Louis de Pointe du Lac

Louis de Pointe du Lac is a fictional character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. He begins his life as a mortal man and later becomes a vampire. He is the protagonist who tells his story in Interview with the Vampire (1976, the first book of The Vampire Chronicles). He also features in The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, The Vampire Armand, Merrick, Prince Lestat, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis and Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince LestatMortal Louis de Pointe du Lac is born in France on October 4, 1766, to a Roman Catholic family who emigrated to North America when he was very young. His mother, sister and brother, Paul, live just outside New Orleans on one of their two indigo plantations, named Pointe du Lac after the family. Louis' brother, who insists that he has religious visions, dies after a terrible quarrel with Louis. Louis blames himself for his brother's death, becoming self-destructive, cynical, and desperate. He longs for the release of death, but lacks the courage to commit suicide. He takes to frequenting taverns and other places of ill repute, instigating fights and duels in order that someone might kill him. Vampire During an incident in a tavern, Louis catches the eye of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat appears to Louis as an angel and offers him an alternative to his desperate, meaningless life. Lestat, upon seeing for the first time Louis's "fine black hair" and deep green eyes, and sensing his passion, is seduced not only by Louis's beauty, but also by his tragedy and human heart; "He seduced the tenderness in me." Lestat makes Louis into a vampire at the age of 25, his immortal companion in 1791, and lives with Louis for nearly 70 years. However, Lestat is damaged from his experiences in France and the Old World. He is not as gentle a tutor or as much of a friend as Louis would like, one of the central themes in Interview with the Vampire. An example of this is an anguished comment recalled by Louis in his memoir, where he muses: "I was thinking how sublime friendship between Lestat and me might have been; how few impediments to it there would have been, and how much to be shared."