David Talbot is Lestat’s dearest companion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Together they share many adventures, and Lestat often seeks out David’s sagacious counsel. David is one of the few vampires whose mortal life positively influences his immortal behavior. David appears in The Queen of the Damned (1988), The Tale of the Body Thief (1992), Memnoch the Devil (1995), Pandora (1998), Merrick (2000), Prince Lestat (2014), Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016), and Blood Communion (2018).
More than twenty years before the defeat of Akasha, the Queen of the Damned, David Talbot, Superior General of the Talamasca, takes from Aaron Lightner as his ward Merrick Mayfair, an orphaned child and an extraordinarily powerful witch of the Mayfair family. David raises her in the environs of the Talamasca until she eventually graduates from the university and becomes a member of the Order herself. As mentor and pupil, and verging on lovers, David and Merrick have numerous missions together for the Talamasca. When Merrick is compelled to go to Central America, to unearth from a deadly cave a magical jade mask that reveals to the wearer ethereal spirits as if they were incarnate, David accompanies her. They are confronted by a perilous spirit resembling a priest. As a result, David becomes mortally ill, but he is eventually cured of the disease.
Following the destruction of Akasha, Lestat and Louis travel to the London Motherhouse of the Talamasca and encounter the elderly David Talbot, still the Talamasca Superior General. They demand from him the diary of Claudia the vampire. David surrenders the diary to them, but when Lestat offers to turn him into a vampire, David refuses.
Lestat is impressed with this first meeting and visits David often. The two become confidants. David grows to value Lestat’s company, not simply because of his Talamasca duty to observe the ancient and powerful vampire, but also because he truly cares for Lestat. As time wears on, and as David ages, Lestat increasingly offers to make David an immortal, realizing that one day he will lose him to death. David continues to reject his offer, because he does not want or need immortality. When Lestat’s failed suicide attempt in the sun leaves him wounded and weakened, he goes to David’s home, where he spends time recuperating. David and Lestat soon discover that, because he has within himself the potent blood of Queen Akasha, the sun cannot harm him anymore, only bronze his skin.
Shortly thereafter, when Lestat receives Raglan James’s offer to switch bodies, David advises Lestat against this. But Lestat ignores David’s advice, and Raglan steals Lestat’s vampire body. David helps Lestat psychically push Raglan from Lestat’s vampire body and back into his former mortal body. Because this happens at sunrise, Lestat must flee and find a place to slumber throughout the day, while the elderly David must contend with the much-younger Raglan James, who switches bodies with David for the purpose of tricking Lestat into changing David’s elderly body (with Raglan inside) into a vampire. When Lestat drinks his blood and discovers that it is not David in that body but in fact Raglan James, the Body Thief, he kills Raglan by crushing the skull of David’s former body. When he finally finds David Talbot in Raglan’s former body, Lestat turns him into a vampire, against David’s kicking and screaming protests. Deeply angered by this in the beginning, David disappears for a while, but he and Lestat eventually reconnect in New Orleans. David expresses to Lestat that he secretly desired to become a vampire and that he is glad and grateful to Lestat for giving him not simply the Dark Gift but also the powerful blood within him.
Following Lestat’s return from his journey with Memnoch the Devil through Heaven and Hell, David becomes one of his caretakers when Lestat falls into a catatonic state, waking occasionally but sleeping most of the time, in the New Orleans townhouse that they share with Louis. During their time together in New Orleans, David embarks on a new adventure with Merrick Mayfair, his former apprentice in the Talamasca.
After the unfolding of the events that took place when Lestat switched bodies with Raglan James, Merrick’s doubts about David’s death are confirmed when David contacts her and explains how he survived in the former body of Raglan James and is now an immortal vampire. David enjoins her to use her magic to raise the spirit of Claudia for Louis. Shortly after she does, Louis is so drawn to her that he turns her into a vampire. Much to David’s surprise, Merrick confesses that she used her magic power to attract Louis and David to herself, because she desired to become an immortal blood drinker. David, Merrick, and Lestat form a New Orleans coven, residing with Louis, not long after they save Louis from a failed suicide attempt.
However, when Merrick performs an exorcism that aids the ghost of Quinn Blackwood’s dead twin brother, Goblin, to go into the light of the afterlife, Merrick loses her own life in a self-sacrificial act. Grieving the great depth of the loss of Merrick, David pens the story of Merrick for his former brothers and sisters in the Talamasca, as well as for any follower of the Vampire Chronicles, because he loved her very much.
In the early twenty-first century, David Talbot takes up residence at Château de Lioncourt and becomes an influential member of the Court of the Prince. He consents to the vengeful destruction of Rhoshamandes and attends the first Winter Solstice Ball.
For more perspectives on David Talbot’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Aaron Lightner, Akasha, Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis de Pointe du Lac, Merrick Mayfair, Raglan James, and Talamasca Order.