** Who is this Lestat guy and what's the big deal about him?

Lestat de Lioncourt a.k.a. The Brat Prince a.k.a. "Lestat, you are the damnedest creature!" is the main character in the VampChron series. He first appears in Interview as the one who makes Louis (the narrator of Interview) into a vampire. TVL is the biography of Lestat so I won't get into that here. The big deal about Lestat is twofold. One, he goes against all previous concepts of what vampires are like. He is not some mindless monster but rather a fun-loving, sympathetic, pain-in-the-ass guy whom most of the other characters would sleep with if they had the chance. Two, he's Anne's favorite character (and this is out of all her works, not just VampChron). Whereas Louis is Anne, Lestat is what Anne would like to be.

There are three schools of thought on this:
Less-tat (rhymes with 'hat')
Luh-stat (also rhymes with 'hat')
Luh-staht (ah sounding like the 'o' in 'dot' or 'hot')

Anne tends to use the third form, but don't feel that that's what you have to use. Although there has been ongoing debate about how to say Lestat's name (usually beginning with a preface of "Well I studied French/lived in France/know how to French kiss and I think..."), you don't have to be intimidated by it. There is no "Official" way of saying Lestat's name. Just say whatever feels more comfortable to you. So long as others don't openly giggle when you say it, you're doing fine. (Yes, I know Stat gave his own pronunciation of it in MtD, but since Anne herself tends to waver in which one she uses, you're still fine using whatever you're most comfortable with.)

Nope. While Anne's writing gets a little vague about this, Anne herself is not. When asked point-blank if her vampires could have sex she said no. Once a human becomes a vampire, they are no longer capable of sex and moreover, they're not interested. Louis put it best when he said that the pleasure from sex is but a pale shadow of the killing. Vampires get physical pleasure from drinking blood and killing. Of course, this does not keep them from getting involved in some pretty heavy petting, but that's another story.

While it is true that at the end of Pandora she and Marius... got rather comfortable with each other. But if you read the text of the passage you'll see how Pandora lets the reader know this was a purely symbolic act.

Again, read the text carefully. Particularly the passage with Marius, Armand and Bianca. Sex of a kind does occur, but it's all variations on heavy petting.

Again, read the text carefully. It's a kind of sex, but not the mortal kind. Call it "I can't believe it's not sex" if you will.

Ahem, yes. For this go back to QotD. In the passage where Lestat looks into the mirror during his time with Akasha you'll see him explain that male vampires, particularly those with a dose of powerful blood in them, do enjoy the dubious honor of sporting a constant erection.

I'm guessing a frequent use of long coats and telepathy.

Tell me about it.

There's nothing in canon to explain it but if Anne goes for anything resembling historical accuracy you'll find that the older female vampires would probably still have leg and underarm hair.

No. And neither are they all straight. Vampires are, by nature, bisexual (meaning that they can fall madly in love with someone of either gender). Some of Anne's vampires were bi before they got the Dark Gift but all of them are bi after. This is an advantage for them as it's so hard for them to find companionship that having a problem with the gender of someone is really setting their standards too high. The reason why it looks like they're all gay is that many of the couples are made up of two men. This is because it took Anne a while to create some strong female characters for her strong male characters to hook up with. No more, no less.

Whoo, tough one here. This is a question, as you can imagine, that leads into some dangerous waters. Let's start with age:

While there is nothing in the text which specifically states Armand's age when Marius saves him we do know that he's forever trapped in the body of a 17 year old. Text in TVA suggests that Marius knew Armand for 2 years before turning him, which would place him at age 15 when the two of them first met. However, text in TVA also suggests that Armand only just entered puberty when under Marius's care which would make him either a late bloomer or a much younger 11-13.

It is canon that the two of them were lovers when Armand was still mortal.

So it can now be said that at the very least Marius took an at least 15 year old Armand for his lover.

