Akasha

This article is about Akasha from the novel. You may be looking for Akasha from the AMC adaptation.

Akasha was the first vampire in existence. She was known among vampires as The Great Mother, and was the holder of the Sacred Core, the source of power for all vampires.

Description[]

Akasha’s skin is unnaturally white, hard, and flawless, often causing those who see her to mistake her for a statue. She has dark brown, nearly black, lustrous eyes and black hair, which is often braided in the Egyptian style, and long and curly when loose. Her face appears innocent and serene, and her voice is high and soft. She is described as having firm, shapely limbs and straight shoulders, and a beautiful face with high cheekbones. She is originally from Uruk, an ancient city located in what is now Iraq.

Personality[]

Akasha is an extremely charismatic and egotistical woman who demands power and control. Willing to manipulate others with claims of a shared desire for a greater altruistic purpose, Akasha is quick to use violence and brutality against those who do not give in to her desires. At her core, Akasha is extremely nihilistic, believing only she is capable of correcting what is wrong in the world. Maharet describes her as the only true monster among the vampires, because she refuses to acknowledge her own monstrosity.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Akasha was born in Uruk, in what is now Iraq, over 6,000 years ago, long before “the first pharaoh built the first pyramid.” At a young age she married Enkil, the King of Kemet (which would later become Egypt). Akasha and her husband Enkil wanted their subjects to turn away from cannibalism, and encouraged the adoption of agriculture. According to Marius in The Vampire Lestat, Akasha and her husband were not the first people in Kemet to follow this path, but they were the first rulers, and were perhaps influenced by earlier believers. Akasha was regarded as a beloved ruler for turning her people away from violence and toward peace.

During her reign, she gives birth to her and Enkil's son, Seth, and takes a young lover from her personal guard, named Nebamun.

Eventually Akasha becomes interested in supernatural spirits. She invites the twin witch sisters Maharet and Mekare to help her contact spirits, which they refuse. Some time later, Akasha sends soldiers to the twins' village where they interrupt their mother's funeral, where the twins are preparing to perform their culture's funeral rite of consuming their mother's brain and heart. The soldiers kill everyone, save the twins, arresting them for the crime of cannibalism, and drag them to Kemet.

At the court, Akasha "spares" the twins and demands they answer countless trivial questions with the help of spirits. The spirits provide only the simplistic answers which they are capable, then grow irritated and provide only rude retorts. Enraged, Akasha throws Maharet and Mekare into jail as blasphemers. The next day the Queen comes again and asks the same questions. Against Maharet's wishes, Mekare summons a powerful spirit named Amel to seek revenge on Akasha. After Amel demonstrates his greater power, frightening Akasha, she orders her steward Khayman to rape Maharet and Mekare before her entire court as punishment. The Queen allows the twins to go home after the rape, but Amel still remains in their court, furious at the humiliation of the twins. Amel punishes Akasha, Enkil and Khayman by pestering them day and night in their homes, by knocking objects over or throwing them at them, eventually driving them mad.

Opposition to Akasha and Enkil was always strong amongst cannibals, mostly by those who practiced ritual cannibalism as opposed to savage cannibalism. Knowledge that the King and Queen were the cause of a malevolent spirit oppressing Kemet made the case against them even stronger. One night, a group of nobles snuck into the palace and stabbed Enkil and Akasha multiple times, leaving them both mortally wounded. As Akasha's soul left her body, Amel snatched and intertwined it with his own and thrust their combined spirits into her body, making Akasha the world's first vampire.

Life as a Vampire[]

Akasha saved a dying Enkil by draining him of his remaining blood before allowing him to drink nearly all of hers, making Enkil the world's second vampire and Akasha's first fledgling. Together, they tracked down and killed all the nobles that participated in their assassination attempt. Akasha realized that she and Enkil are now immortal and possess superhuman strength, but they cannot endure direct sunlight, can no longer have intercourse, and are driven by an insatiable need for blood. She sends Khayman to fetch Maharet and Mekare to explain to her her nature and why she came to be.

Maharet replies that the spirit Amel now inhabiting the Queen and King is too large to be contained in their singular human body. The spirit and their bloodlust will be proportionally diluted as more humans are made into vampires. To verify the Maharet's claims, Akasha betrays Khayman's loyalty by making him into a vampire against his will. Finding Maharet and Mekare's answers to be unsatisfactory as they cannot completely eliminate the bloodlust, the twins are sentenced to death. Before the execution takes place, she has Maharet's eyes and Mekare's tongue amputated. The night before their execution, the twins are saved by Khayman who is furious at what Akasha has done to him. He makes Mekare into a vampire and Mekare makes Maharet into a vampire, hoping with their new powers they will be able to defeat Akasha.

Akasha and Enkil spend the next weeks battling Khayman and the twins and their fledglings, who form a group called the First Brood. Akasha turns her lover Nebamun into a vampire, and appoints him the head of "Guard of the Queens Blood" to fight the rebels. Eventually, Akasha succeeds in trapping the twins in Saqqara and separately sets them adrift in the ocean in stone coffins: Maharet to the east, and Mekare to the west. At some point, Akasha brings her adult son Seth, a healer, unwillingly into the blood to serve in her army.

