#rowan mayfair

[meerawrites]

*correct buzzer noise* everyone say thank you and/or apologies to Anne Rice right now.

[cbrownjc]

Some thoughts on Daniel, Armand, Alice, and Memories, Minds, and Hearts

So first off, for those who may not know, I've pretty much always thought Alice was a real person.

However, the idea that Daniel "cheated" on Alice with Armand? No, I've never thought it was that simple.

Mainly because I think Daniel was deep into his relationship with Armand before he even met, and got involved with Alice. And that Daniel and Armand never "broke up," as it were, before Daniel got involved with her.

Nor do I think Armand was all that jealous of Daniel's relationship with Alice. Not really. Because of the pregnancy announcement story that Louis read from Daniel's mind in EP 2x02, I don't think Daniel was in love with Alice at all, and that Armand knew that.

Because Daniel, given the comment that he and Alice were "talking past each other" before Alice told him she was pregnant, and then Daniel's reaction to that pregnancy news, showed that the man was clearly emotionally checked out of his relationship with her.

That was just not a standard reaction one would have to such an announcement made by someone you supposedly made a marriage proposal to sometime that same year (1985), and, over 40 years later, it still hurts you when confronted with the memory of them rejecting that proposal.

So no, IMO, Daniel wasn't in love with Alice, and I think what was revealed about Daniel's reaction to Alice's pregnancy announcement backs that.

That comment Louis made about Daniel feeling "freer" to hold Alice's hand in Paris? I know I'm not the only one who thinks that had nothing to do with holding Alice's hand in Paris, but Armand's hand. A man's hand.

And look, if you take a gander at Daniel's LinkedIn page that AMC set up for him, his journalism career really started to take off around 1982. Three years before the proposal incident and Alice's pregnancy announcement.

What I'm getting at here is that Daniel Molloy wouldn't be the first person in the world who wasn't comfortable with their love and sexual relationship with someone of the same sex to get involved with someone of the opposite sex to cover up for it. Even if it wasn't only because of their professional career.

So yeah, I think the reasons Daniel even got involved with Alice weren't really about wanting to be with her. I think his being with her was a reaction to a whole host of other things that had nothing to do with her.

Including the fact that, like in the book, Armand very likely kept refusing to turn Daniel.

Because I think things like the discomfort (and possibly fear) of simply holding Armand's hand outside of Paris would have gone away for Daniel if he weren't human anymore. (Or, I suspect Daniel believed it would, and I don't think he was wrong in that belief.)

Now, would Alice have seen it as cheating? Yes, probably.

But Daniel? I think, if the show really does go with Armand hooking Daniel up to have sex with other men and women, like with what happened in the book (and right now I have zero reason to believe that the show would cut that out, given the other stuff that the TVL trailers reveal, they aren't going to be tame about), then no, I don't think Daniel would see it that way. Nor Armand either, of course.

That is the human/vampire line in all of this. I've said before that one of the main character arcs Daniel goes through in The Devil's Minion chapter is the loss of his humanity. At its heart, The Devil's Minion story is a reversal of the "vampire regains humanity by falling in love with a human" love story.

Instead, it is the story of a human (Daniel) slowly losing their humanity after falling in love with one of the most vampiric of vampires that walks the earth (Armand).

And vampires in this (TV show) universe just have a different way of viewing sexual relationships. This recent ask that @nalyra-dreaming got goes into this. Louis, having flings with other men, didn't bother Armand until Daniel.

Because Louis didn't have sex with Daniel, but made an emotional connection with him. That is what bothered Armand and made him jealous.

And, at least at the moment, I don't have enough evidence that Daniel had an emotional connection to Alice like that. That story regarding the announcement of her pregnancy, in fact, gives me the opposite feeling about it.

* * * * *

And that is one reason why I fully believe that the memories of Alice that Daniel gets very emotional about -- namely, the proposal memory, which BTW, Louis goes into after mentioning the hand-holding one -- was actually about Armand. (And that no, he wasn't proposing marriage, so much as he was asking Armand to turn him in some more formal way.)

See, when it came to the blocking and erasing of Daniel's memories, one issue is that the emotions tied to those memories would still be there. And I think those memories that had strong emotions tied to them weren't blocked, but rewritten; but then also locked deep away.

Kind of maybe partitioned off, as it were.

