Eli's past

[Jencer07]

I am a huge fan of both the book and the films. i cant say there is anything i find wrong with the story, but there is one thing that i wish there was a bit more of. and as you see in the subject, it is Eli's past. i always wondered a few things. first of all, why was everyone scared of the man in the wig ? did they know what he was ? and more light on what happened after Eli was changed. i guess i would also like to hear your own personal ideas of these things.

[metoo]

Well, Eli is supposed to be mysterious and thought provoking...

[a_contemplative_life]

A couple of parts from the novel:

Other voices. Children's voices. Eli raised her head again, trembling like a baby. Drops of the sick blood ran from Eli's nose down to her mouth. The man had opened his arms in a gesture of welcome, revealing the red lining of his robe. The lining billowed out; it was swarming, made up of lips. Hundreds of children's lips that writhed painfully, whispering their story, Eli's story.
"Eli... come home ..."
Eli sobbed, shut her eyes. Waited for the cold grip around the neck. Nothing happened. Opened her eyes again. The picture had changed. Now you could see a long line of children in poor clothes wandering over a snowy landscape, waddling in the direction of a castle of ice on the horizon.

She quickly brought her face up to his, sealed her lips over his upper lip, held it firm with a light, steady pressure. Her lips were warm and dry. Saliva started in his mouth and when he closed his own lips around her lower one it moistened it, softened. They carefully tasted each others' lips, let them glide over each other, and Oskar disappeared into a warm darkness that gradually lightened, became a large room, a large room in a castle with a table in the middle laden with food, and Oskar ...
... runs up to the delicacies, starts to eat from the platters with his hands. Around him there are other children, big and small. Everyone eats from the table. At the far end of the table there is a ... man?. . . woman .. .
. . . person wearing what has to be a wig. An enormous mane of hair covers the persons head. The person is holding a glass filled with a dark red liquid, comfortably reclining in the chair, sipping from the glass and nodding encouragingly to Oskar.
They eat and eat. Farther away, against a wall, Oskar can see people in poor clothes anxiously following the events at the table. He sees a woman with a brown shawl over her head and her hands clamped tight over her stomach and Oskar thinks, "Mama."
Then there is the ding of a glass and all attention is directed toward the man at the far end of the table. He stands up. Oskar is afraid of him. His mouth is small, thin, unnaturally red. His face is chalk white. Oskar feels saliva run out the corner of his mouth; a little flap of flesh has loosened from the inside of his cheek towards the front; he runs his tongue over it.
The man is holding up a suede bag. With an elegant motion he opens the hand holding the bag shut and then out roll two large white dice. It echoes in the large room when the two dice roll, come to a stop. The man takes up the dice in his hand, holds them out to Oskar and the other children.
The man opens his mouth to say something but at that moment the little flap of flesh falls out ofOskar's mouth and...

The man's fingers are curled around some dice and Oskar sees that the nails are painted black.
Silence blankets the room like thick fog. The thin hand tips... slowly. . . and the dice fall out, onto the table . . . pa-bang. Hit against each other, spin around, stop.
A two. And a four.
Oskar feels a sense of relief... he doesn't know where it comes from ... when the man walks around the table, stopping in front of the row of boys like a general in front of his army. The man's voice is tonelessly flat, neither low nor high, as he stretches out his long index finger and starts to count down the row.
"One... two .. . three. .. four..."
Oskar looks to the left, in the direction the man has started to count. The boys stand, relaxed, freed. A sob. The boy next to Oskar bends over, his lower lip trembling. Oh. He's the one who is . . . number six. Oskar now understands his own relief.
"Five... six. .. and. .. seven."
The finger points straight at Oskar. The man looks into his eyes. And smiles.
No!
That wasn't. .. Oskar tears his gaze away from the man, looks at the
dice. They now show a three and a four. The boy next to Oskar looks around wildly, as if he has just woken up from a nightmare. For a second their eyes meet. Empty. Without comprehension.
Then a scream from next to the wall.
... mother ...
The woman with the brown shawl runs toward him, but two men intervene, gripping her arms and.. . throwing her back against the stone wall. Oskar's arms fly out a little as if to catch when she falls and his lips form the word:
". . . Mama!"

It seems fairly clear that Eli's mom knew that being chosen was not good. The other adults and even the children are uneasy about having been summoned to the castle. And we can gather from Eli's drug-induced vision that this, or something similar to it, has happened before.

If you are searching for dome insight into the vampire lord, you might want to Google Elizabeth of Batheroy. JAL indicated on a thread here that he was modeled after her.

[Opeth]

It doesn't surprise me that he was modeled after someone like her, I just finished reading her Wiki article. Man, was she absolutely insane...

[sauvin]

It doesn't surprise me that he was modeled after someone like her, I just finished reading her Wiki article. Man, was she absolutely insane...

