claudia’s birth allows louis to believe that he and lestat have become The Parents (equal status) and so the teacher-student power dynamic has gone away, but really it’s just been repressed and it comes up again like wack-a-mole
#clearly he wanted kids and he adored her but also the introduction of a literal child#makes him no longer occupy the position of ‘child’ in the house#in a way that is a relief to him#all that language like fledgling pupil student baby bird is dropped#he’s daddy! they're daddy and uncle :)#and then once claudia is an adult and trying to assert her own equal status#it becomes clear how much that original power dynamic had at best just become latent. bc now there's nobody to transfer it to anymore#'blame the teacher not the student'#addressing louis and claudia as a unit to tell them to clean up the corpse he left#and claudia is obv really aware of this#but like. ‘could the children murder the father’ is something present-day louis says#i think at the time he was still unable or unwilling to look that idea in the eye op's tags are incredible
Reblogging this again to add in Bailey Bass’s comments from the official podcast, because I was reminded of them instantly after reading op’s post and tags.
"But then it gets really dark...because Lestat, honestly...it’s so twisted. Lestat owns Louis, lets be honest. I think Louis wanted to own someone. And in some parts you see Louis does own Claudia. But she goes by feeling, she doesn’t think things through, she’s trying to rip out of this box.”