This was my first bookmand art, that's why he doesn't look like Mick Jagger yet and has bright ginger hair 😂 also, i recently remembered the typical Vergil - Blue and Dante - Red color scheme wasn't always the case, especially in old manuscripts:

☝️☝️ There it is! That's literally Marius & Amadeo. Hahaha!

I have so so many thoughts about the setting of TVA. It's the most prominent and interesting theme in the book to me. I was heavily fixated & obsessed with turn-of-the-century Italian Renaissance history for a while, so starting to read TVA and slowly realizing this book is set in exactly those years, how Armand's conflict corresponds exactly with the history & theology of that brief period was... an Experience. LOL.

Amadeo's rebirth into his new life being set in a time where Christian faith & culture is being reborn. The Siege of Constantinople and Andrei's kidnapping. Savonarola's Bonfire of Vanities and the Children of Darkness ambush. The constant comparison with Christ's rebirth ... It is so deeply imbued with the conflicting values of the Italian Renaissance. Even Marius, too, represents that - an ancient roman teacher to offset & challenge Armand's very Christian, very spiritual devotion. The book, to me, is Armand's Divine Comedy!