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1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_vampire_chronicles_anne_rice.png]]
2
3->''"What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world? And what is 'the end of the world' except a phrase, because who knows even what is the world itself? I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one shattered by the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was not a light, like the light by which God made the world before He had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe."''
4-->-- '''Louis de Pointe du Lac''', ''Interview with the Vampire''
5
6''The Vampire Chronicles'' are a series of novels by Creator/AnneRice that revolve around the adventures of an ever-changing coven of vampires. Throughout the series the protagonist, Lestat, seeks the origin of the vampire species and tries to fit his need for blood into a workable moral system.
7
8TropeCodifier for the modern day interpretation of VampiresAreSexGods. Before ''Interview'', the general public's image of vampires was based on {{Dracula}} via Creator/BelaLugosi and Creator/ChristopherLee, who, while a sex god in his own right, was mysterious, distant, threatening, and a metaphor for rape. Rice's vampires in contrast were modern, petulant, deliciously angsty, incredibly [[{{Camp}} fabulous]], and dripping with bisexual eroticism. These were vampires you were supposed to find attractive. The {{Goth}} scene owes a ton to ''Interview with the Vampire''.
9
10[[AC: Books in this series:]]
11# ''Interview With the Vampire'' (1976)
12# ''The Vampire Lestat'' (1985)
13# ''The Queen of the Damned'' (1988)
14# ''The Tale of the Body Thief'' (1992)
15# ''Memnoch the Devil'' (1995)
16# ''The Vampire Armand'' (1998)
17# ''Merrick'' (2000)
18# ''Blood and Gold'' (2001)
19# ''Blackwood Farm'' (2002)
20# ''Blood Canticle'' (2003)
21# ''Prince Lestat'' (2014)
22# ''Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis'' (2016)
23# ''Blood Communion'' (2018)
24
25[[AC:Related books (The New Tales of the Vampires):]]
26* ''Pandora'' (1998)
27* ''Vittorio the Vampire'' (1999)
28
29Two of the books have been adapted more or less faithfully to film: ''Film/InterviewWithTheVampire'' and ''Film/QueenOfTheDamned''.
30
31Some novels in the series {{Crossover}} with Anne Rice's witch-centered trilogy, ''Literature/LivesOfTheMayfairWitches'', namely ''Merrick'', ''Blackwood Farm'' and ''Blood Canticle''.
32
33A [[Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022 television adaptation]] of ''Interview With the Vampire'' premiered on October 2, 2022.
34----
35!!These books provide examples of:
36
37[[foldercontrol]]
38
39[[folder:A-B]]
40* AbominableAuditorium: The Theatre des Vampires is a theatre troop composed almost entirely of vampires. Under Armand's leadership, it allows the vampires of his coven to murder human victims live on stage without the audience suspecting it to be anything other than a particular lurid horror show.
41* AboveGoodAndEvil: Nicki decides there is no such thing as moral good or evil, only good and bad art. Since he's working at a low-rent theater in the commedia dell'arte at the time, he finds this conviction less than comforting.
42* AbsurdCuttingPower: Even though the Elder states that you couldn't cut Akasha's skin without killing weaker vampires, and Lestat likens it to marble, no ill effects become apparent when her devotees feed from her, and Mekare [[spoiler: decapitates her with shards of glass while pushing her through a window]].
43* AfterlifeAntechamber: Ghosts need some degree of self-realization to move on to Heaven or Hell, at least according to Memnoch.
44* AgentPeacock: Lestat spends much of his unlife wearing and surrounding himself with incredible finery, enjoys theater, and exhibits wild mood swings, but he'll fight anyone and anything.
45* AllForNothing: Armand, infatuated with Louis' humanity and passion, orchestrates [[spoiler: Claudia's murder]] to free Louis for himself (indirectly sacrificing his coven in the process). [[spoiler: Losing Claudia]], however, destroys the very traits that Armand loved in Louis, rendering him cold and detached from anything and everything... including Armand, who wanders off in despair when he realizes Louis isn't going to get over it.
46** Louis' attempts to help Babette Freniere after Lestat kills her brother become this: While his advice initially allows her to save her family's fortune and regain her social status, he is forced to reveal his nature to her when his slaves drive him from Pointe du Lac. She becomes the first example of mortals tending to GoMadFromTheRevelation that vampires exist, and dies "young and insane".
47* AllLoveIsUnrequited: In the first book. Later books at least hold out the possibility of reciprocal love, although the odds never favor it.
48* TheAloner: Gabrielle is happiest exploring remote regions alone; Louis spends much of the twentieth century alone in his rundown Louisiana home; and Thorne spent centuries living north of the Arctic circle, feeding on (but not speaking with) the local Eskimos.
49* AmbiguouslyRelated: InUniverse where Jesse's narration shows that she really isn't sure how "Aunt Maharet" is actually related to her or whether she's just an odd family friend. It's ultimately revealed that Maharet is a Time Abyss vampire and her great-grandmother by roughly 6000 years worth of "great"s.
50* AmnesiacsAreInnocent: Averted. Louis thinks that Claudia forgets her human life when she becomes a vampire, but it it doesn't keep her from delighting in tormenting and killing humans. Even Lestat calls her "my merciless Claudia."
51* AncientTradition: The Talamasca
52** The vampire cult that Armand leads...at least until Lestat shows up.
53* AndIMustScream: Akasha had Mekare's tongue cut out, and then sealed her inside a coffin that she set adrift in the Atlantic Ocean.
54** Many vampires also believe that if they are left in the sun or burned, and their ashes are left unscattered, they will experience this.
55** And then there was the Parisian vampire tradition of burying their criminals and new fledglings alive.
56* AntiHero: Lestat becomes a NominalHero after "interview".
57* AntiNihilist: Lestat essentially summarizes this philosophy when he says he can accept the lack of God, Satan, or eternal rewards or punishments, but not the idea that acts of human kindness lack value.
58* AntiVillain: Lestat in ''Interview''. He's controlling, egotistic, selfish, and proud; he also proves to be Claudia's main obstacle to freedom and Louis goes between tolerating him and flat-out hating him. But at the same time he's easily the most fascinating character in the story and his attitudes set him apart from other actual antagonists encountered later.
59* AppendageAssimilation: Vampires can reattach severed body parts.
60* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Lestat prefers to prey on the evil doer: thieves, murderers, rapists, [[AndThatsTerrible and card cheats.]] However, it should be noted that in 17th to 19th century Europe, cards was SeriousBusiness and accusations of cheating often lead to duels.
61* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Louis and Claudia reach Paris in September 1870 and enjoy Parisian culture and arts, such as the Opera... during the Franco-Prussian War, when Paris was under siege for 5 months and full of soldiers, while the entire population slowly starved.
62* AscendedFanboy: Daniel, who conducts the initial interview (and publishes the book in-universe), eventually convinces Armand to make him a vampire.
63* AssholeVictim: Magnus's assistant, the Back Street Strangler, Roger, and a whole lot of unnamed criminals.
64* AuthorAvatar: Lestat is sometimes this for Anne Rice, but sometimes he's based on her husband.
65* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Any authority a vampire has over others is based either on having information the others need or being able to stomp their asses.
66* {{Autocannibalism}}: In a flashback in ''The Queen of the Damned'', Akasha orders her soldiers to cut out Mekare's tongue. Mekare startles them by snatching it back and swallowing it.
67* AxCrazy: A lot of minor characters-- vampires like eating baddies, and Akasha creates an army of misandrist women. Of the major characters, Armand exemplifies this trope in ''The Vampire Lestat''. Most of his followers are relieved to discover they don't really work for Satan, need to fear religious symbols, or have to sleep among stinking corpses. Armand, however, hits a VillainousBSOD and starts chucking his underlings into a bonfire. In "The Vampire Armand", he literally breaks a door down with an axe at one point, and later claims to have Frankensteined Claudia's decapitated head onto an adult body before killing her.
68** Magnus kidnapped, killed, and discarded dozens of young, blond men, leaving their bodies to rot in his crypt, before he selected Lestat as his fledgling.
69** Mael not only kidnaps Marius so he can become a trapped vampiric god, he also feels betrayed when Marius escapes.
70* BadBoss: Armand to the Parisian Children of Darkness. From his description, other coven leaders fall into this category as well.
71* BaffledByOwnBiology: In ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', the vampire Lestat [[FreakyFridayFlip swaps bodies]] with a human. His fascination with the sensations of a living body flips to disgust when he has to go to the bathroom for the first time in 200 years, "very inexactly".
72* BangingPotsAndPans: When Louis forbids Lestat to play music while his father lies dying, the latter responds by doing this. "Brat Prince" indeed.
73* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Definitely not true, as Louis discovers with Lestat. He lampshades the aversion in ''Interview with the Vampire'':
74---> "What would Christ need have done to make me follow him like Matthew or Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a head of pampered yellow hair."
75* BedouinRescueService: Bedouins saved Mekare and Maharet after Akasha and Enkil sent them into the desert to die in ''The Queen of the Damned''.
76* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: Armand's captivity under the Children of Darkness.
77* BigDamnHeroes: Mekare in the climax of ''The Queen of the Damned''.
78* TheBigEasy
79* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Extremely old vampires are sometimes depicted as having lost the ability to understand human morality or emotions, instead making decisions based on their own philosophies. Claudia has this for the opposite reason; she was turned so young that she didn't have time to learn human morals in the first place.
80* BodyHorror: Armand is responsible for this a couple of times, first when he cuts off [[spoiler: Nicki]]'s hands, and later when he sews [[spoiler: Claudia]]'s head onto another vampire's body.
81* BodySnatcher: Predictably in "The Tale of the Body Thief".
82* BoyishShortHair: Two of the first things Gabrielle does after becoming a vampire are kill a man for his clothes and cut her hair like a boy's.
83* BrattyFoodDemand: Played for drama in the song "I Want More" from the play, sung by a vampire child Claudia about how she wants to drink a lot of blood and doesn't care if she's being rude or evil.
84* BreakTheHaughty: A series of selfish, arrogant choices catches up with Lestat when Claudia and Louis leave him for dead; he spends years covered in hideous scars; and Armand manipulates him into testifying against Claudia, refuses his request for healing blood, and throws him off a building for good measure. Traumatized and humiliated, Lestat spends decades as a shut-in, surrounded by junk and animal corpses and abandoned by a string of vampires who show up out of curiosity more than compassion. Subverted in that he eventually recovers... after about a hundred years.
85* BrainwashedAndCrazy: Armand, courtesy of Santino's coven.
86** The women Akasha induces to rise up and kill ''all'' their menfolk.
87* BreakoutCharacter: ''Interview With The Vampire'' is Louis' story, with Lestat as a villain and supporting character (he's actually absent for a good chunk of the novel midway). But thanks to all the positive feedback he got in ''Interview'', Rice saw fit to not only make the sequel from Lestat's POV, but to pretty much make him the protagonist of the whole damn series.
88** Armand was also another character who didn't appear until towards the end of the first novel, but he ends up playing significant roles (or just to stand around looking pretty) in the books following "Interview" until he finally gets his own book, "The Vampire Armand"--same goes for Marius.
89* BrokenPedestal: Once Louis joins Lestat in vampirism, he discovers that he really doesn't like him, [[spoiler: although they are reconciled late in ''The Vampire Lestat''.]]
90* BroughtDownToNormal: Lestat, when he swaps bodies with a human in ''The Tale of the Body Thief''.
91* BrutalHonesty: Any conversation with Gabrielle will probably contain this.
92* BullyingADragon: The Talamasca decides to issue a "Declaration of Enmity" against Lestat, who could obliterate the Louisiana branch if he cared enough. Then Stirling Oliver breaks and enters Lestat's home, during a tenuous truce, on the grounds that he was curious.
93%%* BungledSuicide: Lestat in ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', Armand in ''The Vampire Armand'', and Louis in ''Merrick''. '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample
94* ByronicHero: Lestat and Marius.
95[[/folder]]
96
97[[folder:C-D]]
98* CannotCrossRunningWater: Addressed with the explanation that vampires don't cross running water because they're territorial and streams often serve as natural boundaries for hunting territory.
99* CharmPerson: Vampires have the capacity to be this to humans and, to a lesser degree, weaker vampires. Armand is something of an oddity: his MindControl abilities seem disproportionate to his other skills, and he can affect vampires of otherwise similar strength.
100* CListFodder: Once unleashed, Akasha kills off most of the vampire race except, conveniently, for every single major character in the series, and plots to exterminate all men on earth.
101** This (except for the "exterminate all men" part) is justified in that Lestat's cadre of friends is the upper echelon of vampires who have been around for hundreds to thousands of years and who have very aggressively marked out their territory. They've gotten that old by being very clever and by learning how to move around in vampire society (i.e. learning who to not piss off). The vampires that Akasha kills are the young ones barely out of their first century, and considering how few older vampires are actually out there it seems reasonable to assume that even if she hadn't gone on a killing spree, most of them would still have died competing with one another for supremacy in a process of natural selection.
102** Not to mention, Akasha states that she spared some of the vampires who were not old and powerful yet because Lestat loved them. Louis and Gabrielle fall under this as well.
103* [[CantGrowUp Can't Grow Up]]: Claudia, tragically.
104** To a lesser extent, Armand, who was turned when he was only a young teenager. This actually helps him seduce literally almost anyone he comes across due to his boyish looks amplified by his vampirism, which brings out their beauty ten-fold.
105* CantHaveSexEver: Once you're a vampire, you can't have actual sex. However, ''everything else'' practically becomes a substitute. Even the ''pattern on a carpet'' can bring rapturous pleasure to one's enhanced senses. Lestat specifically notes that male vampires' "equipment" no longer functions in ''The Queen of the Damned''. This is why one of the first things he does [[spoiler: when transferred into a human body in ''The Tale of the Body Thief'' is have sex with a woman (without her consent it should be noted)]].
106** It's also worth mentioning that vampires typically consider feeding upon one another to be almost as intimate as sex is to humans.
107* CastFullOfGay: Lestat, Louis, Nicki, David, Armand, Marius, and Daniel all demonstrate sexual or romantic attraction to other men.
108* CastFullOfPrettyBoys: Louis, Lestat, Armand, and Quinn. Based on his description in ''Blood and Gold'', even Marius qualifies.
109* CessationOfExistence: Until ''Memnoch the Devil'', Lestat thinks this happens to everybody when they die. Whether or not this is true remains ambiguous afterward, as Lestat can't decide with certainty that what he saw was really Heaven, Hell, and human souls.
110* CharacterFilibuster: Arguably Roger in ''Memnoch the Devil''.
111** Lestat does this from time to time, the worst example being all of Chapter 16 in ''Blood Canticle'', wherein he stops the plot to explain why he's in love with a character despite their complete lack of chemistry.
112** Lestat also takes time in the preface of ''Blood Canticle'' to complain about the fans' reaction to ''Memnoch the Devil'', saying more or less that he gave them a glimpse into the mysteries of Heaven and Hell and all they wanted was "the fancy fiend" with glamorous leather and heavy motorcycles. He assures them that there's plenty of traditional badassery to go around but that he'll get to it when he's good and ready. Then again, that might be a full-on AuthorFilibuster, as well as Chapter 7 of the same novel, which has nothing to do with the plot or the series, but is a three page rave about the new Pope and some Saint in Mexico.
113* CharacterNarrator: The core five books (''Interview with the Vampire'' and all those featuring Lestat in a main character capacity) are written by Lestat and distributed as works of fiction, except for the first, which was dictated by [[WomanScorned Louis]] and distributed as a work of fiction.
114* ChronicVillainy: A lot of vampires, including Louis and Lestat, switch to surviving on animal blood or the "little drink," but eventually surrender to temptation.
115* TheClan: The Great Family, which consists of Maharet's matrilineal descendants.
116* CliffHanger: The ending of ''The Vampire Lestat''. Resolved in ''The Queen of the Damned''.
117* CoolOldGuy:
118** Despite being in his seventies, David Talbot is smart, brave, and charismatic enough to merit a crush by Lestat.
119** Quinn and Lestat both treat Aunt Queen as the female version of this.
120* ColdBloodedTorture: The traditional Satanic covens regularly inflict this on humans as well as other vampires.
121* CollateralAngst: The effect of Nicolas's mental illness on Lestat.
122* ComeToGawk: Armand's exhibition by the slave traders in Turkey.
123* {{Confessional}}: Louis confesses his sins to a priest in ''Interview.'' Unsurprisingly, the priest refuses to believe that Louis is actually an immortal creature of the night who feeds on the blood of the innocent... until it's too late.
124* TheCorrupter: Santino brainwashes Armand from a relatively benign lifestyle (posing as a human while subsisting on the blood of evildoers) into the deliberately cruel practices of the Children of Darkness.
125* CorruptionByAMinor: Despite Louis's horror at the thought of producing a fledgling, Claudia prevails on him to turn Madeleine for her [[spoiler: because she knows Armand will take Louis for himself]]. Louis does it, but says the act destroyed his last vestige of humanity.
126* CreepyChild: Claudia. What makes her particularly unsettling is not only the fact that she's an adult trapped in a child's body, but that she forgot all her memories of being human. As Louis remarks, she does not remember her humanity - she is pure vampire.
127* CreepyCrossdresser: Gabrielle kills a small man for his clothes within hours of becoming a vampire.
128* CruelAndUnusualDeath: When cutting off [[spoiler: Akasha's]] head doesn't immediately kill her, Mekare finishes the job by [[spoiler: eating her brain]].
129* CurbStompBattle: The vampires who attack Lestat at his concert stand no chance when [[spoiler: Akasha]] shows up.
