When I first read the Vampire Chronicles back in 2009, I didn’t even dream about cosplaying any of the characters. I got into the books through a very good friend who was reading them at the time and constantly gushing about how good they were, so I borrowed “Interview with the Vampire” from her. I gave it back almost instantly and instead opted to buy the English original instead. Back then, it took me about a year to get through all of Anne Rice’s Vampire novels that had been published at that point. I loved some, others not so much, but the books always stayed with me and continued to fascinate me when after I had put them down (not you, Memnoch the Devil, not you).
Cosplaying Lestat de Lioncourt
I’m not the kind of person to read a book I love only once and I especially love revisiting old favourites after a couple of years have passed to see if, after gaining new experiences, I still love them. So I picked the Vampire Chronicles back up in autumn 2020 (except for Memnoch the Devil because nothing can make me sit through that again) and I had to admit that I love Lestat even more. And one morning, I woke up with the urge to cosplay him. The funniest part of this is that I had a friend over on that weekend and I spent the early morning looking for suitable fabrics while she was still asleep in the living room and I couldn’t wait for her to wake up so I could annoy her with my new idea. In spring 2021, I finally started working on Lestat.
Still, after over 10 years, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles held more than enough reasons for me to start cosplaying Lestat and maybe other characters in the future. Possibly, I love them even more now than I did when I first read them in 2009. Are they perfect? Definitely not. Are some elements of the books highly questionable? Yes, and I am looking at you, Marius and Armand. Over the past 10 years, I grew as a person and did some soul searching and what appealed to me most now was the ease with which Anne Rice wrote about different sexualities without labelling them. And I especially loved her characters that were living outside the gender binary. Obviously, this is nothing new today, but the fact that the author started writing this series in the 70s really makes me appreciate the many facets of her characters. As a non-binary cosplayer, I proudly wear my Lestat de Lioncourt costume.