Because while you could change what Daniel's mind thought happened, the emotions associated with the memory could maybe have been impossible to just erase or rewrite.

Remember Armand's comment in EP 2x01 about the boy they met in San Francisco? Armand said, "He's still in there." I think it may be this partition that Armand was noting.

Because yes, I am still very much of the opinion that Daniel's memory erasing and rewriting wasn't done by Armand but by Marius. And one of the reasons I think so is because of a line of dialogue Armand has in the park dialogue from EP 3x05 that was spoiled.

But another reason I think this is because I don't think Armand had the skill to erase, block, and rewrite Daniel's mind and separate out his emotions from those memories that would have covered over a decade (from 1973 to 1985) of time.

Think about it. Armand seemed to have had to keep constantly rewriting Louis' memories. Like when we saw Louis asleep (REST) at the start of EP 2x03. Or when the fight Louis and Armand had at the end of 2x04 seemed to have no tension about it at the top of 2x05.

But I don't think Armand having to do this only just started after Daniel arrived. I think Armand had to do this with Louis for a long time, ever since Sausalito, when he first erased the memory of Louis' suicide attempt. Because that suicide attempt wasn't just some isolated incident. It was tied to the emotions Louis had regarding Claudia. Emotions and memories that tied into other emotions and memories that spanned decades.

Yes, Armand has the skill to rewrite people's memories, but I think he can only do it fully successfully with regard to short periods of time, like a few days or so. As we saw in EP 2x05 and Armand's rewrite of Daniel's mind of what happened during the time of the first interview.

The erase and rewrite of that memory appeared to stick, and only seemed to start fraying once Daniel actively started trying to remember what happened after remembering having seen "Rashid" at the bar.

But with Louis, Armand was trying to rewrite memories that were tied into each other over years and decades, with emotions to match. Trying to separate it all, particually the emotions, was probably not something that could easily be done, even with his skills.

* * * * *

And this idea that emotions can be separated from the mind isn't new -- at least when it comes to the Immortal Universe.

Because it is something that was done in Mayfair Witches, Season 2. Episode 2x05 to be exact.

In that episode, Rowan Mayfair's intellect, i.e., her mind, got split from her emotions, i.e., her "heart." Both sides of her were existing separately from each other for a time, showing that such a thing is possible in this universe.

Also, I know I'm not the only one who has noticed all the heart imagery seemingly going on with S3, The Vampire Lestat.

And, if what I suspect regarding Claudia and her story, wrt Armand, that might be revealed in S3 is revealed, then that would tie into imagery of the brain, i.e., the mind as well.

Also, if you know the book, The Queen of the Damned, then you know why both a brain and a heart are important in that story as well.

And given what we learn after the event in QotD about it, in both Prince Lestat and Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, it very much won't be just a physical (biological) brain and (biological) heart that will be important in all of this, either.

Again, Mayfair Witches, of all things, seems to be the show that has gone into the metaphysical aspects of all of this first. But brains and hearts will be quite important when it comes to the Vampire Chronicles as well.

And likely with the mind being metaphysically equal to the brain, and emotions being metaphysically equal to the heart.

[deaddovehasbeeneaten]

tvc or mayfair witches? Rowan could kill a pack of wolves but Lestat would die in med school.

[edisdumbdumbdumb]

and they both inherited it from their moms <3

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

The other day I found out about a new illustrated edition of The Witching Hour that'll be released in a few months, and there are some really gorgeous arts of the main Witches that they posted on their Facebook page, wish I had the money to buy an international special edition like this, but alas...

The source of the images is the Art of the Imagination facebook page, and the illustrations are by Bruno Vergauwen:

Suzanne Mayfair

Petyr van Abel and Lasher

Deborah Mayfair

Charlotte Mayfair

Jeanne Louise Mayfair and Lasher

Angelique Mayfair

Marie Claudette Mayfair

Marguerite Mayfair

Julien Mayfair

Mary Beth Mayfair

Stella Mayfair

Antha Mayfair

Rowan Mayfair

Michael Curry

Rowan and Lasher

February 27th, 2026 update:

I didn't find more updates in the facebook page, but I did find two new pictures of this collection in the Vampire Chronicles wiki page for Katherine Mayfair and Deirdre Mayfair:

Katherine Mayfair:

Deirdre Mayfair:

[levamplestat]

'Katherine Mayfair, August 12th, 1946. He urges me to bond with him in a way I cannot allow myself. To do so would be dangerous and foolhardy. I wake from dreams certain he has used me to perform grotesque deeds. My heart races. Terrified, I disavow him. If he haunts my sleep, I will not sleep again.'