130* CursedWithAwesome: The vampires have eternal youth, super speed, super strength, telepathy, telekinesis and the power of flight, but some of them still see their existence as a curse.
131** Though this is averted (kind of) since Lestat admits (after the events of ''Tale of the Body Thief'') that, if he's really honest with himself, he would much rather be a vampire than a human.
132*** Despite the the bad things he's been through as a vampire.
133** Some of the vampires view immortality as a curse and some don't and think the ones that do are ridiculous. The series stresses (at least in the beginning) that there are many different philosophical perspectives from which a vampire can view his situation, all of them equally valid.
134** To be fair, the focus of the series is usually on the incredible psychological strain of living for hundreds, or even thousands, of years and the toll it can take on ones sanity.
135** But at the same time, their society is either anarchic and devil-may-care or conformist and stifling, and the characters are deeply flawed by their emotions and frustrations brought out by the transformation.
136** And not to mention that sunlight and fire can (and does) easily immolate them.
137*** But even that gets mitigated with age. A sufficiently old vampire can, in fact, withstand exposure to daylight, at least for a time. The very oldest can even handle a full day out with minimal worry.
138*** Lestat himself survives close to two days in the sun of the Gobi Desert. It hurts like nothing else [[IncrediblyLamePun (forgive me)]] under the sun, but when it's over, his powers and mobility are unaffected and aside from a massive suntan that will last for decades, the damage is, literally, only skin deep. Maharet regularly walks in the sun every several years in this way to keep up a tan that makes her more lifelike to mortals. The very eldest vampires, when they really consider it, worry that if the sun can't do the job, there may be ''nothing'' that can kill them even if they wanted it to.
139* DatingCatwoman: Lestat's affair with Akasha.
140* TheDeadCanDance: Lestat likes slipping into palaces to dance with the aristocrats.
141* ADeathInTheLimelight: The Baby Jenks chapter in ''The Queen of the Damned''.
142* DeathSeeker: Nicolas. He experiences a complete breakdown after his capture by the coven, but also reveals that [[spoiler: he never really thought he and Lestat could make it as entertainers in Paris, and in fact participated in the hope that they would fail and starve]].
143* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Since many vampires predate modern conventions and a lot of the series takes place in the past, this trope cones up a good bit. Louis used to regards blacks as less intelligent than whites (although he no longer does).
144* DemonicPossession: Not "demonic" but "spiritual". A particularly nasty spirit named Amel likes pricking people so that they bleed. When Akasha and Enkil are mortally wounded by their subjects, Amel enters Akasha through her blood and takes root, turning her into the first vampire. By draining and then feeding Enkil her own blood, Akasha spreads Amel to him, although the core remains in her. Amel's thirst for blood is what drives all vampires, although the thirst decreases with each vampire, as Amel's essence is lessened. Since Amel's core is in Akasha, any harm that comes to her is spread to all vampires to various degree (in one case, exposing her to the sun killed many young vampires but only burned older ones). Killing Akasha would kill every vampire in the world, unless another one [[spoiler:eats her brain and heart, taking the core into him or her]].
145* DemonicVampires: According to ''The Vampire Lestat'', the [[MonsterProgenitor first vampire]] was created when a bodiless demon [[DemonicPossession fused with the blood]] of a dying Egyptian queen, and its power sustains all younger vampires. However, later books (and [[{{Satan}} the Devil himself]]) clarify that the "demon" is a [[OurGhostsAreDifferent once-human spirit]] who escaped the afterlife, so vampires have no direct link to Hell.
146* DepravedHomosexual: Lord Harlech. When Amadeo/Armand refuses to leave the country with him, Harlech responds by storming the apprentices' home, killing innocent bystanders, coercing Amadeo into a duel, and then cheating by fighting with a poisoned blade.
147* DevilsJobOffer: Lestat is given a tour of the history of mankind and the afterlife, including Heaven and Hell. In Hell, the Devil (Memnoch, in case you missed it) offers him a job as his "right-hand man/vampire". Lestat declines and runs screaming out of Hell.
148* DirtyOldMan: David worries that he's one, having slept with two much-younger Talamasca employees.
149* DramaticIrony: In a couple of [[CallForward Calls Forward]] dealing with fledglings: Eudoxia tells Marius to pick a young person as a fledgling in ''Blood and Gold''; and Marius tells Lestat to make sure his potential fledglings have plenty of life experience in ''The Vampire Lestat''. In both cases, the reader knows how much the younger vampire will or won't take the lesson to heart, and the resulting disasters.
150** Another combination with a CallForward: In ''The Vampire Lestat'', Eleni explains the mood in Paris by telling Lestat that the vampires could feed off humans on stage and the audience wouldn't tell the difference. Readers of ''Interview with the Vampire'' know this will actually happen, decades after Eleni sends her letter.
151* DrivenToSuicide: The overwhelming majority of vampires end up this way, because they can't handle the continuous changes.
152* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Merrick.
153* DrowningMySorrows: Louis and Quinn. Daniel sort of, although he's trying to drown his on-coming madness from the knowledge that vampires exist.
154** Nicki deals with his depression by drinking heavily in ''The Vampire Lestat''.
155* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Vampires' [[KissOfTheVampire feeding on blood]] has blatant sexual parallels, but an especially horrifying example occurs when Lestat turns struggling, pleading [[spoiler: David]] into a vampire against his will. Later lampshaded by Armand, who calls it "a rape."
156* DontMakeMeDestroyYou: When it becomes apparent that [[spoiler: Lestat]] won't support her crazy plan, Akasha practically begs him to reconsider, since refusal would have to mean his death.
157* TheDungAges: Armand was born into late-medieval Russia. Marius tries to introduce him to the Renaissance humanism that's flourishing during the same period in western Europe, but Armand remains one of the series' most superstitious characters.
158[[/folder]]
159
160[[folder:E-F]]
161* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Interview with A Vampire'' has Louis as the protagonist, and Lestat as a petty, vain, and an often cruel anti-villain. Later novels have Lestat as an anti-hero, and explain the discrepancy by saying that both men are [[UnreliableNarrator bending the truth]]. ''Interview with a Vampire'' also has a slightly different, more nihilistic tone than the rest of the series; the novel is mostly about the loneliness and morality issues that vampires (who are tiny in number) face when trying to hide in society. The novel suggests that there are no answers to the vampire (and thus human) condition, no one knows anything about the vampire species' origins, and most vampires are as selfish and troubled as humans. Later novels, starting with ''The Vampire Lestat'' suggest that there are far more vampires than previously indicated, vampires are far more powerful psychically and physically, and kinds of vampire spirituality/mythos are explored with vampire religious cults and ancient vampires such as Marius.
162* EasyAmnesia: Armand thinks that being raped as a teenager caused him to [[TraumaInducedAmnesia forget]] not only the event, but his entire life until that point.
163* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: Almost any dark-haired vampire will become this, but it's clearly indicated that Louis, Eleni, and Enkil qualify. Akasha takes it up a notch in ''The Queen of the Damned''.
164* TheEeyore: Nicki fills this role for Lestat. Explained by the fact that Nicki suffers from chronic depression that Lestat couldn't even imagine until he tasted Nicki's blood.
165* EffeminateMisogynisticGuy: Despite the fact that he's a bling-loving, long-haired bisexual who describes himself as a "mother" in making a new vampire, Lestat "never imagined that a woman" could express thoughts like Gabrielle's; seems more disconcerted by Gabrielle's cross-dressing than by her killing people; assumes that Claudia lacks the will and cunning to defeat him; describes women as "terrifying"; rapes [[spoiler: the waitress who tries to help him]]; agrees with Memnoch that the technically-sexless angels are "more male than female"; and describes the desire to conquer others as "purely male." Given that he has decades of chances to understand women as diverse as Gabrielle, Eleni, Claudia, Pandora, Akasha, and thousands of human examples, it's hard to attribute his attitude to anything but irrational prejudice.
166* EnfantTerrible: Claudia. Her favored method of hunting is taking advantage of her cuteness to trick people into thinking she's lost and helpless, and then ripping their throats out.
167* EvenEvilHasStandards: Despite their own flaws, most of the vampires give Akasha's plan the thumbs-down.
168* EvenTheGuysWantHim: Armand, so, so much.
169* EvilTakesANap: The [[MonsterProgenitor first vampire]] Akasha and her consort fell into slumber for millennia as their thirst for blood diminished. In ''The Queen of the Damned'', Lestat accidentally wakes Akasha with his music, so she sets out to cull the vampires and TakeOverTheWorld.
170* {{Ephebophilia}}: While Marius himself can't experience arousal due to the Dark Gift, he manually stimulates the adolescent Armand and surrounds himself with a troupe of boys in ''The Vampire Armand''.
171* EternalSexualFreedom: Poignantly averted with Gabrielle's sexual frustration as a mortal woman in 18th-century France, as well as Eudoxia's backstory in ancient Alexandria.
172** ''The Vampire Armand'' mentions that some sex acts (implicitly male/male) are technically capital offenses in Renaissance Venice, although almost always ignored by the authorities.
