by Cory
“Hello, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Lestat de Lioncourt?”
Within the Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat show, a specific reference has come up several times. First, in Season 1 Episode 2, Louis says that a vampire in Madagascar coined the term. Then, in Season 2 episode 3, Raglan James refers to the drastic increase in vampiric numbers (from 900 to 1600 in a month) as the Great Conversion. Then, in The Vampire Lestat episode 2, Gabriella refers to someone who has a ‘predatory nature...a good candidate for the Great Conversion...’”
There’s one more time that the phrase comes up, this time in the side series, the Talamasca. In the final episode of the now-canceled series, the primary villain, Jasper, is taken to a secret Talamasca location and told to “Get to work on the Great Conversion,” converting more humans to vampires.
So, what exactly is the Great Conversion, and has it ever shown up in the books?
Based on the context clues in the show so far, the Great Conversion appears to be a time of rapid growth within the vampiric community. As Raglan noted, in the span of a month, there was a jump from 900 to 1600 vampires, and this trend is accelerating.
Has this happened in the books? Kinda. The term the “Great Conversion" has never been used in any of the Chronicles or their extended books, nor noted as a key term in the later books’ "lore” sections. However, this kind of rapid growth has occurred three times in the Chronicles, each time with disastrous consequences. However, before we can get into why we know this, we first must describe the true source of vampires in this universe.
In the Queen of the Damned book, the spirit Amel is described. In approximately 4,000 BC, due to the actions of Akasha and Enkil, the twins Maharet and Mekare are forced to leave their home and travel to the land of Egypt. Amel, a friend of Mekare, travels with them. When the two women are abused and sexually assaulted, Amel becomes determined to do as much harm to the King and Queen as possible. During a murder attempt by their allies, Amel enters the wounds of Akasha and fully melds with her. This is how the first vampire is born.
Many centuries later, the vampiric race has grown drastically, while the King and Queen have become unmoving statues. One priest, seemingly driven mad, decides to put them in the sun. What follows is the first “Great Burning,” a time when the vampiric race sees its numbers dwindle to a mere fraction of its former size.
Then, when the Vampire Lestat takes to the stage as a rock star, the Queen is finally awakened. Her first order of business? Kill her husband. Ok, fair. But her second? A second Great Burning, this time shrinking the vampire race down to just double digits.
Finally, in the novel Prince Lestat, following the second Great Burning, the vampire race exponentially grows. This leads to the spirit Amel deciding on a third Great Burning, though this one isn’t as drastic: according to Dr. Fareed (yes, that one), the race has shrunk from around 5000 to about 1000. It’s later revealed that these burnings were seemingly caused by the spirit Amel.
Our Vampires are Different
For much of the Chronicles, it was assumed that the vampiric race could endlessly increase. However, in the Prince Lestat trilogy, it’s explained that every vampire is connected to the spirit Amel through an ethereal tentacle. But Amel, despite being a spirit, had a size and a limit. He describes this tethering as “Imagine your every limb hung with chains, your fingers bound with weights, your feet connected by a thousand roots to others.”
This forced tethering meant that the more vampires were made, the weaker the lineage became, growing further from the source, and the weaker the source itself, Amel, became. Eventually, he had to enact a Great Burning to reduce the population.
So, what does this mean for the TV series? Well, we know the series’ writers and creators are aware of the overall lore of the Vampire Chronicles, including the later books. While they have created the term the “Great Conversion,” it appears that they’re drawing on lore from the later books to explain why Akasha is going to awaken: the vampiric population is getting too large, and the spirit that empowers them, Amel, needs to do a culling.