MAYFAIR WITCHES 2.01: LASHER.

[haredjarris]

some interview with the vampire/mayfair witches parallels i've spotted on my mw rewatch (no spoilers for mw s2 in the tags/reblogs please, i haven't got around to watching it yet)

[sizeofyoursoul]

The Relics of Saint Lestat, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blood Canticle

As a more recent hardcore fan of The Vampire Chronicles, I find myself in the somewhat bizarre position of actually liking a lot of people's most hated book in the series, Blood Canticle. It's not my favorite- in my personal ranking of books in the series it's like, eleventh out of eighteen. I do like it though, and I think there's a lot interesting in it that gets overlooked by the consensus hatred of it. It's hard for me to articulate why I like it a lot, why I find it to be such a rich text, but on its behalf, I figure I'd better try.

All of the books in The Vampire Chronicles narrated by Lestat have some level of metatextual fourth wall breaking. They're being narrated by a self described "guy with things to say to you," and are explicitly written with the intention of attempting to communicate an authentic experience to an audience. The audience is, from The Vampire Lestat on, always a factor for Lestat: the audience is the rest of vampire kind he hopes to rile, it's the human fans of the band, it's the readers, it's vampires looking for a guide. Lestat wants to be recognized as himself, he wants to become something authentic in that act of recognition. He wants to be onstage, and on that stage, to become something real. He wants the place he can encompass for the audience to give him form.

However, Lestat has this very basic problem: he isn't real. He is a fictional character written by the author Anne Rice. He only exists in the pages of books, in the mind of the reader, in the impact that the book series has on its fans. What people don't talk about enough is: he knows this. Lestat, sometimes, knows he is a fictional character. From the end of Memnoch:

"I want you to see me now. I want you to look at me, as I present myself, and as I swear to this tale, as I swear on every word of it, from my heart. I am the Vampire Lestat. This is what I saw. This is what I heard. This is what I know! This is all I know. Believe in me, in my words, in what I have said and what has been written down. I am here, still, the hero of my own dreams, and let me please keep my place in yours. I am the Vampire Lestat. Let me pass now from fiction into legend."

That is the last thing Lestat says directly to the reader before Blood Canticle, and the entire crux of the novel. Blood Canticle isn't a story about a vampire who wants to be a Saint. Blood Canticle is a book about a fictional character who wants to become legend, and isn't really sure how to figure out how to be. All Lestat de Lioncourt, fictional vampire, can ever be is Lestat de Lioncourt, fictional vampire, who wants to be good but likes drinking people's blood, who kind of thinks God exists but isn't sure whether or not that's a good thing, and who wants to see himself in what he means to other people.

The saint Lestat spends most of the novel talking about is Juan Diego, who vitally, it says in the book itself, probably didn't exist. Juan Diego wasn't a real person, but he became a real saint because his mythos was more important than his reality. That's what Lestat wants to be, the embodiment of something more than what he actually is, because then he will exist in the minds of his perceived audience beyond the pages of the books, into legend. To do that, in this book, Lestat is trying to cash the check he wrote you way back at the beginning: he's going to find a way to be good, actually, for real this time.

He's just also, as usual, not that good at it.

Lestat wants to be a saint so he can declare to the world that the gays are going to heaven, but unfortunately, he's an evil vampire, so he can't. He wants to be a great mentor figure, but he can't, because Mona gets on his nerves and doesn't listen when he tells her what to wear. He wants to be an example to vampire kind of how they can be good, but he can't, because everyone's read all these books where he confesses to murdering children, and that makes everyone else think they can murder children. He wants to save the Taltos, but he can't save the Taltos, because sometimes when you try to do a good thing, people still die for stupid, petty reasons. This book is about trying, and what it means to fail.