As Maharet promised, as more vampires are made, Akasha and Enkil's bloodlust decreases. Akasha and Enkil are worshiped as Gods in the ancient world for some time, appropriating myths about Isis and Osiris, and drink from "evil-doers" brought before them for telepathic judgement for their crimes. Akasha sends her servants into the world to be worshiped as Blood Gods, following a similar ritual. She forbids the creation of any female vampires without her blessing, insisting she be the only woman worshipped by her followers. After a thousand years, her general Nebamun violates this rule by giving the Dark Gift to a slave woman her falls in love with named Sevraine, and is imprisoned. This event leads an unwilling member of Akasha's army, Rhoshamandes, to finally enact his plan to flee from her control. Akasha takes Sevraine as her handmaiden, but Sevraine abandons her within fifty years, and Akasha puts a price on Sevraine's head.

Immobility and Protection as "Those Who Must Be Kept"[]

Eventually, the power of Akasha and Enkil's blood becomes a target to other vampires, who trap them in order to maintain access to their power. They eventually become living statues, cared for by vampires who know their importance to their kind. As the parents of all vampires, any injury done to Akasha and Enkil will be done to all vampires. If they were to die, all vampires in the world would die with them. A vampire, referred to as the Elder, eventually becomes the guardian of Akasha and Enkil. Unaware of how damage to them will affect other vampires, and after years of resentment against them for refusing to move or speak to him, the Elder places Akasha and Enkil in the sun. Vampires across the world feel its effects, and either die of spontaneous combustion or are severely burned. Unharmed, Akasha uses the Mind Gift to call out to a recently made Marius to take them out of Egypt. Akasha briefly awakens when the Elder tries to stop their escape, killing him by crushing his head beneath her feet and pouring burning oil on his remains.

Akasha and Enkil continue to spend the next two thousand years under Marius's care as living statues. After ten years with Marius, Akasha becomes aware of Marius's growing disillusionment with his task. She summons a Roman woman Marius knew as a mortal, named Lydia, to her telepathically with visions of Akasha's life in dreams. Once Lydia, now named Pandora, becomes a vampire, Akasha sends her images of a Roman wedding between she and Marius. Pandora realizes that she was chosen by Akasha to keep Marius from destroying the she and Enkil, and therefore himself, by being his companion. When Marius is severely burned by the Children of Darkness several hundred years later, Akasha allows him to drink her blood to heal his wounds.

Akasha first encounters Lestat in the eighteenth century when Marius shows him Akasha and Enkil's sanctuary. Despite Marius's protests, Lestat goes into their chamber alone and plays the violin. Akasha awakens and offers him her blood and drinks his. They are stopped by a jealous Enkil, who comes out of his state as a living statue and begins to crush Lestat. Lestat is saved only when Marius comes and threatens to take Akasha away from Enkil if he doesn't stop. At the end of The Vampire Lestat, Lestat reflects that the blood Akasha gave him was vital to him surviving Claudia's attempt on his life.

Reawakening and Eventual Death[]

In 1985, Akasha awakens for the last time when she hears Lestat's music in his music videos. She drains Enkil of all of his blood to take his power, killing him as she has grown tired of him. Marius is trapped in ice when Akasha destroys his Alaska sanctuary in her departure.

She embarks on a mass killing of vampires, finding them by listening to their thoughts and incinerating them with the Fire Gift. She kills Baby Jenks, Laurent, and the majority of other vampires on Earth, intending to eliminate all but those who would become her servants in her grand design for the human race. She specifically spares all vampires important to or loved by Lestat, as she intends to make him her consort.

Akasha destroys the vampires assembled at Lestat's concert, and takes Lestat from his resting place as the sun rises. She takes him to his childhood home, which lies in ruins, and Azim's temple, allowing him to drink massive amounts of her blood and instructing him in his new powers, the Cloud Gift and the Fire Gift. Finally, after massacring an island in Greece, she concludes her pitch to Lestat: he will be her consort and the personification of male aggression under her control as she enacts her ultimate plan for the human race. Akasha plans to destroy ninety percent of the male population, believing this will eliminate rape, violence, and war. In the resulting “peaceful Eden,” she will be to be worshiped as a goddess, the Queen of Heaven.

The surviving vampires are confronted by Akasha in Maharet's Sonoma compound, where Akasha has appeared at Lestat's request. She explains her plans and offers the vampires a chance to be her followers as angels in her New World Order. They all refuse to partake in Akasha's plan despite her vow to destroy all of them if they do not comply. Maharet speaks for all of them when she says that Akasha simply wants to dominate and be worshiped, and have everyone obey her, no matter how many lives are lost.

Their refusal makes Akasha furious, but before she can destroy the surviving vampires, Mekare, whom no one has seen for 6,000 years, appears in the room. She charges at Akasha, shoving her into a glass wall, causing a large shard to decapitate her. Mekare devours both Akasha’s brain and heart, taking into herself the Sacred Core and the spirit of Amel. By successfully bonding with it, Mekare becomes the new Queen of the Damned, while Akasha’s body collapses into a transparent shell.

In Adaptations[]

In the movie Queen of the Damned, Akasha was played by Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash after completing production of the film, but prior to its release. The film is dedicated to her. In 2025, it was announced that the character of Akasha in AMC's The Vampire Lestat would be portrayed by Sheila Atim.