Pandora (The Vampire Chronicles)
First edition
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| Author | Anne Rice |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Vampire Chronicles |
| Genre | Horror fiction |
| Published | March 2, 1998 |
| Publisher | Knopf |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) & abridged audio book |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | (hardcover edition) |
| OCLC | 37966504 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3568.I265 P36 1998b |
| Followed by | Vittorio the Vampire |
Pandora (1998) is a novel and a vampire in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Her story is told in the book Pandora, one of two novels in the New Tales of the Vampires series.
Pandora was born with the name Lydia in the Roman Republic in the year 15 BC to a Senatorial family. She is tall, with rippling brown hair and gold-brown eyes. Like many Patrician Roman females of the time Pandora was taught how to read and write and is well versed in epic poems, especially Ovid's works. She meets Marius for the first time when he is twenty-five and she is ten. Marius asks for Lydia's hand in marriage, but her father rejects Marius' offer. Five years later, Lydia sees Marius at a festival and begs her father to allow her to marry Marius. Her father again refuses.
Pandora's father holds a high rank as a Senator. But when a new emperor takes power, her family is betrayed by her own brother and killed. Only Pandora and her traitorous brother survive the massacre, and she is taken to Antioch (after changing her name) by a man who was very close to her father. There she meets Marius again, twenty years after their last encounter. Unbeknownst to her, Marius is now a vampire.
She eventually finds out what Marius has become, and also that he protects and hides the Queen and King of all Vampires. The vampire, Akabar, wants to steal the Queen's powerful and ancient blood. Marius and Pandora try to prevent him from carrying out his plan. To gain access to the Queen, Akabar uses Marius's love for Pandora against him and drains Pandora to the point of death. In order to save her, Marius is forced to make Pandora into a vampire and forced to let Akabar see the Queen, who then destroys Akabar. The pair stay together for the next two hundred years, taking care of the King and Queen of all vampires, before arguing and separating. Marius later characterized the breakup (of which he left her and she spent six months or more waiting for him to return) as being entirely his fault: He considers himself a teacher who longs to impart what he knows upon his pupils, but Pandora—being as free-spirited and highly educated as she was—had no patience to be his student. During their time together, against his objection, she did turn one of her beloved slaves into a vampire. As soon as he was turned he left the pair and was not seen again.
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