Though not officially given the moniker “Brat Prince” until much later in the series, in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, Lestat cements himself as a flawed but not unlovable hero. One might argue that Louis’s narrative is driven by ego, while from his humble 18 th-century aristocratic origins to his modern-day rock superstardom, Lestat’s is charmingly vain. However, while Lestat does not directly address many of Louis’s claims (he writes, “As for the lies told, the mistakes he made, well, I forgive him his excess of imagination, his bitterness, and his vanity, which was, after all, never very great”), he does tell his own version of events-namely, Louis and Claudia’s “trial” by Armand’s coven at the Théâtre des Vampires-and dig deep into his knowledge and understanding of vampiric nature (“I never revealed to him half my powers, and with reason, because he shrank in guilt and self-loathing from using even half of his own”) which often contradicts Louis’s recounting of events. As autobiographical narrations with some degree of overlap, both novels share some commonalities in plot and timeline. Narrated by the titular character shortly his reawakening in the 1980s (after a fifty-five-year long sleep during which INTERVIEW has been published as a fictional novel by The Boy), Lestat’s tale is a direct response to Louis’s. It’s a rumination on both Otherness and Immortality, and you don’t get that without leaning into the bizarre. By the end, you’re reeling from both the strangeness and the surfeit of ornamentation.” They’re not wrong-Anne is known for her rich language and love of the baroque, which can sometimes make for a dauting read-but it’s worth noting that THE VAMPIRE LESTAT is, in sum, less one vampire’s story and more a deep exploration of Anne’s entire vampire sociology. Even so, a reviewer for The New York Times bared their fangs at THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, saying it’s, “a lot like spending an entire day in a museum featuring only works by Henry Fuseli – all hung in heavy, gilt frames decorated with curlicues and malicious cherubs.
Published in 1985 to spend six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT came nearly a decade after the release of INTERVIEW, which received mixed reviews from critics (some praising Anne’s lush and hypnotic prose and others decrying the novel’s “ suckling eroticism”), but ultimately captured the still-beating hearts of mortal readers worldwide. After Louis de Point du Lac’s less-than-flattering portrayal of his maker, Lestat de Lioncourt, the Brat Prince himself takes center stage in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, the second installment in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles.
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