Memnoch show him Heaven and Hell. I'm not going to go into detail on that. I'll just say that it's very intresting Anyway while on this trip he drinks from the blood of Christ Himself and aquires Veronica's veil. Once he reaches hell he decides that he really isn't up to being Memnoch's right hand man. Memnoch however isn't pleased with this and tries to keep him from leaving. However he escapes but looses his eye in the process. Anyway when he gets back he reaccounts all that has happened to Armand, David, and Dora (She's the daughter of an earlier victem he had in the story who demands that he look after his daughter. She is a priestess who he too falls in love with.) When he finally reveals the veil to them she snatches it from the streets and runs outside shouting that she has the veil. In the end there is religious chaos with everyone rushing to see the veil. Armand and another vampire go into the sun giving their lives for God. Lestat goes insane and gets chained up inside the church by Maharet and I think Mekare. Anyway towards the end it has him so where he is unchained and he leaves the church and walks down St. Charles street all depressed. That's about it so far.
Note:Once I get all my books back I'll make this more indepth like I want it
In Interview With the Vampire he was played by Tom Cruise. Might I add that he did a superior preformance too.
When it was anounced that Tom Cruise was going to play Lestat the reasons for Anne Rice's dissaproval were that he was too young, too American, and wasn't androgogynous enough to play him. My thought on this are that wait a second Lestat was only in his early twenties when he was turned so how was Cruise too young to play him.
In 1993 when it was announced that Tom Cruise was going to play Lestat in Interview With The Vampire Anne Rice stated that she was not at all happy with the choice because she thought that Tom Cruise was too young, too American, and lacked androgeny. However when Anne finally saw the movie she thought that he had done a wonderful portrayal of him. Lestat was Cruise's only dark role. Cruise being picked to play the part of Lestat not only upsetted Anne Rice but many of her fans had felt the same way. It's a case that is still argued almost everytime the subject comes up. Trust me I've gone through it enough to know.
Maker: Magnus
Siblings: none
Offspring: Gabriel (his real mother), Nicholas de Lenfent (deceased), Louis de Pointe du Lac, Claudia (deceased), and David Talbot
