what rules about claudia being a child vampire is like. the whole 'family' dynamic is based on denying claudia because she's 'the baby' except that the being a vampire of it all completely voids all the usual excuses that are trotted out to justify the typical (mis)treatment of children by their families... for example, children are expected to physically restrain themselves, ostensibly so they don't get hurt. yet the fragility associated with youth doesn't apply to claudia, and both louis and lestat tell her not to run in the house anyway; the rule is revealed as being grounded not in child safety but in the comfort and preferences of adults.
everything that might be said about claudia's physical weakness or vulnerability is annulled by her vampirism; everything that might be said about her being lesser because she is a fledgling is pretty much equally true of louis, who for the decade of experience he has on her seems to have very little vampire knowledge to show for it. and she owes louis and lestat no kin-based loyalty or deference because for all they say they are her parents, they did not birth or raise her and she did not ask to be turned! she is a "child" but without any of the associated conditions which usually conspire to fix children in their traditional roles; and once the excuse provided by those traits is gone, all that remains is the desire for control and the willingness to enforce that control with violence.
all the perfect hypocrisy of parenthood is on display; lestat admonishing claudia for unsubtle killings when he famously loves to do like. murder-based performance art, both louis and lestat refusing claudia a mate of her own despite neither of them being able to come up with a good reason for denying her other than 'because i said so.' and for all that claudia's behavior is framed by both louis and lestat as her 'acting out' for one reason or another, they never manage to come up with even one convincing explanation as to why she should not be allowed to do exactly as she pleases. who are they, after all, to tell her what to do?
[ID: Could the children murder the father? end ID]
something else that is so interesting is the point(s) at which louis as the narrator strategically refers to himself as a child. he puts himself on claudia's level even though he and claudia did not occupy the same role within the family structure (other posts say more about how louis' role in the family most closely resembles that of the housewife). that's not to say that louis wasn't abused — he was. it just didn't take the same form as claudia's abuse, which as one of her "parents" he also participated in.
it seems that louis draws this false parallel between himself and claudia in this moment in order to emphasize his victimization at lestat's hands and also to minimize his role in abusing claudia. if he was a child compared to lestat — innocent, powerless — then he could not have protected her, even though protection was explicitly the frame through which he justified her creation. here and at other points, louis clearly means to emphasize the maker/made aspect of his relationship with lestat in order to make it seem harder for him to go through with the murder, but like. claudia was made by lestat too, and as daniel points out, she had no problem pulling the trigger!
in my reading as in daniel's, it was louis' perfectly human (if trauma-forged) attachment to lestat, and not some ineffable vampire sire bond, that made him pull his punch at the moment of truth. louis wants it to have been impossible that the murder could have worked, because then his failure doesn't matter; the image of outmatched children trying to take on their father is meant to evoke that futility. but it wasn't impossible, and that's worse! louis was fully capable, he just wasn't willing! in this moment, he is already preparing the listener for the thing he still can't bring himself to say — that lestat was never going to die, not because lestat was unbeatable or because louis was powerless but because louis was never going to be able to bring himself to kill him!