Monday, October 6, 2014

Claudia


Claudia is a fictional character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. She is one of the main characters in Interview with the Vampire, the first novel in the series. She also features in The Vampire LestatThe Queen of the DamnedThe Tale of the Body ThiefThe Vampire Armand and Merrick.

Claudia (portrayed by Kirsten Dunst)
Claudia (her last name is never given) was a young girl who lived in the poor, plague-ravaged quarters of 18th century New Orleans. She lost both of her parents to the plague, and is first introduced as a crying child of five years old in her house, next to her mother's dead body. She is small and delicately shaped, with golden ringlets for hair and pale skin. She is found by Louis de Pointe du Lac, the protagonist of Interview with the Vampire, and begs him to “wake” her mother. Louis instead feeds on her, much to his self-disgust, and her life is temporarily saved by Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis' maker.

Claudia is taken to the vampires' townhouse in the heart of New Orleans, and there she is turned into a vampire by Lestat. Lestat tells her that she is his and Louis' “daughter” and that now that she is in their family, Louis can not leave them. Though Louis is at first horrified at the thought of a vampire child (and indeed he accuses Lestat of condemning Claudia to hell), he and Claudia become very attached, and the three form a vampiric “family” for decades.

Although the three vampires spend many years in happiness, Claudia begins to grow more and more detached, insisting on self-sufficiency and even gaining her own coffin so that she does not have to sleep with either Lestat or Louis during the daylight hours. Claudia becomes self-educated and philosophical under Louis' tutelage and also an indiscriminate murderer under Lestat's guidance. She would “appear to her victims as a little angel” and lure them to their deaths.

As the years pass, Claudia becomes increasingly dissatisfied with being constantly “dressed as a doll” by her two fathers, and her frustration leads her to kill a mother and daughter and leave them to rot in the kitchens of the townhouse. When her deed is discovered by Lestat, she flies into a rage and informs the two that she has been damned to a body never able to grow old, that she wants to be a grown woman and will never have that chance, and that she hates them both more than she ever thought possible.

 Let the bloodbath begin! Celebrate Halloween all October long
with a new vampire post every day! Who's your favorite?

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