TW// rape, pedophilia, slavery, colonialism, orientalism, grooming, white supremacy

It angers me so much when people don't read into Armand's character by taking into account BOTH the fact that he was a child when he was enslaved and trafficked, AND that so much of his subsequent treatment is related to racism, orientalism and fetishization as a South Asian boy, then man. He was stripped of his agency, his bodily autonomy, his culture, forced to conform to a culture and customs that were not his, all while being subjected to extreme abuse and rape.

This did NOT happen in a vacuum, this is directly related to white supremacy because Marius is a white supremacist, an ancient Roman who idealizes the "white race" and calls any culture that's not western European (even Eastern European, as per Armand's og background as Ukrainian in the books) "barbaric" and "backwards" and beats it into submission and molds it into fitting the "pure European standard".

And yes, Armand idealized Marius for so long, and he served him, and still somewhat idealizes and romanticizes his idea of Marius because he is a victim of him. He is still deeply traumatized and he was groomed by Marius, and as was confirmed by Louis, Marius bought him when he was twelve.

He was taught to serve him, because that was what he knew, Marius was all he had, no more parents, Marius would be his father. Father, lover, maker. Everything, he would be everything all at once.

That is exactly what groomers do. They replace what should be the safest figures in your life, your parents, a partner, a companion, and twist it, just enough, just enough to make it innocuous, to make it look normal. But it's not. Marius beats him, whips him, and Armand still pleads for him to forgive him. "Basked in his mercy," and what mercy was there to be had?

And even still, Armand still somewhat knows deep down that he was abused, but nobody can fault him for romanticizing anything that happened to him in an attempt to protect his psyche from shattering. He tries to wrap it up by saying he was loved by Marius, ("knowing what it would do to his beloved Amadeo") even though we as an audience know he was groomed and that Marius didn't care, as he calls him a "rotten boy" in s3 when Lestat meets him. Disgusting man.

Btw, this is not the discussion to bring your grievances about Armand's actions into, I do not justify nor excuse them, however I feel like Armand deserves to be analyzed as a victim of slavery, colonialism/orientalism and child rape without bringing in what he did after becoming a vampire, so just some nuance to be had here.

Also, while I am not South Asian, I am Algerian, and specifically Amazigh (the indigenous people of North Africa), so my people have an uncomfortable history with different waves of colonialism (not only from Europeans, but also Arabs, Ottomans, etc) and similar fetishization, kidnappings, enslavement, trafficking and rape.

But discussions about Armand's treatment also need to include the fact that he is a brown skinned Indian man and I feel like a lot of people gloss over this as well.

This would ABSOLUTELY affect the way he was treated in the brothel and by Marius. Colorism is a direct result of racism in how it ranks Black and Brown people and too few people talk about it nor do they acknowledge bias in how they might perceive him. Anti-Indian hatred and islamophobia have become alarmingly high in the past decade or so, and I see it in this fandom too even though people try to claim otherwise.

(nsfw warning, long post, underage & dead dove for TVA and Sleeping Beauty series)

10. In the second to last book in the series Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Lestat goes to the lost city of Atlantis! This is not in fact a thing that happens in the book. It's a fun book, you should read it.

9. Anne Rice hated [insert character here] which is why they aren't in the later books! No she probably didn't, she probably just forgot they existed. She cared much less about minor characters than any of us do. She also didn't feel like she could write Louis because of his headspace being so tied to a particular point in her life.

8. In Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, you find out that the vampires are aliens! That's also not what happens in that book, go read it, it's pretty fun book.

7. Anne Rice hired a ghostwriter to write Blood Canticle, or any of a number of her other books! Literally what the fuck are you talking about, why would someone write that book if they weren't Anne Rice!? Also, you think Anne Rice let someone else write LESTAT!? A thing she famously had a weird problem with!?

6. Anne Rice disowned and denounced her former work when she reverted to Christianity! All of the actual quotes about the series from her after she stopped writing it because she consecrated her writing to Christ are much funnier than the thing you're hallucinating, go look them up, she said something about how even her pornography was probably divinely inspired.

5. None of Anne Rice's books after The Queen of the Damned underwent any editing! It's not editing she was talking about, it was developmental comments from her editor, her editor who would give her feedback as she was writing the book. All of her work was copyedited, some better than others, and she actually paid for additional editors for some of her books to catch continuity issues. If you're wondering why she stopped taking developmental comments from her editor, I can only speculate, but I can tell you from reading her diary that her editor thought she should scrap most of that Armand nonsense in the middle of The Vampire Lestat. So I can't be too mad about it.

4. The concept of an unreliable narrator is central to the series throughout! No it's not, well, that and most people are using the term wrong or using it inconsistently. The series is a bunch of books mostly in first person, they rarely contradict on actual external events and most of the places where the point of views diverge are purely the personal opinions and subjective experiences of the characters. You are almost never supposed to assume a character is lying in the narration, and there are only two points in the series where anyone is actually noted to have been false in their narration. Neither of the falsehoods is a significant plot point.

3. Anne Rice didn't write books with female leads because she had too much internalized sexism and was ignorant about it! Anne Rice had internalized sexism she was completely cognizant of and actively working through in her work, you can find a bunch of interviews of her talking about it. She also did write fewer female leads because they didn't sell as well, you can find a bunch of interviews with her talking about that too. You don't have to love the way she writes about women, you can't complain she didn't write enough female leads unless you actually read the books that she wrote with female leads in them. You should go read The Witching Hour, it has a great female lead, and if you don't have time to read half a million words, go read Pandora, which is also great.

2. The books aren't gay because she either had to censor them because she couldn't make them gay in the '70s, or because she was naive and homophobic! Neither of these things are true, Anne Rice wrote Cry to Heaven in 1982, she confirmed the queerness of her characters as early as in the first book in the second half, and if you really need it hammered home, it's also in the second and third books. For what it's worth she didn't try to make them less gay later on either. It's Anne Rice, if a character isn't bisexual that's an anomaly. The sex stuff is for thematic reasons in the lore, and there's a bunch of sex stuff that doesn't contradict the lore later on. It's crazy that people who have read The Vampire Armand think this woman was avoiding writing gay sex.

@dogpuppy