The Elder is infamous for instigating the Great Burning of 4 C.E. when he abandons Those Who Must Be Kept under the Egyptian sun. He appears in The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), and Blood and Gold (2001).
Thousands of years before the Common Era, after the great war between the Queens Blood and the First Brood, Akasha and Enkil are captured and imprisoned for so long that they become mute and immovable—like statues. When they are freed from this prison and once more elevated as the most honored of all vampires, they need to be cared for by a vampire almost as ancient as themselves. This caretaker vampire becomes known as the Elder.
Vestiges of the old blood religion remain. The Elder facilitates the blood rituals of the priests who continue to worship Those Who Must Be Kept. The Elder becomes the gateway for younger vampires to gain admittance to kneel before the Queen, to beseech Akasha for a taste of her powerful blood, and to clear away the remains of the young vampires she rejects. Caretaking becomes one of the principal duties of the Elder. He must wash and clean the Mother and the Father, change their clothes, and wipe away any dust that gathers over time. Throughout it all, Those Who Must Be Kept remain perpetually motionless, except on those rare occasions when they take a victim. They sit motionless, staring straight ahead like lifeless dolls, but their minds remain highly active.
To endure his eternal duties, the Elder makes several fledglings, two of whom are Cyril (Prince Lestat’s bodyguard-to-be) and Avicus (Marius’s eventual companion in Rome, who will help protect Those Who Must Be Kept). After more than a millennium of caring for them, the Elder grows weary of his endless and repetitive duties and no longer fully values the meaning of his life as the caretaker of the Mother and the Father of all vampirekind. Early one morning, he takes Akasha and Enkil out of their shrine, drags them to the banks of the Nile River, and leaves them lying there, exposed to the rising sun. He flees back to his sanctuary, where he remains safe throughout that day. When he rises the next night, he discovers that younger vampires have been utterly immolated, older vampires have been charred to a living crisp, but ancient vampires like himself have bronze skin, the way his mortal body once tanned under the hot Egyptian sun. Full of curiosity, he returns to the place where he left Those Who Must Be Kept and discovers to his dismay that they have not died but are tanned, with bronze flesh, like him. Understanding the profound connection between the Mother and the Father and all of their children, he also grasps the vast immensity of caring for Those Who Must Be Kept. If Akasha and Enkil suffer, all vampires suffer, in greater degrees for those with the fewest years. Moreover, he comprehends that if the Mother and the Father die, all vampires will also die. So the Elder brings Akasha and Enkil back to their shrine secretly and tells no one what he has done. But his new knowledge of the interconnectivity of all vampires sparks in him a new idea. Dreading the possibility of continuing his duties, he begins to consider ways to rid himself of Those Who Must Be Kept while also protecting them from anyone who might seek to destroy them. He comes up with the idea of dropping them to the bottom of the ocean, since in their current statuesque state, they do not appear to be breathing; and as long as they are not exposed to the sun again or any fire that might destroy them, they will remain alive while also preserving the lives of every vampire in existence.
Right at that time, Marius arrives in Egypt, having been sent by Teskhamen, who was an integral member of Akasha’s blood priest cult. Marius finds the Elder in the temple library in old Egypt sitting at a desk, and he explains to the Elder how he was sent by Teskhamen, who was severely burned. The Elder tells Marius the vague and compelling legend about the Blood Genesis, but by then the stories seem too mythic to inspire the Elder’s devotion to the old religion or his love for Those Who Must Be Kept. His faith in the Old Ways is dead. In his discussion with Marius, the Elder never mentions anything about the preservation of the old religion or the establishment of a new one. When Marius questions why so many vampires have been burned around the world, the Elder feigns ignorance and lies, stating that he does not know. Later, however, when the Elder stands with Marius before the Mother and the Father, Akasha uses the Mind Gift to confirm for Marius that the Elder is corrupt, evil, and a cowardly liar, and that she greatly desires Marius to take her and Enkil away from him because the Elder is once again planning to rid himself of his duties by drowning them at the bottom of the sea.
Upon Marius’s inward acquiescence, Akasha rises from her throne to the great astonishment of the Elder. Stupefied, he can only stand perfectly still as Akasha crushes him under her feet. Finally, when he is nothing but a pulpy mess of flesh and bone and blood, Akasha sits back down upon her throne and uses her Mind Gift to telepathically knock over a nearby oil lamp. The oil mingles with the Elder’s remains, and her Fire Gift ignites the oil to incinerate the Elder to ashes, which are subsequently trampled underfoot when Marius moves Those Who Must Be Kept to a holier shrine in Antioch.
For more perspectives on the Elder’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Akasha, Avicus, Cyril, Enkil, Lestat de Lioncourt, Marius, and Teskhamen.