The Mayfair Vampire Chronicles

The Mayfair Vampire Chronicles opens with:

Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle:

The Love of Mona Mayfair and Quinn Blackwood

"A long oval face, with features that were too delicate—a nose too narrow, eyes round with round eyebrows and a full cupid’s-bow mouth that made me look as if I were a twelve-year-old girl. No huge eyes, no high cheekbones, no rugged jaw."

Rice, Anne. Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles, Book 9) (p. 11). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Issues of Continuity

in Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle

Why is the issue of time something I focus on so much?  I don't fully know, but for some reason, I have always had this "thing" about time and space being well defined in the telling of a story.  But does this issue take away from the overall enjoyment of these novels in any real way?  No.  Does it make the novels less in terms of their quality?  No.  Because when novels have a lot going for them, like such a rich and detailed story, the matter of a few years doesn't quite have the same impact as, say, time differences that are large enough that they are at least a generation off.

As I read through Blackwood Farm, I noticed issues of continuity that were tipped off by the viewing of movies of all things. Throughout the novel, Mona Mayfair is said to be fifteen years old at the time she and Quinn Blackwood meet at Mayfair Medical. She was thirteen years old in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches.

Mona Mayfair's Age

The time setting for The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos was 1989-1990.  Rowan and Michael married in November 1989 - the same month that Mona later tells Michael she turned thirteen during. Gifford Mayfair notes that Rowan Mayfair had been missing for sixty-seven days at the start of Lasher - counting from December 25, 1989, that would set the time and date of the beginning of Lasher to be on or about March 2, 1990.

By the time Quinn met Mona, he was eighteen, older than she by two or three years. If Mona was born in 1976, Quinn would have had to be born in 1973 or 1974 (if the action was indeed in 1992). However, there is a problem with this.

Lynelle, 'Immortal Beloved' and the Grand Tour

Quinn tells Lestat that by the time he met Mona, Lynelle was already dead.  In fact, he asked the doctor if he remembered Lynelle, who was to study at Mayfair Medical, while he was hospitalized there after his encounter with Petronius.  The doctor told him that Lynelle was indeed remembered and made mention of the car accident that had killed her.  This is the hospitalization during which he met Mona Mayfair.

While Lynelle was alive, she, Quinn and Goblin watched a film called Immortal Beloved.  This film starred Gary Oldman as Ludwig van Beethoven and was released in theaters in January 1995, making its video release (DVD did not exist then, only laser disc) occur later that same year.  Quinn could not possibly have seen this movie as early as 1992 or before.

If Quinn took his three and one-half year tour of Europe from 1993/94 to 1997 and was turned into a blood drinker shortly enough afterward for the concierge at the hotel in Italy to remember him, it seems the time between his turning and his contact with Lestat would not have taken another three or four years, especially with Goblin getting more and more vicious.  Again, remember that Quinn could not have seen Immortal Beloved before January 1995 at the earliest and certainly not on video at such an early date.

Let us also not forget that Aunt Queen is confirmed to have been eighty-five years of age at the time of her death.  Her biological father was Julien Mayfair, who died in 1914 but was still more than capable of fathering children, which he did.  If Aunt Queen was born in or about 1915, that would make her 85th birthday occur in the year 2000.

The Flow of Action

In Blood Canticle, reference is made to the time of year, which is summer.  The action in Blood Canticle is a direct continuation of the action in Blackwood Farm, placing the action in BC in the summer of 2001 - at that point long enough from the original stories of Lasher when Rowan Mayfair would conceivably have aged enough for her blond hair to naturally show streaks of gray as Lestat notes early on.  The only other possibility is that the birth of the Taltos caused her to show signs of premature aging, but this seems unlikely if the Taltos breast milk restored her completely - enough to wake her from an almost certainly fatal coma.

Could Mona Mayfair have been fifteen when she met Quinn Blackwood?  Not unless we move the action in the first three books up by about five years and place Quinn and Mona's first meeting to be in or about 1996 or 1997 or different  movies had been used in the book to set the themes that influenced the character's lives.  Mona was said to be about twenty when she was made a vampire.  That would have been late 1996 or most of 1997 if we keep to the timeline of the first three books.  Since Gladiator would not be released for a few years, this seems impossible, unless, like I said, the timeline were reset to a few years later.  This is because Mona Mayfair was made a vampire after Aunt Queen died, and after the viewing of Gladiator, which would most certainly have been available for rental or purchase by the summer of 2001.  This means Mona was actually about twenty-four years old at the time she was made a vampire, not twenty.

