Claudia (The Vampire Chronicles)

Claudia
The Vampire Chronicles character
Kirsten Dunst as Claudia in the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
First appearance	Interview with the Vampire
Last appearance	Merrick
Created by	Anne Rice
Portrayed by	Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles)
Information
Species	Vampire
Gender	Female
Family	Agatha (mother, deceased) Unnamed Father (deceased) Lestat de Lioncourt (maker/adoptive father) Madeleine (adoptive mother/deceased)
Spouse(s)	Louis de Pointe du Lac (adoptive father/lover)
Nationality	American

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 Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, The Vampire Armand and Merrick.

Character history

Mortal life

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 or six 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.

Interview with the Vampire

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.

After driving a wedge between them all, Claudia remains attached to Louis and increasingly cold toward Lestat. Obsessed with finding out the origins of vampires and finding “her own kind,” Claudia questions Lestat on his maker and on creating other vampires, of the creation of the first vampire and any other subject, though Lestat refuses to say a word. Finally through with her “dark father,” Claudia poisons Lestat with the blood of a poisoned young boy and gashes his throat, having Louis leave Lestat's dessicated and seemingly lifeless body in the swamps.

Claudia and Louis escape New Orleans and head to Europe, where Claudia's research has indicated vampiric activity. They are embittered and disillusioned when the only vampires they come across are mindless beasts who've been left for dead in their coffins, and eventually head to Paris to embrace civilization. The wedge between Louis and Claudia grows larger than ever as Claudia spirals even further into maddened fury at the thought of being trapped within the body of a little girl forever.

Everything changes when the two find the Théâtre des Vampires, a group of vampire mummers disguising themselves as humans playing vampires onstage. Claudia is repulsed by these vampires and what she considers to be their cheap theatrics. Santiago, a prominent figure among the vampire coven, suspects Claudia and Louis of killing their maker. One rule among the vampires is death to any vampire who kills their own kind, and later she and Louis meet Armand. Armand and Louis fall in love, and Claudia hears Armand telling her telepathically to leave Louis as a companion. Feeling threatened, Claudia sinks into a sort of paranoid madness, finally forcing Louis to create his first vampire, a woman named Madeleine, to care for Claudia when he is gone in love with Armand, severing the ties between them, seemingly forever.

Shortly after this, however, the Parisian vampires abduct the three of them and take them to the Théâtre des Vampires, where it is revealed that Lestat is alive and has sought punishment for Claudia's crimes. Though Louis' life is spared, Claudia and Madeleine are left to die in a room where they cannot escape exposure from the sun. Claudia is burned to death, and her death spurs Louis into a rage that inspires him to take vengeance on the vampires, torching the Théâtre des Vampires and killing all inside before escaping with Armand. It is Claudia's death that finally turns Louis cold and away from his “mortal passion,” a death that Armand forever mourns.

The Vampire Lestat

More of Claudia's relationship with Lestat is revealed in Lestat's eponymous autobiography, where he describes her fondness for playing with her victims as he did, and his sorrow at the turn their relationship took. Still, he reiterates his statement made at the end of Interview, that Claudia “should never have been one of us.”

The Queen of the Damned

When Jessica Miriam Reeves, at the time an investigator of paranormal activities for the Talamasca, received the assignment to purchase and uncover the townhouse of Lestat's coven in New Orleans, she finds Claudia's room as well as a diary kept in secret by Claudia, revealing more of her inner thoughts about her love/hate relationship with Lestat in particular, as well as hints of her growing rage and confusion at being an adult woman trapped forever within a child's body.

It soon becomes clear to Jesse that Claudia's ghost, or at least a psychic imprint left behind after her violent death, is haunting the townhouse. Claudia's ghost realizes that Jesse can see her, and haunts her all the way back to the Motherhouse when Jesse is taken off of the assignment. Jesse sees her as a little girl playing with a woman-shaped doll, sitting outside of her window and watching her, and describes a feeling of menace and anger radiating from Claudia. When Jesse is turned into a vampire by the end of the novel, she loses the ability to see and communicate with spirits, as is usually the case with vampires, and thus loses the ability to see Claudia.

