Louis de Pointe du Lac
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Louis de Pointe du Lac is a fictional character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. He begins his life as a mortal man and later becomes a vampire. He is the protagonist who tells his story in Interview with the Vampire (1976, the first book of The Vampire Chronicles). He also features in The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Prince Lestat and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.
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Mortal
Louis de Pointe du Lac is born in France on October 4, 1766, to a Roman Catholic family who emigrated to North America when he was very young. His mother, sister, and brother, Paul, live just outside New Orleans on one of their two indigo plantations, named Pointe du Lac after the family. Louis's brother, who insists that he has religious visions, dies after a terrible quarrel with Louis. Louis blames himself for his brother's death, becoming self-destructive, cynical, and desperate. He longs for the release of death, but lacks the courage to commit suicide. He takes to frequenting taverns and other places of ill repute, instigating fights and duels in order that someone might kill him.
Vampire
During an incident in a tavern, Louis catches the eye of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat appears to Louis as an angel and offers him an alternative to his desperate, meaningless life. Lestat, upon seeing for the first time Louis's "fine black hair" and deep green eyes, and sensing his passion, is seduced not only by Louis's beauty, but also by his tragedy and human heart; "He seduced the tenderness in me." Lestat makes Louis into a vampire at the age of 25, his immortal companion in 1791, and lives with Louis for nearly 70 years.
However, Lestat is damaged from his experiences in France and the Old World. He is not as gentle a tutor or as much of a friend as Louis would like, one of the central themes in Interview with the Vampire. An example of this is an anguished comment recalled by Louis in his memoir, where he muses: "I was thinking how sublime friendship between Lestat and me might have been; how few impediments to it there would have been, and how much to be shared."
While Louis and Lestat are often at odds with one another, they eventually form an uneasy truce, with Lestat coming to regard Louis as a kind of soulmate, albeit one who resists his "teachings" on killing and living life as a vampire. There is an element of sexual attraction implicit in their relationship; in the books after Interview with the Vampire, Lestat refers to Louis as his lover.
Interview with the Vampire details an ersatz familial relationship between Louis, Lestat and a third vampire, Claudia. Louis, in a moment of weakness, feeds from a five-year-old orphan he finds in an abandoned house within the plague-ridden section of New Orleans. Lestat contrives to make her into a vampire to, in his own words, "bind Louis to [him]." In giving Louis Claudia to love and look after, he curses Claudia by condemning her to the form of a little girl.
Louis accepts his "family", taking the "maternal" role with Claudia and finding contentment in their townhouse at Rue Royale. Claudia however, matures psychologically but remains in her child form. After decades of being trapped in the form of a small child, she comes to hate both of her "parents" for giving her immortality. She rebels against Lestat, poisoning him and setting their home ablaze with Lestat inside in 1860. She escapes with Louis to eastern Europe to look for other vampires. After years of searching and becoming disillusioned, they travel to Paris.
In Paris, they find fifteen vampires who have disguised themselves as human actors pretending to be vampires at the Théâtre des Vampires. However, in the eyes of this coven of vampires, Louis and Claudia are criminals. The coven finds out that both attempted to kill their maker Lestat, and believe they ought to pay for their crime with their lives since killing fellow vampires is against the rules of the vampiric lifestyle. Louis escapes death after Lestat pleads for his life. Claudia is exposed to the sun and destroyed.
Louis burns down the Théâtre, killing the vampires there as revenge for Claudia's death and drifts through the world with the Theatre's former leader, Armand, whom he had fallen in love with. They separate in the late 1980s in New Orleans.
In the early 1920s, Louis claims to have discovered Lestat in New Orleans, lost in a catatonic state. Louis turns his back on him in pity and disgust. (This may be a fabrication by Louis to lead Daniel to Lestat's haunt, on which Lestat remarks in his memoir, "Louis [...] had all but drawn a map and placed an X on the very spot in New Orleans where I slumbered [...] and what his intentions were, were not clear." Lestat also mentions, in The Tale of the Body Thief, that Louis "made up" this scene. In The Vampire Lestat, Lestat does not mention meeting Louis again in New Orleans before undertaking his long sleep.)
Louis and Lestat are reunited at the end of the novel The Vampire Lestat in 1985 when Lestat is a rock superstar. In the events of The Queen Of The Damned, Louis and other vampires come together at Maharet's house in the Sonoma Compound to fight against Akasha.
Louis is one of the only vampires to refuse the powerful blood offered by Maharet and Lestat, preferring to gain strength with age. However at the end of Merrick, one of the Vampire Chronicles, Louis puts himself into the sun after making Merrick a vampire. Lestat, David Talbot, and Merrick then give Louis some of their blood (Lestat and David's containing the power of some of the oldest and most powerful vampires in the world) to save Louis's life. It is noted by David Talbot that with this transfusion of blood Louis may have lost some of his humanity and become more vampiric in nature and has become almost equal to Lestat in power.
In Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Louis leaves Armand and his home at Trinity Gate to reunite with Lestat, who has now taken up the role as leader of the vampire tribe. Lestat requests Louis return with him to the chateau in France as his companion and confidante; Louis agrees and becomes consort to Lestat, taking an active role in solving the dilemma the tribe face in that novel.
Fledglings
- Madeleine
- Merrick Marie Louise Mayfair
{{#section-h:List of The Vampire Chronicles characters|Family tree}}
Appearances in other media
In Neil Jordan's 1994 film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, Louis is portrayed by Brad Pitt.
Louis appeared as a character in the short-lived Broadway show Lestat: The Musical composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and was played by Jim Stanek.
Jacob Anderson will portray Louis in the upcoming AMC television series.