Mona being age twenty at the time of her becoming a vampire would only work if the action in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches were moved up in time by four or five years.  That would be inconceivable since The Witching Hour was first published in or about November 1990.  Lasher was first published in 1993, and Taltos was first published in 1994.

My Estimation of the Timeline of Events

My estimation is that Mona Mayfair could not have been only fifteen years old and Quinn eighteen when they met, despite Michael Curry's assertion that Quinn was that age at the time.  My estimation is that Quinn met Mona - after Lynelle died and well after the release of Immortal Beloved - in late 1996 or early 1997.  He then went on his three- and one-half-year tour of Europe with Aunt Queen and their entourage.

Quinn's return from Europe and subsequent vampirization by Petronia/Petronius would have occurred around late 2000 or early 2001, if he had spent months being barred from Mona's bedside and then hiding his vampiric state from Mona, then managed to be informed that Gladiator was being viewed in his home.  It takes us to Quinn's ultimate decision to seek out Lestat and ask for his assistance with Goblin in the summer of 2001.

Mona would, in this timeline, be about twenty-four years old at this point, because if we keep with the timeline of the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, her twenty-fifth birthday would not have been until November 2001.

Since Quinn is older than Mona, he would have had to be about twenty-two or twenty-three when they met.

Mona Mayfair and Quinn Blackwood: Immortal Lovers

In Blackwood Farm, Mona and Quinn signed their emails and messages to each other "Ophelia" and "Abelard".  These two characters represent the tragedy of the love affair between a dying witch and a seer of spirits because their love, while deep, profound, and utterly romantic, is also doomed.

Mona, already wasting away from the illness brought on by the birth of her Taltos daughter, cannot have children for the same reason.  Quinn learns, too late to avoid falling in love with Mona, that he is in fact too closely related to her to ever marry her.  It is not because the Mayfairs do not condone marriages between cousins; it is because those marriages between cousins too close and who each possess the 92 chromosomes required to possibly reproduce Taltos offspring have resulted in disaster - the near destruction of the Mayfair legacy and the threat to the continuation of the Mayfair line into future generations.  A marriage between Mona and Quinn would almost guarantee disaster, even if Mona were healthy and able to bear at the time she met Quinn.

Unlike Ophelia, who drowns herself most memorably, or Abelard, who does not die, but is painfully separated from Heloise, Mona and Quinn's story becomes different.  Quinn, like Abelard, is separated from Mona because her family (Rowan and Michael) has taken her access to her computer, her only means of contact with Quinn while he is abroad.  She is ill, dying, and the computer only excites her and taxes her already waning resources.  Quinn unwillingly becomes a vampire, and at that point, he deliberately separates himself from Mona, not wanting her to know what he has become.

Mona knows she is dying, but not because she intends to commit suicide.  She has no idea that Quinn has become a vampire but at the end, leaves Mayfair Medical and has her limo driver help her collect all the flowers she can find to take to Blackwood Manor so she can die in Quinn's bed, on a bower of flowers, just like Ophelia.

What Mona also does not know is that Goblin, the doppelganger whose presence she immediately witnessed and understood (the catalyst for the beginning of Mona and Quinn's romance) is, at the moment of her flight from the hospital, being exorcised by Merrick with Quinn and Lestat in attendance.  When Quinn finds Mona in his bedroom, among the flowers, waiting to die like Ophelia after he was sure he would never see her again, he has to reveal to her what he has become.

Links

Anne Rice used another house she owned in New Orleans as the house Mona Mayfair had lived in with her parents before living with Rowan and Michael at First Street. You can learn more about the house on this page of the Parlor:

Amelia Street: The Fontevrault Outpost

Abelard and Heloise Website

http://www.abelardandheloise.com/

Abelard and Heloise on About.com

Date of Original Parlor Publication: 7 February 2010

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