173* EveryoneIsBi: Sort of. Vampires don't have actual sex, but the enhanced senses make them [[SenseFreak Sense Freaks]] to a point where ''rubbing against any sufficiently interestingly-textured surface'' makes an orgasm seem rather dull. Additionally, gender isn't an issue for romantic or sensual purposes; things become beautiful (to them) because said things are alive. So, everyone is Bi-romantic, bi-sensual and extremely hedonistic.
174* EvilIsNotWellLit: The Children of Darkness don't allow themselves light and warmth (except for ceremonial bonfires) because they believe that, as servants of Satan, they don't deserve it.
175* EyeScream: Akasha had Maharet's eyes cut out. Maharet's solution is to steal the eyes of her victims, pop them into her eye sockets, and let her [[ThePowerOfBlood vampire blood]] work its magic and allow her to see. It's mentioned that she has to, periodically, replace the eyes with fresh ones, [[spoiler: until she takes Thorne's as punishment for disobeying a command]].
176** Lestat gets one eye ripped out (although he gets it back) while fighting his way out of Hell in ''Memnoch the Devil''.
177* FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Armand and Claudia. Claudia is repeatedly compared visually to a china doll, while Armand is often called cherubic. Both of them are deeply vicious.
178* TheFakeCutie: Claudia plays her adorable exterior for all it's worth while manipulating her human victims and vampire "fathers."
179* FallenAngel: Memnoch presents himself as one.
180* TheFarmerAndTheViper: People who attempt to help Claudia in her "lost waif" guise invariably fall afoul of this trope, as does the waitress who feeds Lestat in ''The Tale of the Body Thief''.
181* FantasyForbiddingFather: Lestat's father tries to keep him from from his scholastic, religious, and artistic interests, and disowns him for running away to Paris, before morphing into a WellDoneDadGuy.
182* FeralVampires: Despite the series being the TropeCodifier for the opposite, a great many of these vampires can also be found wandering Europe. Called "revenants", they are essentially bestial, animated corpses, viciously attacking human and vampire alike. It's implied some were prospective Children of Darkness, whose initial test for fledgelings was to [[BuriedAlive bury them alive]] to suffer prolonged starvation until they could free themselves, a process that could result in an insane EmptyShell driven purely by thirst.
183* ForcedIntoEvil: Khayman rapes Maharet and Mekare on Enkil's orders. It's implied that even worse consequences would have resulted had he refused.
184** Bianca's criminal relatives threaten to have her killed if she quits poisoning their marks. Marius's massacre of the Solderini clan earns her UndyingLoyalty.
185* ForcedToWatch: Due to Maharet's power, Akasha can't simply kill her. Instead Akasha threatens to kill Maharet's loved ones before her eyes, unless Maharet joins her.
186* {{Foreshadowing}}: Nicki's father threatening to break his hands; Gabrielle longing for a vampire who will overthrow human civilization.
187** Lestat marvelling at fascinating modern phrases includes the example "it's so Freudian", hinting at his... interesting relationship with his parents that becomes clear later in the book.
188* FromNobodyToNightmare: Lestat was an illiterate, impoverished actor when Magnus turned him into a vampire. 200-odd years later, he's one of the most dangerous creatures on Earth-- and possibly Heaven and Hell, too.
189* FrozenFashionSense: The Satanists in Armand's coven wear old rags, some obviously outdated as well as rotting, when Lestat encounters them. Later, Lestat himself misses the luxurious fashions of the eighteenth century and dresses in the closest style he can get away with in late-20th-century Miami.
190* FullyEmbracedFiend: Lestat and Claudia to Louis; Marius to Amadeo/Armand.
191[[/folder]]
192
193[[folder:G-H]]
194* AGodAmI: Akasha was worshiped as a god for centuries, and came to believe it.
195* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Humans who learn about vampires tend to go crazy; why remains unclear. It happens to Nicolas (although he already suffered from severe depression), Babette, Gretchen, and Daniel, Maharet seems to fear it could happen to Jesse [[spoiler: before Jesse becomes a vampire herself]], and Marius warns Armand that Bianca might go mad if they reveal their true nature to her.
196* GoneHorriblyRight: Lestat wants to draw out the other vampires with his rock concert. It works!
197* GoodBadGirl: Gretchen, Dora, and Bianca all have premarital liaisons while being portrayed as basically good people.
198* GoodSamaritan: Most of Claudia's victims tried to be this.
199** The waitress, David Talbot, and Gretchen all help Lestat-as-human in ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', [[spoiler: and it ends badly for all of them]].
200* GodAndSatanAreBothJerks: Lestat meets them both (or, possibly, ''very'' convincing impostors), calls them both idiots, and declares that he wants nothing to do with either of them.
201* GodIsFlawed: In that his refusal to consider letting any (other) imperfect entity into Heaven causes eternal suffering for many of the dead.
202* GrandTheftMe: In "The Tale of the Body Thief."
203* GreatWhiteHunter: David Talbot is an old Brit who keeps fondly recalling his youth, much of which was spent in the jungles of India and South America as this trope.
204* GrayAndGreyMorality: Most of the characters have a high degree of moral ambiguity, although some (such as Louis) come across as ALighterShadeOfGray than the ones around them. [[BlackAndGrayMorality Akasha]] is a likely aversion, considering that basically everyone besides herself thinks she needs to be stopped.
205* GuyOnGuyIsHot: Bianca certainly thinks so.
206* HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Claudia is an extreme subversion. This frail, doomed, golden-haired child doesn't die gracefully and accept her wings. Instead, she becomes an insatiable killer who delights in tormenting her innocent victims.
207* HealingFactor: Most injuries (such as a gunshot wound) heal almost instantly, with only massive physical damage causing long-term damage.
208* HemoErotic: When Claudia asks Louis what it was like to make love, he replies that it was like "the shadow of killing," which they perform by draining their victims' blood.
209** At one point Lestat bites his tongue so he can both make out with and feed Gabrielle. Y'know, [[ParentalIncest his mother]].
210* {{Hermaphrodite}}: [[spoiler:Petronia]] from ''Blackwood Farm'' (s/he seems to prefer being [[{{Crossdresser}} a]] [[DudeLooksLikeALady woman]] though)
211* HeroicBSOD: Louis is hit with this when [[spoiler: Claudia is executed]]. It destroys the vestiges of humanity that Lestat, Claudia, and Armand found so alluring, and he spends over a century in a detached, passionless state. Would almost qualify as a DespairEventHorizon, as he concludes his life story (and the book itself) without having reached any further resolution; luckily, reuniting with Lestat years later seems to have revitalized him.
212** Lestat accidentally triggers one in himself when, following the revelation that his mother is dying and during a drinking session with Nicholas, he suddenly grasps the horrific, meaningless, nihilistic nature of reality. It results in a rather explosive anxiety attack followed by a severe, extended depression/existential crisis, which slackened over time but "never did pass, really".
213* HeroOfAnotherStory: During Armand's breakdown in ''The Vampire Lestat'', Eleni proves to be the only vampire capable of imagining a new lifestyle for the coven and guides its transition from religious cult to performing troupe, but we only see a few glimpses of her talent at work.
214* HighOnHomicide: {{Downplayed|Trope}} when a vampire is feeding on a human while they die. It's described as a "wallop" and a "rolling delirium" for the vampire, but not particularly addictive compared to their obsession with blood itself.
215* HistoricalDomainCharacter: None of the major ones, but we get cameos from Creator/SandroBotticelli, Savonarola, and Marie-Antoinette, to name a few.
216* HollywoodSatanism:The Children of Darkness live in cemeteries, dance around bonfires, and practice human sacrifice, all in service to Satan. Other characters are quick to recognize the absurdity of their beliefs, with Marius noting that he actually predates their order, Christianity, and widespread belief in the Judeo-Christian devil.
217* HolyBurnsEvil: Averted. Louis actually likes attending Mass.
218* HolyHitman: Lestat evolves into this over the course of ''Blood Canticle''. At the climax of the book, he [[spoiler: [[CurbStompBattle effortlessly slaughters]] the [[RedShirtArmy private army of a drug cartel leader]] while quoting from scripture.]]
219* HotConsort: Lestat, for Akasha.
220[[/folder]]
221
222[[folder:I-J]]
223* IAteWhat: After being starved by the Children of Darkness, Armand drains the human they provide him before realizing that it's his friend Riccardo. %%What was his reaction after he found out?
224* ICannotSelfTerminate: The older the vampire, the harder they are to kill. The oldest and most powerful ones cannot die even if they step outside during the day. If they wish to die, they need help from another powerful vampire. Marius actually cites the inability to self-terminate as a reason a younger vampire may choose to not drink blood of an older vampire to strengthen themselves.
225* IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten: Would-be Children of Darkness in Armand's coven had to perform "a hundred unspeakable crimes" before their initiation.