Does this make him a pedophile? Well, therein lies the rub. Debate on this ranges from whether 15 years old then is the same as 15 now, mention of how a Roman like Marius would have considered a relationship with a younger boy to be normal, the fact that 15 year old boys are rarely capable of making responsible decisions about their sexuality (especially a raped one like Armand), etc.

What's the verdict, then? Well, it's anyone's guess. Some people think it was fine, other people think it's appaling. If you want my personal opinion then I'll say that I personally think Marius did have something of a pedophile's streak in him. Even the brief passages about Armand and Marius in TVL give hints that Marius was overly comfortable with youngsters. Does this mean that Marius raped Armand or intended him any ill will? No. The passages between them in the text show that this was an apparently OK relationship (or as OK as it can be given that one of them was technically dead at the time). It just means that Marius apparently prefers the company of those with a young appearance. How that will affect the character development of them both is up to Anne.

No, Lestat (and other vampires) just thought he did. In TVA Armand explains what really happened (not that reading that particular passage will answer your question much because Armand's final answer amounts to "Heck if I know.").

Unclear as of right now. Anne hasn't specified. The fate of Mael is still up for grabs.

Not really. There is a small bit of information left out between the end of MtD and Pandora. As of right now no one is quite sure how Lestat went from the car dealership to the chapel floor.

You're making the common error of confusing Santino with Santiago. Santiago is the vampire that made fun of Louis (doing that annoying mime routine, etc.) and helped to trap and kill Claudia. Santino is the vampire who headed up the coven that took Armand away from Marius (this is mentioned in TVL) and, in QotD, he helps Pandora find Marius and bring him to the Sonoma Compound.

Believe it or not, no he isn't. Louis is the one who is lying about this moment. This is because, while she was getting ready to write TVL, Anne realized that if Louis' version was true, it would ruin what Anne wanted Lestat's story to be (his coming up in 1984 and so on). So the Brat Prince is telling the truth. Go fig.

Anne has changed quite a bit of Pandora's history for the purpose of writing the book of the same name. This is confusing and frustrating for some but it is Anne's prerogative as an author to do it. Whatever the newest book says has to be taken as canon.

This is a tough call. According to the story Armand created many children just to kill them. This would mean that Daniel is one of a rather large litter. But according to QotD Daniel was the first child Armand ever made. Anne hasn't made a comment one way or the other about it so you can feel free to believe what you like. If you were to ask my educated guess, however, I would say to go with what is said in QotD since Anne tends to work with whatever was most recently written.

In her Compuserve conference, Anne explained that the reason why that vampire was so unlike Louis and Claudia was that it hadn't been made properly. No more, no less.

I'll let her words speak for themselves (this was taken from the message on her phone line, the number of which was listed earlier):

"Good morning everybody. This is February 22, 1995,.... Um, I had a very, very strange experience this week that I want to share with you: Lestat...left me. For those of you who are readers, who have seen the movie, you know who I mean. The Vampire Lestat, he left me. He departed me forever. And this doesn't mean he died, or anything like that, he just left me. I finished making the very last corrections on the galleys of my novel _Memnoch, the Devil_ which is the fifth novel I've written with Lestat, I wrote it February of last year, and I went back over it February this year, and as I completed the last page, I knew that Lestat was leaving. He didn't quite say it to me directly, but we both kind of sensed that the five books had finished what we had to do together. And I wrote in ink on the last page, "Adieu, mon amour," commending him to God. I probably murdered the pronunciation of that in French, but then he's French, I'm not. I can tell you exactly where he disappeared. He disappeared in the twenty-hundred (2000) block of St. Charles Avenue, only about 25 to 30 feet downtown from the Ponchartrain Hotel. He disappeared in that spot. That's where he was standing when my imagination left him. And he was looking in a shop window, there's a place on that corner that used to be a Mercedez-Benz dealership, and he just happened to be passing there and he saw himself in the glass, of...of that empty store, or building, and...that was the last time he and I looked at each other, he's gone. He's absolutely gone. And now it's my obligation as a writer to create new characters and to think about my new book _Servant of the Bones_ and to try to make characters that can talk for me, as eloquently as Lestat did because he's not going to come back. I know that."

