not to expose my freak and over analyze a two word sentence but: GENUINELY so many layers to Lestat bringing up Armand and Marius muttering “rotten boy” under his breath. Like rotten??? Boy??? I saw some people say they felt like that was out of character for Marius to openly + casually insult Armand like that and I One: highly disagree, and Two: think that those people and I are picking up on different implications.
Because yeah what a nasty mean thing to say, it definitely is an insult, but also, not really?? I mean it’s more than that. That one line functions fundamentally as a substitute for what amounts to paragraphs in the vampire lestat of Marius and Lestat talking about Armand. this one line in the show has so much subtext doing the heavy lifting. Here’s a telling bit from the book that I feel is relevant:
“Rotten” as an insult is so so specific. “Rotten” infers that something that is now decayed and putrid was formerly fresh, pure, unspoiled, ripe, gleaming with potential. but it was left out to spoil, abandoned, or ruined, and now it’s gone bad, moldering, sour, repulsive. there’s no coming back from rot. a rotten fruit is tainted beyond redemption, it would’ve been delicious once, but now it’s sickening, it’s foul, it’s rot.
And not just rotten, Rotten boy. boy. “boy” that is a 27 year old man that has been alive for over 300 years. It’s belittling, but it’s belittling in the way parents are towards their children. I would go so far as to say there’s an undercurrent of affection in it. Oh Armand, that rotten boy, that grimy little devil. Rotten because Marius left him to rot, rotten because it's too late, the food has already gone bad. Marius made a horrible mistake, making Armand, and now he’s gone bad, he’s no good, he’s to be thrown out for the rats and the flies. But he’s a boy. He’s his boy, was his boy, his fruit, his seed that he grew and flowered and would have eaten if he hadn’t let it go rotten.
Whats so sad about how Marius thinks of Armand is not that he despises him, it’s that he pities him. He pities him like you pity a dog who you take out back and shoot. Immortalizing Armand was the worst crime Marius has ever committed against his own kind. He was a mistake, there’s no going back now. It’s too late.
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