226* IHateYouVampireDad: Either TropeMaker or TropeCodifier. Fledglings usually wind up despising their creators. Averted by Gabrielle, who, although she finds Lestat too boring for an eternal companion, still loves him and pops up from time to time to help him out.
227** Louis himself wrote the entire first book about despising (or sometimes tolerating/maybe even enjoying) Lestat only for the sequel and the following books having him being very much in love with the Brat Prince, after they finally reconciled after years apart.
228** Armand had gone through an emotional ride with Marius after being turned, but once he had been kidnapped and brainwashed by the Children of Darkness and later left them in a literal blaze of glory, they later reunite and still do deeply love each other and care about one another.
229* ILoveYouVampireSon: Frequently averted: Lestat "couldn't stand the sight" of his fledgling [[spoiler: Nicki]]; Louis shows no interest in a relationship with Madeleine; Magnus kills himself after making Lestat; and Armand leaves Daniel with Marius soon after Daniel's transformation.
230** That being said there are a couple of vampires who deeply love their fledglings and are loved in return. The most notorious example, despite their KissKissSlap dynamics at times, would probably be Lestat and Louis. There's also Marius and Armand.
231* IllegalReligion: Marius lives through the Roman prohibition against Christianity and, eventually, against paganism.
232* ImmortalityBisexuality: Subverted, as it turns out that Lestat and Armand were bisexual before they were turned.
233* ImmortalityHurts: While vampires will eventually heal from almost any injury that doesn't kill them outright, the process can take ''years'' for severe cases, and they feel as much pain as humans.
234* InappropriateHunger: Shortly after becoming a vampire, Lestat makes his way to the dungeon full of corpses, where the smell and the creep factor make him vomit blood. However, being a vampire, he quickly adjusts to the situation and starts lapping it back up off the floor.
235* InherentInTheSystem: Lestat's maker Magnus warns him several times that he should not drain his victims completely; he should drink enough to sate his thirst and then let them die. The reason for this doesn't become clear until Lestat actually kills his second victim and and begins feeling guilt because he felt the man die instead of just watching it.
236** This is misinterpreted for the ''Film/QueenOfTheDamned'' film, where it is stated that any vampire who drains his or her victim completely will die.
237* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: Vampires are so beautiful to humans that humans can't think clearly when faced with them.
238* IronicHell: As shown in ''Memnoch the Devil'', people in Hell have to suffer through the bad things they inflicted on others to gain the necessary empathy for redemption.
239* ItRunsInTheFamily: The ability to communicate with spirits was inherited by Maharet and Mekare from their female ancestors. Maharet herself passes this talent onto many of her female descendants, like Jesse.
240* ItsPersonal: The animosity between Akasha and the twins, Maharet and Mekare. Akasha blames twins for the accident that changed her into the first vampire. Maharet and Mekare hate Akasha for destroying their village and ordering them raped and mutilated.
241* JerkAss: If you asked Lestat he'd tell you it was Armand, if you asked Armand he'd tell you it was Lestat.
242** And don't even get Louis ''started''...
243* JoinOrDie: Akasha gives this ultimatum to the survivors of her initial massacre. They can either help her create new world order, or die.
244[[/folder]]
245
246[[folder:K-N]]
247* KickingAssInAllHerFinery: Claudia wears lavish clothing and jewelry, but she can still move faster than humans can see and has little trouble dispatching them.
248* KillItWithFire: One of the few ways to actually kill a vampire, although you'd better have the kerosene handy: Marius and Lestat both survive sloppy burnings, and Pandora uses a small blaze as a form of handwashing.
249* KissOfTheVampire: And HOW! TropeCodifier.
250* LetMeTellYouAStory: Marius in ''The Vampire Lestat'', and many other examples. Marius tends to do this a lot.
251* LineageComesFromTheFather: Inverted with the Great Family. Maharet traces her descendants only through the female line, since in ancient times [[MamasBabyPapasMaybe reliable verification of paternity was impossible.]]
252* LiteraryWorkOfMagic: ''Interview With the Vampire'', the book itself, serves a similar function InUniverse. When Lestat awakens in the sequel, he discovers his name and many details of his life with Louis are now famous and part of popular culture. ''Literature/TheVampireLestat'' is framed and written as his response --cashing in on the popularity to promote his new rock and roll career, correcting misconceptions about his person, detailing his origins, and officially breaking TheMasquerade while calling on other vampires to do so as well.
253* LivingForeverIsAwesome: Lestat has this attitude despite the fact he's gone through numerous horrible traumas. Most of the other Ancients are similarly of the mindset that there's no point in dying. Louis, by contrast, is really the only one who romanticizes death. At least after the Paris Satanic cult was "reformed" by Lestat. They were pretty miserable.
254* LockedIntoStrangeness: Vampires' skin becomes whiter, smoother, and shinier upon their transformations and as they "age," while their eyes develop an iridescence, their nails turn glassy, and slight imperfections in their features disappear. For Lestat and Gabrielle, the change also leads to thicker, paler hair. Since some vampires, e.g. Akasha and Enkil, remain dark-haired despite centuries or even millennia of vampirism, it seems that the physical effects of vampirism vary from person to person.
255** If a vampire is badly burned by fire or sunlight their hair will sometimes turn white permanently.
256* LosingYourHead: After [[spoiler: Mekare]] decapitates [[spoiler: Akasha]], her mouth keeps snapping while various body parts crawl toward the head.
257** Mael endured this trope twice, as his companion reattached the head at an odd angle, leading to the necessity of re-beheading him so that the parts can reattach naturally.
258* TheLostLenore: [[spoiler: Claudia]] becomes this for Louis.
259* LoverAndBeloved: Marius and Armand had this sort of relationship during the latter's mortal years. Eudoxia and Zenobia have a similar, gender-flipped relationship, but Eudoxia is far more controlling than Marius.
260* LowerClassLout: Roger describes Terry, his late ex and Theadora's mother, this way in ''Memnoch the Devil''. He found her gaucherie both contemptible and sexy, which is how we got Dora. Another example is Armand's fat, greasy-haired victim from ''The Vampire Armand''.
261** Louis views Lestat as this in ''Interview'', even though most series readers interpret him as the [[WickedCultured polar opposite]].
262* MadeASlave: Armand, by a Tatar raiding group, during his adolescence.
263** Some fledglings exist in a state of slavery to their masters. Think about how Lestat tried to keep Claudia as a perpetual ward, or Eudoxia's hapless servants and lover.
264* ManipulativeBastard: Lestat in ''Interview'', Armand throughout the first three books, and Eudoxia in ''Blood and Gold''.
265* MarionetteMotion: The performers in the Theatre des Vampires employ this in their stage acts.
266* MartyrWithoutACause: Armand and Mael both attempt self-immolation in the belief that this will aid the miracle cred of Veronica's veil. Not only is the veil already drawing massive crowds, but it's dubious, at best, that most witnesses would regard a rash of spontaneous combustions as a sign of God's love. Marius lampshades the trope by saying, "What a fool," when he hears about Mael's attempt.
267* MementoMacGuffin: Lestat awakens Akasha by playing Nicki's violin for her.
268* MindRape: Most of the time, narrators regard their use of telepathy as perfectly normal and OK, but Marius describes it as rape in ''Blood and Gold''.
269* MoreThanMindControl: While Armand doesn't hesitate to use mind control on his underlings (or anyone else for that matter), he also uses mundane torture and fire-and-brimstone sermons to keep them in line.
270* MurderByInaction: The end of ''Interview with the Vampire'', [[AmbigousSituation possibly.]] Armand claims he couldn’t have prevented Claudia’s execution, but Louis accuses him of letting it happen because he didn’t want the rest of the coven turning on him and Claudia says he secretly wanted her dead so he could have Louis to himself. It’s left up to the reader to guess if Armand’s powers of persuasion and influence in the Theatre des Vampires would have been enough to sway a mob of angry vampires led by Santiago, who has a petty personal grudge against Louis.
271* TheMusical: ''{{Theatre/Lestat}}'', a merging of ''The Vampire Lestat'' and ''Interview with the Vampire''.
272* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
273** Lestat after he turns [[spoiler: Nicki]] into a vampire, and after he slaughters hundreds of men alongside Akasha, and after he switches bodies with Raglan James, and after he turns [[spoiler: David]] into a vampire against his will...
274** Louis's reaction to giving Madeleine the Dark Gift.
275* {{Narcissist}}: No threat of horrendous consequences-- to himself or others-- will stop Lestat from doing what he wants, although he may (or may not) feel sorry afterward.
276* NaughtyNuns: Gretchen wants to have one fling with a man before returning to her life of piety. Lestat obliges.
277* NayTheist: After his adventures in ''Memnoch'', Lestat isn't sure if God and Satan are real or not, but he's sure he doesn't like either of them.
278* NoDeadBodyPoops: Zigzagged. Part of the process of turning into a vampire, which is just dying with an exciting epilogue, explicitly involves emptying your bowels and bladder one last time. However, the countless unfortunate humans who end up as dinner don't tend to leave messes of anything other than blood.