As an update to this, it's uncertain whether Lestat's mentions in Pandora and TVA are indications that Lestat's come back, if she'll do another book with him or anything like that. She's made a lot of guesses but nothing is certain yet.

The very next appearance of Lestat, after the above message and MtD, and what I personally (That I means me, DarkAngel, not Laura) feel would be the re-entrance of Lestat into Anne's consciousness and creative process was in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, during the Al Copeland/Straya period.
In the Sunday, February 23, 1997 edition, page A-25 was a full page ad, placed by Anne. I will quote it here in it's entirety.

EXCLUSIVE TO THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT IS BACK!!!!

READERS ARE OVERJOYED!!

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT WANDERED INTO TOWN TWO DAYS AGO, AND WAS WALKING IN HIS DAZED AND SHOCKED MANNER DOWN ST. CHARLES AVENUE WHEN HE DISCOVERED THAT ON THE VERY SPOT WHERE HE HAD SAID FAREWELL TO HIS READERS--THE SITE OF THE OLD EMPTY CAR DEALERSHIP--A NEW AND WONDEROUS STRUCTURE HAD SPRUNG TO LIFE, LIKE A GIANT PINKISH PEACH PLANT, RIGHT OUT OF THE EARTH.

LESTAT IMMEDIATELY KNELT DOWN AND GAVE THANKS--THE PEACH APPARITION SEEMED NOTHING SHORT OF A MIRACLE! LESTAT IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED HIS HARLEY DAVIDSON UNDERGROUND FRIENDS AND OBTAINED THE BIGGEST "HOG" HE COULD GET HIS HANDS ON. HE IS NOW DRESSED IN FULL LEATHER, PROWLING THE TOWN AS VIGOROUSLY AS EVER, SEEKING EVIL DOERS TO SLAKE HIS ETERNAL THIRST.

HE SENDS HIS SPECIAL LOVE, SPECIAL REGARDS AND SPECIAL THANKS TO MR. AL COPELAND:

"MR. COPELAND, NOTHING SHORT OF YOUR INDESCRIBABLE RESTAURANT COULD SHOCK ME OUT OF MY TORPOR AND MY COMA. I AM NOW MYSELF AGAIN! IT IS NOTHING SHORT OF A STROKE OF GENIUS ON YOUR PART TO CREATE A RESTAURANT THAT WILL BE IMMORTALIZED IN HISTORY, LEGEND AND LITERATURE. YOU ARE ONE HELL OF A GUY! MY IMMORTAL THANKS. I WILL ALWAYS COUNT YOU AS ONE OF MY DEAREST FRIENDS. YOUR KITH AND KIN ARE A MARVELOUS BREED. MAY GOD LOOK DOWN WITH HIS INFINITE MERCY WITH LOVE UPON YOU ALL.

LESTAT"

(END OF SPECIAL REPORT FROM THE ASTRAL PLANE)

A.R.

Pandora was then finished July 5, 1997.

Quite frankly, no one really knows for sure. The closest thing to an explanation that's come from Anne is that it has to do with vision, which is apparently a theme in the books Anne has considered herself to have worked on since the first line of Interview ("I see," said the vampire...) How, exactly, that relates back to the note, or to Memnoch, or how anything in Memnoch relates to anything else in it or the series is really up for grabs. IMHO, make of it whatever you'd like. Your theory is bound to be as good as anyone's.

Anne is hoping to do many VampChron books as the years go on so expect them to come out on a fairly regular basis.

Anne's next novel, a Vampire Chronicle entitled MERRICK, will be released October 17, 2000.
A sneak peek at the first chapter can be found here Merrick - Chapter One at Contentville.com