Lestat de Lioncourt (pronounced les-tät with a rather French flair, according to Blackwood Farm [1] and Blood Canticle [2]) is a fictional character in The Vampire Chronicles novels written by Anne Rice. He began his life as a mortal man, and later became a vampire. He is the narrator and also protagonist of many of the Vampire Chronicles, including The Vampire Lestat [3].
Lestat’s background
Lestat is the seventh son of the marquis d'Auvergne Auvergne and was born in Auvergne, France in a castle belonging to his ancestors. Despite his apparent highborn background he grew up in relative poverty: his ancestors squandered the family riches, and being the youngest in the family, he stood to inherit nothing.
Perhaps the most pivotal moment in his mortal life was when he was nearly killed by a pack of wolves he was hunting in mountains surrounding Auvergne. He returned home a different person, determined to follow his own path.
After leaving his family, Lestat became an actor in Paris. During a performance, he attracted the attention of an ancient vampire named Magnus, who abducted and held him prisoner.
Becoming a vampire
Finding Lestat "a worthy heir," Magnus made him a vampire. However, Magnus, weary of life, committed suicide soon after by throwing himself on a huge bonfire, leaving Lestat to fend for himself without any kind of guidance. Lestat found himself heir to nearly inexhaustible wealth, and began an adventure that led him all around the world.
Throughout his long life, Lestat was plagued by common philosophical questions, such as "Are my actions good or bad?", "Is there a God?", "Am I in His Plan?", "What happens after death?", "What makes a person happy?" He found himself more in love with humanity than ever before, even if his relationship with mankind was savage. He saw life as "the Savage Garden", filled with beauty and death.
In the space of only a few centuries, Lestat became one of the most powerful of all vampires, surpassed only by the most ancient ones who age in the millennia. This was in part because the blood he received from Magnus, one such ancient, was incredibly powerful, and because he had a relationship with the vampire queen Akasha. Because of his boldness, Lestat's seniors referred to him affectionately as 'the Brat Prince', a title of which he was very fond. He was very vain and concerned with fashion, and would pause mid-narrative to remind the reader what he was wearing. Sexually ambiguous, he was attracted to whomever most interested him at the time. Most of his early experiences were with male companions. He himself explained this by saying the women in previous centuries simply weren't that interesting.
One such male companion was Louis de Pointe du Lac, a young Creole aristocrat from New Orleans whom Lestat turned into a vampire in the 18th century and with whom he would live, travel and kill with for almost a century to come. Though Louis claimed that Lestat made him into a vampire because Lestat merely wanted his plantation, Lestat refutes these claims in his own book and says it was rather because he fell "fatally in love" with Louis. Their relationship started badly with mistrust and half-truths, though Lestat gradually came to regard his friend as a kind of soulmate, albeit one who often resisted his "teachings" on killing and living life as a vampire. There was a certain element of sexual attraction implicit in their relationship, but whether it was actually consummated is a matter of debate.
The two "adopted" a young orphan named Claudia in 1795, and Lestat turned her into a vampire over Louis' objections. While Lestat spoiled her and tried to teach her how to become a vampire, it was Louis she truly loved, something Lestat resented greatly.
In 1860, after 65 years of living together, Claudia rebelled and tried to kill Lestat by cutting his throat and dumping him in a swamp, then again by burning down the Spanish Quarter house they lived in, horribly disfiguring him.
In the late 1920s (1988 in the film version), Louis once again discovered Lestat, who was once again living in New Orleans in a catatonic state. Louis turned his back on him in pity and disgust. This version of events is again refuted by Lestat, who said that he had no contact with Louis in that era, although he had been visited by Armand around that time. Whatever the truth, Louis and Lestat reunited in the 1980s, only to be caught in the events that are detailed in The Queen of the Damned.
Overall, Lestat tends to be an extremely unreliable narrator, in that books in the Vampire Chronicles written by him tend to gloss over his faults and exaggerate (or make up) his virtues. This is confirmed in the book The Tale of the Body Thief, when Louis attacks Lestat for constantly claiming in his books that certain events move him to tears. Louis sarcastically remarking although he knew Lestat for more than two centuries, he doesn't remember him crying at all.
Lestat in other media
Lestat was played by Tom Cruise in Neil Jordan's 1994 film adaptation of Interview with the vampire [4] . The movie also starred Brad Pitt as Louis, Kirsten Dunst as Claudia, and Antonio Banderas as Armand, the leader of a cult of vampires who briefly takes Louis and Claudia under his wing after they escape Lestat.
Stuart Townsend played Lestat in the 2002 film adaptation of The Queen of the Damned, co-starring R&B singer Aaliyah as Akasha. In this adaptation, Lestat was not only a vampire but also a rock star (an aspect of his life which does appear in The Vampire Lestat, but is not dealt with at any real length until the next book, Queen of the Damned).
Opening on Broadway in March 2006, with a pre-Broadway opening in December 2005, and running until May 2006, Lestat: The Musical features music by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The role of Lestat was performed by veteran Broadway actor Hugh Panaro. An Original Broadway Cast Album was recorded in May 2006 a few days before Warner Bros. Theatrical Ventures announced the show would be closing the following week. The OBC was originally set to be released on July 22nd by Mercury Records but has since been delayed indefinately.
See also