279* NobleFugitive: Pandora's backstory is being the SoleSurvivor of her Roman noble family's massacre by Emperor Tiberius.
280* NothingLeftToDoButDie: Why Magnus kills himself.
281* NoWomansLand: Ancient Alexandria, as described by Eudoxia.
282[[/folder]]
283
284[[folder:O-Q]]
285* OccultDetective: The Talamasca is a secret organization dedicated to the investigation and documentation of the supernatural. They gather documents and artifacts, work to hide evidence of paranormal activities from the public and often help people troubled by such phenomenon. Many members of the organization possess supernatural abilities like telepathy. Among Talamasca's many interests are, of course, also the vampires. Unfortunately for them, agents who have a brush with vampirism tend to end up turned and leave the order.
286* OddFriendship: Even Lestat seems a little bemused by his friendship with human Talamasca director David Talbot. The weirdness reaches an apex when Lestat sleeps off a sunburn on one of David's hunting trophies. Naked.
287* OffWithHisHead: The only way to kill an ancient vampire is to cut off their head and let both it and the body bleed out. Burning that is also advisable. [[spoiler: Akasha]] learned that the hard way.
288** The climax of Louis' RoaringRampageOfRevenge is dishing this out on Santiago, the "Grim Reaper" of the Theater of Vampires. [[DeathByIrony With a scythe]].
289--->'''Louis:''' "I swung the scythe again, catching him easily. And there was no wound. [[CraniumChase Just two hands groping for a head that was no longer there]]."
290* OffingTheOffspring: Akasha annihilates most of her vampire progeny as part of her plan to create new world order.
291* OminousLatinChanting: Sung by the Children of Darkness during their sabbats.
292* OneManArmy: Lestat hopes to wage war against all the world's humans ''and'' most of the other vampires. Akasha intervenes and does it herself.
293* OneSteveLimit: Just barely averted by a minor character in ''Interview'' being named Daniel. Daniel Molloy doesn't comment when he's mentioned, probably because Rice hadn't named him yet.
294* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Let us count the ways:
295** They are not soulless. Just the opposite in fact. Their souls are so strongly bound to their bodies that they need to be almost completely destroyed to be assured of death.
296** No vulnerability to religious artifacts.
297** Stakes through the heart do not kill them, and they will be able to just pull it out.
298** Do not need to sleep in a grave or coffin. Anyplace free of sunlight will do.
299*** But the books do imply that the belief that vampires need to sleep in coffins is a commonly held superstition among some groups of vampires (specifically those of the "Old World") or, in some cases, a practice based more in tradition than actual necessity.
300** Unaffected by garlic (although they cannot eat it, nor any other kind of food).
301** They have reflections.
302** They cannot shape shift.
303** Pretty much the only vulnerabilities they have in common with most depictions of vampires are fire and sunlight and if they're old/powerful enough, not even ''that'' will kill them.
304*** At a low ebb during "Tale of the Body Thief", Lestat levitates nearly into the clouds in the Gobi desert to meet the sunrise. He spends the entire day completely exposed to the sun and the following night feeling like he's been swimming in powdered glass dipped in acid. He endures a second day before the pain is too much and he returns home. And after all that, the damage he suffered is literally only skin deep, a deep burnt tan on his skin that, after he thinks about it, he actually rather likes as it takes away his unnatural paleness.
305*** Many vampires are seen to be unusually resistant to even fire and sunlight even when they do inflict harm. Both Lestat and Marius survived being burnt down to charred skeletons draped with meat and eventually recovered fully. And after converting Lestat, his creator Magnus went into an enormous bonfire and warned Lestat to scatter his ashes afterwards to ensure his death, as there was a fair chance he could eventually recover from even that.
306** They have heart beats (though their hearts beat considerably slower than that of a living person)
307** They breathe (though it's implied that this is more out of habit than actual need for oxygen)
308*** They also need air in their lungs to speak.
309** Their bodies are smooth and poreless, and they grow paler and ever more [[UncannyValley inhuman]] over time. Among other things, substances like water, dirt, and dust do not cling to a vampire's skin the way they would a human's and can be wiped clean the same way one would clean a mirror.
310*** Their bodies seem to become just a hardened, glossy husk filled with blood over time. In Queen of the Damned, Akasha [[spoiler: completely drains her husband Enkil, who is the second vampire created and has been alive for millennia]], and when Marius finds the body, it is described as light and nearly transparent; when Marius knocks it over onto the floor, he says it makes a sound like dry insect husks on the marble.
311** They cannot have "sex" as such. At least not the males anyway. Their phalli do not actually work anymore. Technically they could still be penetrated, but it is unstated if they could have an orgasm.
312** Their powers are wholly [[PsychicPowers psychic]] in nature, even physical ones such as {{Flight}}, SuperReflexes, SuperSpeed, FlashStep and SuperStrength are rationalized as being [[MindOverMatter telekinesis]], which is essentially the force that animates the vampires in the first place.
313*** A vampire's powers come about through a combination of their own age, and the age of the vampire who created them and generally follow a particular order: [[PsychicPowers The Mind Gift]] grants telepathy with one another and lets vampires read minds. [[PlayingWithFire The Fire Gift]] lets them set fires, from lighting candles to engulfing infernos. Then the [[MindOverMatter Killing Gift]] can let vampires basically bludgeon their enemies from the inside out. The [[JediMindTrick Spell Gift]] implants hypnotic suggestions. And finally, the [[{{Flight}} Cloud Gift]] lets a vampire fly.
314* OutOfTheInferno: A particularly powerful vampire (hinted to be Maharet) demonstrates her power to the Children of Darkness by walking through a bonfire and emerging unharmed.
315* ParentalAbandonment: Lestat endures the vampiric equivalent, as he only knew Magnus for a couple of days before Magnus walked into the bonfire. Lestat also regards himself as having done this with regard to his difficult fledgling [[spoiler: Nicki]], making Lestat as responsible as Armand for his suicide.
316* ParentalMarriageVeto: Marius asked for Pandora's hand in marriage twice when they were both still human. Her father didn't think very highly of Marius and refused both times.
317* PartingWordsRegret: Louis' last words with his brother were a harsh argument — the brother claimed to have had a religious vision that they should sell their possessions to become missionaries, and Louis mocked him as delusional. The brother [[DeathByFallingOver died in a fall]] immediately after, leaving Louis nearly suicidal with self-recrimination.
318* PetTheDog: Most of the vampires do this from time to time. Gabrielle and Lestat, despite their divergent interests, do show considerable loyalty to one another even after their transformations; Louis does his best to care for his "daughter" Claudia; Marius spent part of the fifteenth century sheltering abused boys; and, at one point, Lestat adopts an actual dog (which he does in fact pet). Even Armand went out of his way to save Bianca from becoming Marius's unfortunate lesson in vampire morality.
319* PhysicalGod: Akasha imagines herself to be one as soon as she becomes a vampire at the edge of prehistory. This attitude only increases along with her powers as thousands of years go by. In ''The Queen of the Damned'', the ancient vampire Azim has done this literally. He has a temple in the Himalayas where human pilgrims come to commit ritual suicide by offering themselves to him. His worshipers are quite excited when another "goddess", Pandora, stops by for a visit and are thrilled to offer themselves to her as well.
320* PlayingWithFire: The Fire Gift.
321* PlotThreads: Unlike most of the books, ''The Queen of the Damned'' includes multiple [=POVs=] filtered through Lestat's, which results in a lot of these, including not only Akasha's attempt to conquer the world, but also Marius's entrapment in ice; Daniel's self-destruction; Armand's adjustment to the modern world; the Akasha/Lestat, Lestat/Louis, Armand/Daniel, and Marius/Pandora romances; Mekare's emergence from seclusion; the origins of Egyptian mummification; and Baby Jenks's whole life story.
322* ThePornomancer: With them possible exception of Gabrielle, everyone who meets Armand wants to either bang him or suck his blood. At least until they get to know him, but even THEN the temptations are still there, if we take Lestat as example.
323* PretendingToBeOnesOwnRelative: In ''Queen of the Damned'', Maharet explains that she periodically reveals herself to her extensive clan of descendants by showing up as the family genealogist. She claims to be from a slightly obscure branch of the family, where the women are all named Maharet and pass down the responsibility of maintaining the family tree. For whatever reason, they believe it and welcome her with open arms.
324* PromotedToLoveInterest: In the ''Film/QueenOfTheDamned'' film, Jessie is turned into Lestat's LoveInterest, likely to avoid any backlash over Lestat's relationships with men.
325* PsychicPowers: Rice actively avoids using FunctionalMagic in this series as well as in ''Literature/LivesOfTheMayfairWitches''. Preternatural phenomena and abilities are all explained in psychic terms.
