CONTENT WARNINGS : racism , suicide ,
mental illness , unhealthy relationships .
louis was born on october 1877 to the wealthy de pointe du lac family of new orleans. despite being of creole descent in the jim-crow era deep south, louis' father had made a name for himself as a real estate dealer & property manager, & provided his family all they needed & then some.but after his father's death in 1905, louis felt a heavy responsibility to provide for the du lac family as the oldest of his mother's three children. but he was still a young man at heart, & lacked his father's deep connections in the business community. the many properties they owned struggled for a time, & louis consolidated all that was left of their family trust into a handful of smaller ventures — a brothel, a cardhouse, a few rooms for rent.although louis felt ashamed of turning his family's legacy of landowners to prostitution & gambling, no one could deny that the profit was good. thanks to him, his family was able to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. louis' mother & sister supported his business decisions, but his devout brother, paul, warned louis about the dangers of tangling with evil & temptation.& it was in his own brothel that louis first met lestat de lioncourt — a strange frenchman fresh off the boat from paris. lestat seemed quite taken with louis, appearing at his businesses & pursuing him intensely. lestat also seemed to have strange abilities — undue influence over others, to speak without speaking, even to hold time itself captive. &, with louis suspicious but weak under the attention lestat lavished him with, the two men quickly became lovers.on their first night together, lestat bit louis & drank of his blood. still louis continued to see lestat, posing as business partners & even bringing him to see meet his family. but paul deems lestat the devil. & on the day after their sister's wedding, at sunrise, paul bids louis not to see lestat any longer — just before walking off a roof to his death.filled with fear & grief & guilt & unsure where else to go, louis fled into a church to confess his sins. but lestat followed, killing the priests in front of louis & revealing his true vampiric nature beyond any doubt.
& then lestat offered louis a choice : to take his mortal suffering & replace it with a dark gift. & there, on the altar, louis agreed. & lestat turned him.but louis did not take to immortality. he was consumed with guilt, unable to forgive himself for killing humans. he instead fed himself with the blood of rats, stray cats, pigeons, & other animals. as the years passed, his family became more & more suspicious of his behavior, & louis became isolated & depressed. lestat helped finance his businesses, but louis found it increasingly difficult to endure the slights against his race, his relationship, & himself.one night, louis killed a racist businessman & left his corpse as a bloody decoration for all to see. the backlash is swift, white supremacists descending to burn down the poor black area of town. while wracked with guilt at the destruction that he caused, louis heard a child's voice in the burning quarter. from the flames, louis pulled claudia — a girl of only 12, badly burned. he begged lestat to turn her, to save her, to make her their daughter. lestat resisted, but eventually caved to louis' pleading.claudia is a prolific vampire, despite her young body. but louis & lestat argued often about how to raise her. & when claudia eventually left to seek her own future, louis fell into a deep depression for many years. upon her return, lestat realized that louis planned to leave him with claudia, & the two fought, leaving louis physically broken.louis eventually took lestat back, but the relationship continued to be strained & difficult. claudia, as captive to their misery, began to believe that they must kill lestat in order for she & louis to be free, & created a plan. with louis' help, she poisoned lestat. but louis refused to burn the body, leaving lestat alive.claudia & louis fled to europe in search of other vampires, eventually joining with the théâtre des vampires in paris. there, louis meets their coven leather, the vampire armand, & the two become companions. but there is danger afoot in the paris coven. louis & claudia soon discover that the coven was founded by lestat, & that if what they did in new orleans is discovered, their new life in paris may come to an end before it's even begun.