YMMV / Lust for a Vampire

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Carmilla herself seems to be a brand new vampire. There's no evidence at all that she was a vampire when she died in 1710, and in his Satanic invocation in which he sacrifices a local girl in order to raise her, the Count specifically asks Satan to grant him the power to allow "the dead" to join "the Undead", implying that Carmilla died naturally and is being resurrected as a vampire. Barton's educational speech to the girls in the graveyard claims that Carmilla probably died of a plague that was sweeping Styria around 1710, though 'plague' in this context could be a rationalisation for a swathe of vampire-induced deaths (1710 fits with the Karnstein's 40 year nomadic cycle) and given his later admissions, he could well have been hiding the truth of what he knows. Carmilla's complete ignorance of any literature post 1710 seems to be evidence that she really was just a normal girl taken in the prime of her youth. It could be asked "how much reading for leisure do vampires actually do?", but just take a look at the quality of the clothes and the carriage the Count and Countess get around in. They obviously have money and don't typically just hang around ruined castles all the time, so they're as likely to keep up with modern trends as any other immortal predator, which means books and reading.