326** All vampires possess at least some degree of {{Telepathy}}. MindOverMatter is the basic animating force of vampires, accounting for their superhuman strength and speed, which often seem to violate normal laws of physics. The older and more powerful ones also have various additional abilities, including telekinesis, pyrokinesis and the ability to kill people telekinetically. They can also fly and are capable of AstralProjection.
327* PullingThemselvesTogether: Dismembered vampires can do this.
328* PurpleProse: Frequently.
329* PyroManiac: In the first book alone, Louis burns down two houses and a theatre, sets Lestat on fire and says that he could "spend hours just staring at the candles."
330** Turning other vampires into torches is pretty much Akasha's hobby.
331[[/folder]]
332
333[[folder:R-T]]
334* RageAgainstTheHeavens
335** In the earlier books, it could be called Rage Against the Fact That There is No Heaven. The absence of God or underlying moral justice in the universe is a source of a lot of the characters' angst.
336* RapeAsDrama: A very unusual example in ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', which follows the perpetrator's perspective. Armand also states that he was raped as an enslaved human, but that actually caused less direct drama than most of the other things that happened to him.
337* ReallyGetsAround: Lestat's father was frequently assailed by men demanding recompense in the event that Lestat knocked up their daughters. The prodigal son also slept with multiple prostitutes and at least one man (although that was in a serious relationship) before he switched to giving the vampiric kiss instead.
338** Armand spent days on end in brothels, at Marius's urging, during his years in Venice. He also received one-sided pleasure from Marius; had casual sex with his fellow apprentices; and pursued affairs with Bianca Solderini and, unfortunately, Lord Harlech before his transformation ''at seventeen''.
339* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: All the vampires. Especially Claudia.
340* RebuiltPedestal: It takes over a century, but Louis finally forgives Lestat for his failures as a mentor/lover/father figure.
341* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Armand tries and fails to fulfill this trope in ''The Vampire Armand''. Lestat tries at the beginning of ''Memnoch the Devil'' but it doesn't quite work.
342* ReligionOfEvil: The Children of Darkness believe that they serve God by serving Satan by living comfortless lives and torturing/killing innocents. This makes about as much sense to Lestat as it does to the reader.
343* ReligiousHorror: Subverted throughout the first three books: crosses don't frighten vampires, Lestat actually hunts in a church, and Marius says that, even ''if'' God and Satan exist, "[T]hey have little if anything to do with us." However, ''Memnoch the Devil'' is full of this. Whether or not the reader should take Lestat's adventures in ''Memnoch'' remains unclear.
344* ReluctantWarrior: Marius is described as this. He just wants to be a scholar but he went to war when he was a human (although this would have been normal in AncientRome).
345* ReplacementGoldfish: Lestat says he turned Louis into a vampire in part because of how much Louis resembled Nicolas.
346* TheRenfield: As Daniel discovers, this is what you become when you devote your life to tracking down and befriending a vampire like Armand.
347* {{Retcon}}:
348** ''Interview With a Vampire'' has several scenes of Louis showing what a monster Lestat is, such as killing a pair or prostitutes for no reason and a young local rich youth Louis liked. In ''The Vampire Lestat'', Lestat "sets the record straight": That "noble youth" was a wastrel about to gamble away his family's fortunes and those "innocent women" had drugged, robbed and murdered over a dozen men.
349** Indeed, much of Lestat's supposed character and origins is shifted quite a bit over the course of the books.
350* RichReclusesRealm: In the modern day, Armand lives on Night Island, a luxurious resort community off the Florida coast that [[VampiresAreRich he designed and commissioned]]. It caters to all his wants, from [[ManOfWealthAndTaste world-class shopping]] to tourist prey, and operates exlusively overnight. However, he gifted the actual ownership to his reluctant protégé Daniel Molloy in an attempt to woo him.
351* ScrewTheRulesIHaveSupernaturalPowers: Sooner or later almost all vampires reach this point. Some, like Akasha, rather spectacularly. The fact that their psychic powers only increase with age makes this more and more inevitable. Some of the more restrained ones settle in for lifestyles as an EccentricMillionaire. Others become [[TheRockStar rock stars]]...
352* SealedEvilInACan: Akasha and Enkil, who had taken the odd step of basically sealing themselves.
353* SelfImmolation: A common suicide technique for vampires.
354* SenseFreak: The Vampires. JustifiedTrope; the spirit animating their bodies is itself a SenseFreak. This is why said vampires get off over practically anything.
355* SerialKillerKiller: Lestat thinks serial killers make for fine hunting, as shown in ''The Tale of the Body Thief''. Played with in that instance, since he's so disappointed by his catch that he [[spoiler: winds up draining the serial killer's intended victim as consolation]].
356* SexSlave: Marius rescued Andrei/Amadeo/Armand from captivity in a brothel.
357* SignificantGreenEyedRedhead: This coloring usually accompanies psychic powers in Mekare and Maharet's lineage, including in Jesse.
358* SlapSlapKiss: Marius and Pandora, starting even before Marius turned her into a vampire. Marius has a mentor-like approach to his fledglings, considering them somewhat unequal. Pandora has no time to be his pupil (unlike Armand or Bianca) and spent ''centuries'' arguing.
359* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Zig-zagged with Armand. When his looks get him kidnapped, raped, sent hundreds of miles from home, and locked in a brothel cellar to die, it looks like this trope. However, after Marius rescues him, Armand enjoys his good looks, seducing men and women and decking himself out with luxurious clothes. Then Lord Harlech attacks him, the Satanists brainwash him, and we're back to this trope.
360** Another murky example is Lestat himself: as he points out, Magnus picked him, turning him against his will, in part for his physical beauty. Lestat waffles on just how unfortunate this was, but eventually decides that, all things considered, being a vampire beats being human.
361* TheSpeechless: Mekare, due to the fact that Akasha had her tongue ripped out.
362* SpikedBlood: Lestat is left weak and delirious when he drinks the blood of two boys who, unknown to him, had been fed a lethal dose of absinthe and laudanum. [[spoiler:Claudia did it to create an opportunity to attack him.]]
363* StageName: As an actor, Lestat used the surname "de Valois," "which actually meant nothing," in preference to his real, arisocratic surname, de Lioncourt.
364* StalkerWithACrush: Lestat for Louis and later David. Armand and Daniel take turns being this to each other.
365* StarcrossedLovers : Marius and Pandora. Poor Marius in general has the worst luck in that department, all of his greatest loves are taken away from him at some point. Usually by Santino.
366* StarvingArtist: Lestat and Nicki, after moving to Paris to perform. Later, Lestat becomes the patron [[spoiler: and maker]] of a composer who can't afford paper.
367* StepfordSmiler: Armand excels at seeming gentle and friendly, especially to his victims.
368* StrongerWithAge: The psychic force that animates the vampires is gradually changing and adapting their bodies to make them more suitable vessels for its energy. Thus their powers only grow with the passage of time, even if they go through periods of hibernation, starvation or recovery from especially grievous injuries. The process can also be accelerated by drinking blood from older vampires. Akasha increases Lestat's powers by whole orders of magnitude by letting him drink large amounts of her blood.
369* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: Laurent, the "boy zealot" of Armand's Children of Darkness and a founding member of the Theatre des Vampires, appears for all of five minutes in ''Queen of the Damned'' before Akasha unceremoniously incinerates him. Felix, another follower of Armand and Theatre vampire, is given the same treatment. A bit surprising, considering Akasha meant to spare those who Lestat cared for and he reacts to their deaths rather bitterly, but to be fair their personalities ("devout Satanist" and "nice dancer", respectively) would have left them little to do regarding the plot.
370* SuicideBySunlight: Attempted by [[spoiler:Louis, Lestat and Armand.]]
371* TearsOfBlood: Anne Rice vampires don't weep salty water. They weep blood.
372* ToHellAndBack: Lestat in ''Memnoch the Devil''.
373* TooDumbToLive: Lestat receives little sympathy from other vampires when his BodySwap goes wrong in ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', probably because they knew and told him it was a bad idea from the get-go. Daniel's determination to find Armand qualifies, too.
374* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Louis' mystic brother.
375* ToxicFriendInfluence: Claudia attempts to goad Louis, who prefers to make his kills as quick and painless as possible, into cruelly teasing human victims for her enjoyment.
376* TrappedInVillainy: Many vampires, especially Louis, regard their need for human blood as this.
377* TheTrickster: Lestat is actually referred to as this by another character at one point in the series.
378* TheTwink: Both Armand and Lestat sometimes play up their PrettyBoy looks to appeal to other men.
379* TrespassingToTalk: Lestat sneaks into Talamasca's headquarters in London, to talk with the Superior General, David Talbot. He continues visiting David in this manner and soon they develop an OddFriendship.
380* TwistedEucharist: The Eucharistic imagery doesn't get more blatant, whose film had the tagline "Drink from me, and live forever." Vampire stories that follow Creator/AnneRice's lead have people becoming vampires after drinking the blood of their vampiric sire, usually after the vampire in question has just drained them of all of their blood.