The Tale of the Body Thief

Claudia's ghost again makes her presence known to Lestat in The Tale of the Body Thief, where she haunts him mercilessly in an attempt to make him feel the pain she believes he inflicted upon her when he turned her into a vampire as a child. Claudia's ghost and the ensuing guilt that Lestat feels drives him to a half-hearted suicide attempt in the beginning of the novel. Claudia haunts Lestat again when he is nearly dying in his mortal body and when, after recovering his vampire body, he goes to see Gretchen in the French Guiana.

The Vampire Armand

In The Vampire Armand, Armand tells his own story of what happened in the Théâtre des Vampires leading up to Claudia's execution: Claudia offered to leave Louis if Armand could give her the body of a woman, no matter how painful or violent this effort would be. Armand agreed to Claudia's demands, and decapitated her, attempting to place her head – and thus her mind – on the body of another vampire woman, believing that the healing powers of vampire blood would allow Claudia to heal herself. The attempt failed, and, with Claudia near death and Armand seeing that he could rid himself of her and have Louis to himself, he simply locked her in the air shaft with Madeleine and left them both to die.

Merrick

In Merrick, the eponymous character Merrick Mayfair – a powerful witch and one of the descendants of the opulant witchcraft family described in Rice's The Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy – is contacted by Louis to seek out the ghost of Claudia. When Merrick summons her, Claudia returns with a vengeance and takes her rage out on Louis. Claudia attempts to drive a stake through Louis' heart and kill him. When Louis survives, Claudia disappears, apparently put to rest by taking revenge upon both of her vampire “fathers.”

Merrick goes on to theorize that Claudia had already forgiven Louis, and that some of Claudia's rage during her reappearance was projected onto her by Louis' overwhelming guilt at her fate.

Claudia is never seen nor heard from again throughout the rest of The Vampire Chronicles, and it seems that she has been put to rest.

Appearances in other media

• In Neil Jordan's 1994 film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, Claudia is portrayed by Kirsten Dunst. ^[1] Dunst was 12 years old at the time of filming^[2], so that the producers could have an actress that could actually play the five-year-old immortal. Makeup and film tricks were used to make Dunst look younger for the role.^{[citation needed]}

• In the short-lived Broadway show Lestat composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Claudia was portrayed by Allison Fischer.^[3] She was given two solos: I Want More^[4] and I'll Never Have That Chance^[5].

• Louis, Lestat and Claudia all have non-speaking cameo appearances in Innovation Comics' adaptation of Rice's vampire short story The Master of Rampling Gate, illustrated by Colleen Doran.^[6]

• The Damned's 1982 album Strawberries contains the track "The Dog", which is written about Claudia.^[7]

References

1. ^ Claudia (The Vampire Chronicles) at the Internet Movie Database
2. ^ Kirsten Dunst at the Internet Movie Database
3. ^ Katie Riegel (April 14, 2006). "Allison Fischer". Broadway.com. http://www.broadway.com/shows/lestat/buzz/6531/allison-fischer/. Retrieved 2011-09-08. 
4. ^ I Want More
5. ^ I'll Never Have That Chance
6. ^ * Ciaran Carson. Anne Rice's The master of Rampling Gate. Innovation Comics, 1991.
7. ^ The Damned – The dog.

External links

• Lestat: The Musical at the Internet Broadway Database
• Official website of Anne Rice
• Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles at the Internet Movie Database

Bibliography

• Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. ISBN 0394498216
• Rice, Anne. The Vampire Lestat. Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. ISBN 0345313860
• Rice, Anne. The Queen of the Damned. Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. ISBN 0345419626
• Rice, Anne. The Tale of the Body Thief. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. ISBN 978-0679405283
• Rice, Anne. The Vampire Armand. Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. ISBN 978-0679454472
• Rice, Anne. Merrick. Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. ISBN 0679454489