Part of the metatextual nature of the book is also that it's a cheeky self-deprecating commentary on The Vampire Chronicles as a whole. You think Lestat spends too much time mooning over tables? Fine! He's going to try really hard not to and fail ridiculously! You think the books have these long, sprawling sections of dense philosophical nonsense? What if a character just shoved all that into a blog instead! She wouldn't even be good at writing it, Lestat would tell her it was bad! You think Lestat lacks self-awareness and is the author's most special boy? You don't even KNOW the levels of lacking self-awareness Lestat can reach! You think the books aren't action-packed enough? What would be action-packed enough? LESTAT JUST BLEW UP A HELICOPTER WITH HIS MIND! ARE YOU HAPPY!? HE ISN'T!!

This also plays into the book's role as the (originally intended) final book in the series. Lestat is looking for a way to goodness, a redemption, but also specifically because that would be a resolution to his story. If Lestat can be good, he can redeem himself for Louis, for Claudia, for every person he's killed, for every question he ever asked and then never gave the reader an answer for. An ending is, in some way, certainty: those were the questions, here were my answers, turn on the houselights, the show is over. Lestat can never end his story that way, because he will never have the answers.

From The Vampire Lestat:

"I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find out the answer as to why we were ever alive. Even the avowed atheist probably thinks that in death he'll get some answer. I mean God will be there, or there won't be anything at all."

Finally, we get to Rowan Mayfair, and the part of this that's going to be the most difficult thing to explain.

Rowan, in many ways, is like an ending. Her story is one of looking for answers and finding them: who am I, why have these things happened to me, what was this all for? Her answers didn't resolve anything: she is a person with the means to heal the sick who still can't save her own family, these things happened to her because of hundreds of years of decisions made by people with their own selfish ends, and what was it all for? The possible return of a species that could destroy humanity, if it wanted to, and no knowledge of where they even are. Rowan has no resolution, just a messy rest of a mortal life trying to do the best she can for the people who rely on her. She's a human, not an immortal, and her attempt at redemption will always be more urgent and more real than Lestat's. There's a possibility, somehow, that the good she does might somehow outweigh her pain, and because of that, she can never stop striving for it, even while she fails.

What do you do when you fail, fail to redeem yourself, fail to be the example you wanted to be? When you fail to be good, when you fail to do right by other people, when you fail at finding the answers you were looking for, but are still here? When people rely on you, when you mean something to people, when you can't be a Saint and you can't rescue Mona's daughter, when you can't keep writing these damn books for the people who they matter to anymore, because the part of you that doesn't believe you'll get the answers has been a fictional vampire for too long, and now needs to belong to something else? What do you do, when you're an author who needs to let go?

Blood Canticle is a book about failure. It's a book about failing to stop being yourself even when you'd like to, it's a book about failing to find satisfaction in knowing the answers, it's a book about letting the people who you mattered to down. When you fail, when you can't be good, when you can't ever, even if you had thousands of years, make up for the things you've done- you keep going. You keep trying, you keep failing. You hand the questions you had back to the people who expected you to answer them, and you move on.

"Be gone from me, oh mortals who are pure of heart. Be gone from my thoughts, oh souls that dream great dreams. Be gone from me, all hymns of glory. I am the magnet for the damned. At least for a little while. And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in— —the blood that teaches life will not teach lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song."

This isn't my full read on what Blood Canticle is about, which goes much deeper into some of the prevailing themes of the entire series, and I don't know if Anne Rice, reading this, would have agreed with me. I barely even mentioned how this is a sequel to Blackwood Farm. I don't know if I missed something obvious she intended, or if that one page where she gets Rowan's hair color wrong was a purposeful fourth-wall-breaking metatextual hint, or if the copyeditor just missed a mistake. Blood Canticle is always going to be, on some levels, the book that's the farthest from my never-Catholic, atheistic self. Blood Canticle is always, now, going to be a weird artifact of an attempt to end a series that got retconned. Blood Canticle is always going to be the insane manic fever dream that it is.

Against the odds, it was able to mean something to me anyway. If you've only heard bad things about it, I wanted you to know that there's someone who likes it, actually likes it, and why. I wanted you to know that it's weird on purpose, and bitchy on purpose, and it not resolving anything was on purpose, at least, as far as I can tell. If you read it and asked yourself, "what the FUCK WAS THAT?!" I hope hearing what it is to someone else was interesting.

It also doesn't hurt that I find it really, really funny. Blood Canticle Lestat is a legend, a true legend, and he's wandering through legend covered in morally imperative dust, and he can't stop noticing tables!