Louis de Pointe du Lac is a fictional character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. He is the protagonist who tells his story in the first novel of the series, Interview with the Vampire. He begins his life as a mortal man in the 1700s and later becomes a vampire.
Contents
Publication history
Louis is introduced in Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire which was to become the first novel in The Vampire Chronicles series. In the first novel he is the protagonist, where he explains his full backstory prior to transformation living in New Orleans as a plantation owner via oral retelling. Throughout the series, Louis becomes a secondary character and primary love interest to Lestat de Lioncourt.
Character development
Louis' creation began in the 1960s, where Rice had written a loose short story with him as the protagonist. In his early development, Rice felt that the creation of the character was her surrender to the guilt she'd felt towards her daughter's death. Quoting "When a child dies, you feel as if you should have been able to do something.'' Rice decided to not use Louis as a primary character during the rest of the series because she didn't self-identify with him any longer, feeling closer to Lestat instead.
Fictional character biography
Physical appearance
During the first interview, Louis is described as having bright green eyes with a bleached face and medium length black hair which curls at the ends. He is described as wearing a long cape, with a white-collared shirt, and black silk tie during the interview. In the book The Vampire Armand, Armand describes Louis as human in appearance because of his voice and lack of supernatural prowess. He also states that Louis has long and delicate fingers. Throughout the series, Louis' clothing becomes more frayed.
History
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' 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.
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.
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.
Fledglings
Madeleine
Merrick Marie Louise Mayfair
Appearances in other media
In Neil Jordan's 1994 film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, Louis is portrayed by Brad Pitt. Despite largely sticking to the events of the book, this version of the character is presented as having lost his pregnant wife and child before being turned by Lestat rather than his brother like in the book.
Louis is absent from Michael Rymer's 2002 film adaptation of The Queen of the Damned, despite appearing in the book. His role as Lestat's love interest, and later his companion in the epilogue, is instead filled by Jesse Reeves (played by Marguerite Moreau).
Louis appeared as the 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 portrays Louis in the 2022 television series by AMC. His backstory is radically altered in the show, changing him from a sexually ambiguous white slave owner from the 18th century to a gay closeted black brothel owner in the early 20th century, with more focus given towards his relationships with Armand and Daniel Molloy.