381[[/folder]]
382
383[[folder:U-Z]]
384%% * {{Retcon}} / {{Retool}}: Lestat, due to...
385%% * {{Ubermensch}}: Lestat, himself.
386* UnconventionalSmoothie: One of Armand's fascinations while acquainting himself with the twentieth century is putting strange combinations of things in blenders, mostly sorted by colour.
387* UndeadTaxExemption: Material possession minded vampires employ elaborate systems of lawyers, front companies and multinational bank accounts to manage their assets. They actually find this even easier in the modern era, as people increasingly believe that as long as there is a record of something then it must be legitimate. Where necessary they employ telepathy to aid in maintaining their secrecy. Lestat actually selects his first attorney at least in part because he finds the man's mind very easy to read and is thus always able to come up with the right explanations for anything questionable.
388* TheUnfavorite: Lestat, to his father.
389* UnfortunateName: Santino reasonably decides that "Amadeo" ("one who loves God") is a poor name for a Satanist and changes it to Armand.
390* UnreliableNarrator: The Lestat that appeared in ''Interview with the Vampire'' was not merely the antagonist; he was a stupid, cruel and petty ''villain''. The (vastly different) Lestat of the later books claims he was spitefully misrepresented by Louis.
391** Although it can be debated whether ''Vampire Chronicles'' fits this trope at all, as we're not talking about one narrator who is inconsistent, we're talking about two completely different narrators within the series (not counting the multiple points of view of ''The Queen of the Damned''). Of course a depiction of Lestat from the perspective of Louis (who resents him) is going to be more harsh and critical, and a depiction of Lestat from his own point of view is going to be more forgiving. No one sees themselves as being "stupid, cruel and petty." Lestat knows and fully understands the motivations behind his own actions and Louis doesn't, which would account for any seeming inconsistencies in Lestat's characterization.
392** The simplest explanation is that Lestat went through a lot of personal change as the series progressed, which explains why he became a very different character in the later books than he was in the early ones (toward the end he even starts to believe in God.)
393** It is worth noting that Louis is self-absorbed to the point where, unlike most vampires, he almost never seems to exhibit any significant telepathic ability. Thus his point of view is entirely his own. Lestat, in contrast, makes extensive use of telepathy, particularly as his powers grow, and many of the observations in the stories he narrates came directly from the thoughts and memories of other characters. Thus he is to some extent an omniscient narrator.
394* TheUpperCrass: Lestat comes from a family of these. They were French nobles but very poor and often had to rely on hunting to avoid starvation. After he becomes a vampire, he uses the money stolen from his victims to turn himself into a cultured, sophisticated noble.
395* VampireMonarch: Akasha, also known as the Queen of the Damned.
396* VampireProcreationLimit: Popularized the "blood transfusion" method of vampiric transformation.
397* VampiresAreRich: Or at least, they can be if they choose. Those that don't, such as Mael, don't accumulate wealth because they lose the thread of humanity and don't have any interest in what they consider mortal trappings. Being immortal, telepathic and willing to kill people makes the accumulation of wealth fairly easy. Some vampires do eschew money or property. But over time the older ones in particular just find it convenient to be rich, if only because they develop a taste for lavish lifestyles. Plus, one year's regular consumer product can be a priceless antique a century later.
398* VampiresOwnNightClubs: Well, bars-- there's an international chain that provides them with a place to meet each other, although most clients are oblivious human Goths."
399* VillainHasAPoint: Marius actually concedes Akasha's point that she could achieve world peace by killing 99% of human males (although he doesn't believe that the ends justify the means). A little odd when you consider that, even as a human, Akasha could have served as Exhibit A for female-induced destruction.
400** Which is much of Akasha's [[FatalFlaw Fatal Flaw]]; she's incapable of recognizing that most of her problems are of her own making, and is a textbook case of [[NeverMyFault Never My Fault]].
401* VillainousBreakdown: Armand can't cope when Lestat and Gabrielle disabuse him of his Satanic delusions and leave him in Paris.
402* VillainProtagonist: The main characters are all vicious murderers, but it's OK because they feel bad about it.
403** Debatable: many of the main characters do not kill humans, but instead survive by the "little drink" (taking small amounts of blood from several humans instead of completely draining one) or at least only kill people who seem to deserve it (murderers, rapists, etc.), and a vampire who kills without discretion is usually depicted as being (at least somewhat) worse than one who is selective about who he kills.
404** This is usually chalked up to the fact that a vampire's mind simply doesn't work the way a human's mind works and the fact that, if you look at it subjectively, humans really are below vampires on the food chain. Lestat himself alternates between idealistic and pragmatic on the matter throughout the books.
405** They don't always feel bad about it, in fact some of them never do.
406*** Armand in particular exhibits little guilt over killing humans, although he is not always cruel to the victim when he does it. Gabrielle flat-out states "I will be a goddess to those I slay." when she decides to venture into central Africa (then largely unexplored by Europeans).
407*** Marius encourages ethical feeding habits, but is not above a killing when it is convenient.
408* VomitIndiscretionShot: Three times in ''The Vampire Lestat'', always accompanied by a surprising dose of PurpleProse. Since all the vomit in question is pure blood, it's different from the trope's norm... but it's still pretty freaky, even to Lestat himself, when he realizes he's lapping up his own vomit from the floor of Magnus's corpse-filled dungeon.
409* WaterfallShower: At the end of ''The Tale of the Body Thief'', [[spoiler:David Talbot]] cleans off beneath a waterfall after being turned into a vampire; this scene doubles as ShowingOffTheNewBody.
410* WeCanRuleTogether: Akasha makes this offer to Lestat.
411* WeUsedToBeFriends: Lestat's relationships tend to turn into this trope, as do maker/fledgling relationships in general.
412* WellIntentionedExtremist: Akasha wants to create a peaceful world by killing almost all males. On a lesser scale, Mael and his fellow Druids fit this trope, as they kidnap Marius to replace the god of the grove.
413* WhamLine: "Behold the queen of the Damned."
414* WhatBeautifulEyes: Lestat repeatedly talks about Louis's dark green eyes.
415* WhatTheHellHero: Twisted into "What the hell, villain?" as vampires periodically call out their fellows for being ''not evil enough''.
416* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman
417* WholesomeCrossdresser: Bianca sneaks around Venice dressed as a boy to avoid early-modern restrictions on women. She may have done some unsavory things in the past, but the other characters view this particular quirk as harmless, not to mention fairly common for human women.
418* WhoWantsToLiveForever: The whole corner stone of the series, at least until it JumpedTheShark (though when exactly this happened is debatable) is that eternal life really isn't all it's cracked up to be.
419* WithGreatPowerComesGreatHotness: People who are transformed into vampires [[VampiresAreSexGods become uniformly, preternaturally beautiful]]. For people like Armand, who looked angelic in life, the effect is dazzling.
420* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Armand grew up around crazy religious ascetics, got sold into slavery, lost everyone he cared about ''twice'', and found out that Santino's coven had tricked him into murdering his last friend. He winds up committing his own list of atrocities, including: stuffing his coven's walls with starving vampires; kidnapping and tortutung Nicki just for knowing Lestat; stitching together the body parts of different living people out of curiosity; having two vampires executed to get [[spoiler: Louis]] for himself; and stalking Daniel Molloy until the latter turns into a paranoid, homeless alcoholic.
421* WouldHurtAChild: Lestat kills a child for its blood shortly after becoming a vampire; Louis, while starving, drinks from the human Claudia; Lord Harlech kills two children in his pursuit of Armand; and Akasha's army of brainwashed women kills male children alongside the grown men.
422* YaoiFangirl: Bianca fantasizes about sharing her bed with Marius and Armand together.
423* WritersCannotDoMath: In ''Queen of the Damned'', Lestat tells Akasha, "And by this you mean kill forty percent of the population of the earth? Ninety percent of all males?" Supposedly this is based on assuming males are 50% of the world's population. If this is true, ninety percent of all males is fourty-five percent of the total population, not forty. Ninety percent of the male population would correspond to forty percent of the world's population, if the male population was around 44-45% of the total. Also, earlier in the book Akasha says she is leaving one male in a hundred alive, so it is unclear where the 90% comes from in the first place.
424* YouCantFightFate: In ''The Vampire Lestat'', Lestat asks,"Do you think we find our destiny somehow, no matter what happens?"
425* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: How [[spoiler:Mekare]] becomes the queen of the damned.
426* YourVampiresSuck: Aimed at Dracula in the series, the series itself is probably the second most common after Dracula to receive this treatment in other works.
427** Though this didn't seem like genuine criticism on the author's part, but more as a means of illustrating how [[OurVampiresAreDifferent her vampires are different]] than Bram Stoker's Dracula (who is most commonly regarded as the "traditional" model of a vampire.)
428** Given that Louis expresses the desire to be able to turn into mist this seems like more of an OurVampiresAreDifferent than a YourVampiresSuck.
429[[/folder]]

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