The way that I read Gabi and Lestat’s relationship (mostly familial but also just generally) is that she’s trying to convince him it’s mutualistic, that they’re thick as thieves, allies against the other members of the family, but it’s parasitic and devolves into predation.
She’s the mom who keeps her child close and ignorant and needing her comfort and she also resents that she is put in this position in the first place.
She is surrounded by men who have all this innate privilege and agency and they squander it to fuck and complain, and part of her relationship with Lestat is that she is so jealous of him and she sort of twists the hatred, it’s irrational. She hates him for loving her like a son should love his mom, for depending on her like a child depends on a parent, for being her one ally. She crafts his world to explicitly bend towards her and then sneers at him for following the curve she set. It’s a vicious circle.
There’s a quote from the Beautiful Creatures movie, (said by Sarafine to Lena, her daughter that she’s trying to “turn evil”) “It’s not easy y’know, pushing another female out of your body, a younger more perfect version of yourself with every option and no mistakes.”
I don’t go in for psychology, but..
They have such a tense mother/daughter relationship tbh. It actually manages to be both oedipal and elektra but Gabi is both the mother being desired by the son and the daughter’s rivalry with the mother but not really for the attention of the Marquis.
It’s also so cloth/wire mother coded.
And has that more modern emotionally incestuous “boy mom” thing going on that is made more interesting by their gender nonconformity.
Everyone has been dissecting the witches burning scene, the duplicitous nature of it.
Run away but don’t/this is what happens here and also don’t think about turning on me/ I love you and I’m trying to save you but I love you like you’d love a caged bird, and I love you like a pyre, willing to destroy you for my own needs and then complaining about the smoke.
