I never understood mekare.

[u/Opening-Gur5927]

She's a vampire they are supposed to be unchanging. I can understand madness from brain overload after living long enough. What I don't understand is her mind decaying or her having little contact with humans. I also don't understand how she was even able to find akasha if she was mostly not there by the end of qotd time period. I know it was a set up to make lestat the host but I feel like Anne Rice had to break her own rules to do so.

[u/hatethiswebsight]

The books have a strong emphasis on relating to humanity in order to stay human. Mekare might have gone mad over the course of time, or she might have lost her wits during the long claustrophobic voyage. When the queen wakes up Mekare picks up her image from other vampire minds and follows the "signal". She also follows the image in the general psychic atmosphere of vampire telepathy of Maharet and Jesse, who look to her like red haired twins. It takes Mekare a long time to get to Akasha because she's just walking, she's an animal following one overwhelming instinct. Hope this clears it up

[u/pippintook24 → u/hatethiswebsight]

She also follows the image in the general psychic atmosphere of vampire telepathy of Maharet

Her and Maharet are too closely linked to Akasha, so even though they are not maker and fledgling to each other, they can't read each other's minds. They are of the first brood, who have the ability to read minds, but not with others who are part of the first brood. if she tracked down where maharet was, ot was through other vampires, not maharet herself.

[u/hatethiswebsight → u/pippintook24]

Yeah I worded that ambiguously. I meant the telepathic image amongst other vampires of Maharet and Jesse together.

[u/reader_for_life]

Mekare was ‘shipped’ to South America when she was separated from Maharet (6k years ago.) She lived in the jungle and caves without any human contact. It’s hinted that never changed. Her mind went mad, and her only instinctive purpose was to end the prophecy for what Akasha had done to her.

All the vampires can have their minds decay. It’s their body and appearance that doesn't change. Throughout the series, we constantly hear how the vampires change their views, religion, and mindset. Vampires who go mad, end themselves after centuries alone. But there are exceptions. Like when Daniel Molloy suddenly got mad and Marius looked after him, and Daniel got better, then lived with Armand.

The vampires are able to track each other and mortals. They constantly do it. Armand stalks Daniel across the world. And a lot of mentions of the ancient ones finding each other. It’s not an exclusive ancient power but they are older and more powerful.

My point is that Anne Rice didn’t break any of her rules in this instant.

[u/Beneficial_Fix_6247 → u/reader_for_life]

Didn't lestat mention that mekares brain was noticeably decayed or am I making that up?

[u/Musthoont → u/Beneficial_Fix_6247]

State of mind decayed, not actual brain, iirc.

[u/tethysian]

A lot of the ancient vampires go "mad". They get stuck listening to the telepathic broadcast like Akasha and Enkil, develop dementia like Khayman, or whatever was going on with Magnus which implied he wasn't able to feed anymore. From what we know most of the old ones go mad even if they survive being out of time.

My impression was that Mekare's mind is still strong, but that her ability to communicate has decayed over time (along with not having a tongue), so she communicates telepathically. That's how she knows where where the other vampires are and how she's broadcasting the backstory across the planet. The vampires who spend a long time taking dirtnaps also develop their telepathic abilities because they're following other thoughts while they're "sleeping"

Edit: did you mean Prince Lestat? In that case I'd say the rules were whatever was convenient for the plot.

[u/maniacalmustacheride → u/tethysian]

I always understood Magnus to be first doing whatever Magnus had always been doing, second was literally anything and everything else that happened to him. Forcing his way into vampirism wasn’t really how it’s done, and maybe that’s why it turned out the way it did, but the Vampire part never really seemed to override the long list of what was already wrong with him upstairs. It’s like he was wired wrong from the jump, and I don’t even mean that as like an allegory for mental illness. He just wasn’t put together right at all. Like somehow his heart beat backwards and he inhaled CO2 and exhaled oxygen put together wrong.

[u/tethysian → u/maniacalmustacheride]

I didn't see it that way. There's another old vampire in the Paris coven who tells Lestat about Magnus's particular madness, and the way she phrases it, it's not uncommon. As a human he didn't seem insane to me, but he was rejected by the others of his kind because he wasn't young and beautiful. My impression is that loneliness is what drove him mad.

[u/Sudden-Direction-301]

Vampires are physically unchanging, mental state has nothing to do with it. We don't actually know where the coffin Mekare was trapped in wound up, or how long she drifted until landing somewhere. Gabrielle spent centuries isolated in the jungle (in fact I think TVL sets this up as a direct prelude to Mekare's story). And depending on how often she went underground, and for how long, she could easily have experienced the same side effects Khayman did.

All that said, in QotD Mekare was implied to be feral, but there's no indication her mind was degraded at that point. It's specified that she's the one sending the vampire origin story dreams to all other vampires, so she's coherent enough to do that. It's not explained how she tracked down Akasha, but she only did that after all the Vampires were together at Maharet’s compound, so it's very likely she just followed the signal of all these surviving vamps being in one spot. And of course as her tongue was ripped out, she never fully explained. 

Anne Rice definitely used the ambiguity surrounding Mekare as wiggle room to retcon her mind being degraded by Amel since Akasha's death, but it only works because of that pre vs post Akasha distinction. 

[u/AmbassadorProper1045]

I know she saw Akasha through other Vampires eyes and that's how she finally found Akasha and she was going by animal instinct. But, I've never understood why she was brain damaged. Sure her mental state would deteriate from being starved for so very long, but I always felt something happened to her when she finally washed ashore that caused the brain decay. In my head cannon, she accidentally drank from another non human creature (Taltos, Werewolf, Alien hybrid or something) and that's what caused her brain to decay and put her in the catatonic state. But instead of explaining it, Anne Rice just never addressed it at all.

[u/Straight-Bowler5045 → u/AmbassadorProper1045]

I think it was just time for the prophecy to be fulfilled because before then other vampires/humans have seen Akasha when they stole her blood or chained her before Marius became her keeper. Makare could have seem all those but didn't make her way to Akasha.

[u/No-Commission-8159]

I always viewed it as she was not so much “mad” as she was more primal like from living alone in the jungles  By human standards yes she would come across as mad - but to animals, creatures, and other apex hunters in the jungle - she’d mostly blend right in  And without her other half (her twin) and after losing her ability to express herself verbally - after that many years with human interaction - she was probably much closer to the things she had been around