László Nagy has argued that Elizabeth Báthory was a victim of a conspiracy, a view opposed by others. Nagy argued that the proceedings were largely politically motivated. The theory is consistent with Hungarian history at that time. There was great conflict between religions, including Protestant ones, and this was related to the extension of Habsburg power over Hungary. As a Transylvanian Protestant aristocrat, Elizabeth belonged to a group generally opposed to the Habsburgs.

Character assassinations and smear campaigns are cheap and easy because we seem to be more readily apt to believe something evil about people than to believe something good. I'm not saying that Bathory was framed; I'm saying it looks like we can't be certain she wasn't.

As for role models for Eli's sires, forum members have suggested Gilles de Rais.

[lombano]

It doesn't surprise me that he was modeled after someone like her, I just finished reading her Wiki article. Man, was she absolutely insane...

László Nagy has argued that Elizabeth Báthory was a victim of a conspiracy, a view opposed by others. Nagy argued that the proceedings were largely politically motivated. The theory is consistent with Hungarian history at that time. There was great conflict between religions, including Protestant ones, and this was related to the extension of Habsburg power over Hungary. As a Transylvanian Protestant aristocrat, Elizabeth belonged to a group generally opposed to the Habsburgs.

Character assassinations and smear campaigns are cheap and easy because we seem to be more readily apt to believe something evil about people than to believe something good. I'm not saying that Bathory was framed; I'm saying it looks like we can't be certain she wasn't.

As for role models for Eli's sires, forum members have suggested Gilles de Rais.

An alternative interpretation being that people like Gilles de Rais and Bathory were punished only because they fell out with the wrong people, and that perhaps others who were more careful or luckier enjoyed total impunity for similar acts.

[sauvin]

László Nagy has argued that Elizabeth Báthory was a victim of a conspiracy, a view opposed by others. Nagy argued that the proceedings were largely politically motivated. The theory is consistent with Hungarian history at that time. There was great conflict between religions, including Protestant ones, and this was related to the extension of Habsburg power over Hungary. As a Transylvanian Protestant aristocrat, Elizabeth belonged to a group generally opposed to the Habsburgs.

Character assassinations and smear campaigns are cheap and easy because we seem to be more readily apt to believe something evil about people than to believe something good. I'm not saying that Bathory was framed; I'm saying it looks like we can't be certain she wasn't.

As for role models for Eli's sires, forum members have suggested Gilles de Rais.

An alternative interpretation being that people like Gilles de Rais and Bathory were punished only because they fell out with the wrong people, and that perhaps others who were more careful or luckier enjoyed total impunity for similar acts.

IIRC, Wikipedia also has content suggesting that de Rais had also been framed, which dovetails with what I said about character assassinations and smear campaigns.

Ultimately, neither de Bathory nor de Rais much care; they're dead. All we know about them is what we read, and the wise among us will tend to bear in mind that not everything we read is factual. Still, even if de Bathory and/or de Rais are completely innocent, the images made of them might still serve as role models for fictional characters, it's just that we'll never be totally certain that the role models themselves aren't manufactured.

[Ash]

What I remember written of the Báthory case is that the one person (a woman servant) who refused to go along with what the others testified, was summarily tortured then executed. It wasn't so hard for the other "witnesses" to see where descenting testimonies led. Notwithstanding, Eli had/has no past or future simply because s/he only existed in JAL's mind in the fixed places and times he gave her life.
I have to admit I'm also ravenous for more information about Eli, perhaps a sequel or prequel, but Eli is JAL's plaything and only he can give her life beyond what has already been written. Perhaps it's better to view her within the confines of what we already have, as we all know what can happen when authors or film producers attempt to milk the cash cow, turning the sublime into the ridiculous.

[lombano]

An alternative interpretation being that people like Gilles de Rais and Bathory were punished only because they fell out with the wrong people, and that perhaps others who were more careful or luckier enjoyed total impunity for similar acts.

IIRC, Wikipedia also has content suggesting that de Rais had also been framed, which dovetails with what I said about character assassinations and smear campaigns.

Ultimately, neither de Bathory nor de Rais much care; they're dead. All we know about them is what we read, and the wise among us will tend to bear in mind that not everything we read is factual. Still, even if de Bathory and/or de Rais are completely innocent, the images made of them might still serve as role models for fictional characters, it's just that we'll never be totally certain that the role models themselves aren't manufactured.

IIRC, the arguments for framing were basically that they had influential enemies (hardly a surprise - what aristocrat didn't?). Their alleged actions seem to me merely a little beyond what was the norm at the time. In Bathory's case at least, I think it was the charge of witchcraft, rather than the murders, what did her in, which I think makes it less likely that they were fabricated from scratch. In any case, she didn't deny committing the murders, she claimed that it was her right as belonging to the highest nobility.

[Jencer07]

Lindqvist has a great talent for creating characters. he has left a lot of people with the craving of wanting to read more. looking forward to reading more of his works.