Requiem Vampire Knight 3: The Return of Torquemada

One of the virtues of featuring real-life historical or mythological characters: there’s no copyright on them.

Torquemada, my all-time favourite villain, returns in this volume. But it was actually Olivier’s doing, rather than my own. I’d originally featured an ordinary Catholic priest of my acquaintance for the role. He was a typical pervert who appeared to be holy, while in reality he was a wolf, a perfect basis for a werewolf. But Olivier rightly felt that the priest wasn’t big deal enough and a more classic figure was needed for the role. He suggested the infamous Torquemada and I jumped at the chance to write about him yet again. A very different role to the Torquemada in Nemesis The Warlock, but equally evil and equally fanatical.

It’s one of the virtues of featuring real-life historical or mythological characters: there’s no copyright on them. So in this book there are a myriad of authentic personages who’ve been condemned to Hell, including Adolf Hitler.

Another favourite character appears in this volume: the pirate Lady Venus who was ‘woke’ before the term was even invented. My French publisher, Jacques Collin, said he was concerned that a French audience wouldn’t understand her personality in a country where – according to him, at least – there was no political correctness. But I persevered with her and I think, today, France has caught up with the rest of the world and is just as socially conscious. Lady Venus is an extreme feminist and her dialogue must have been a nightmare for Jacques to translate.

Visually, the volume is dominated by a number of fabulous visual splash scenes: the magnificent cloud-ships of the pirates; Dracula’s sky-ship The Satanik; a battle between werewolves and knights; and Thurim pulled apart by wild horses. Once again, this last visual was Olivier’s idea, as John Hicklenton had already come up with the idea for the book Torturer we produced for Germany. Great artists’ minds think alike. I never suggested it to John because it was so visually demanding, but he rendered it effortlessly and so, too, did Olivier.

Pulled apart by horses: Olivier’s vision

And John Hicklenton’s version, in Torturer