What was that Lestat saying something about his brother and Magnus?? Didn't get the meaning
Okay, so, he has that "makeshift party" there, right? For the turn of the century?
Consisting of
cabbage for his brother and father
moldy bread for Armand
cake for Marie Antoinette
the violin for Nicki
an empty setting for Gabriella
no setting for Marius
and ....
William Blake's painting "The number of the Beast is 666" for Magnus.
Meaning he is literally placing Magnus as the Devil there.
Now, what Lestat actually says there is hugely interesting:
"But Magnus, his hand is wandering down my older brother's pants."
Magnus never put his hand down Gregoire's or Antoine's pants. He did, however, put them down Lestat's.
This is a reframing of a transgression, of what happened to Lestat into "this kind of party" setup, pushing what happened at someone else, distancing himself from the events, through that reframing.
In TVL, Lestat reframes what happned to him as almost love, only in later books he puts the name "rape" to what happened to him, in the last trilogy he STILL has PTSD flashes from it all.
So this way of... rejecting what happened and reframing it into something else is actually quite in line with canon (just very, very condensed, in a way).
Interestingly, this is also something that we were shown in the trailer that Gabrielle did to him - who also sexually abused him, after all.
"Are you affronted by these intimacies, Enkil?"
A challenge. He knows (deep down) that Magnus (and Gabrielle) taking the liberties was wrong, but he defiantly challenges the perception of himself as a victim. And he tries to regain some agency by challenging the perception on it, within the reframing of it.
"My hand on your Eve on the eve of a great century."
This is the most interesting part of it for me - because he knows that him touching her / them is also a transgression in a way, no matter that Marius appointed him supposedly on her behalf.
And we see him reach out, carefully, respectfully, yes, but also more intimately than he is supposed to. Knowingly not adhering to the rules Marius set.
He is also very lonely and drawn to her, drawn to touching her, though he knows he shouldn't.
(And of course it is also a nice little word play.)
That said, I found it very interesting how Sheila laid out in the After Dark, that it is precisely this ... gentle and almost longing touching, this caring for them in a way that is way more intimate than Marius did which makes Akasha realize that Lestat may be what she was looking for (later).
