anne's archive

you want a guy that was purposely written to be a villain? palpatine is your guy! george lucas explicitly calls anakin/vader palpatine’s victim. palpatine grooms him from the time anakin is a nine year old child, isolates him, radicalizes him, and uses him as a custom-designed weapon to further his own agenda, finally spending the next twenty years torturing him physically, spiritually, and psychologically. star wars not your vibe, you want a vc analog? okay, i raise you santino and the children of darkness (no hate to my santino girlies lmao if you can’t tell, i’m very much a proship blog 🫶🏼)

george lucas famously said about anakin/vader: [“I like the idea that the person you thought was the villain is actually the victim, and that the story is really about the villain trying to regain his humanity.”] and this was actually the route anne ultimately took with armand as a character, insofar as the ‘villain as the victim’ arc goes (not to say they’re mutually exclusive, george right there labels vader as both victim and villain, because he is without doubt a villain; anne said armand was the villain in the first two books but that he became a good person in qotd through his relationship with daniel, etc etc)

[Star Wars is not about morally complex situations where it's hard to tell who the villains are. Star Wars is about how easy it is to become one of the villains] and [#it's about how easy it is to become one of the villains but also that you can ALWAYS choose not to be no matter how far down you are #that part ISN'T easy - in fact it's very difficult - but it's worth doing] — imo this is the biggest strength of star wars, because it makes what is a space opera/greek tragedy palpable to a broad audience! and obviously vc, which was written as a gothic horror series for an adult audience, is more morally grey, of course i get that. and i understand that grooming takes on different forms and there’s a wide variation. i have lived three decades of life somehow. it is two very distinctly different genres and scenarios that i’m trying to compare here… but they do share some similarities, enough that anne rice could take something away from it and use it in her own creation (you think i’m being hyperbolic? she got some of her inspiration for qotd from darth vader LOL i can’t make this up, i wish i was making it up 💀)

and as clear as george lucas was on palpatine being anakin’s abuser and jailer, anne rice was just as clear on marius being armand’s savior and liberator (she called him a hero, actually). your closest star wars analogs to marius de romanus are either qui-gon jinn: the man who freed nine year old anakin from slavery and brought him before the jedi council to be trained as a jedi knight because he saw the potential in him and/or obi-wan kenobi: the man who following qui-gon’s death, subsequently dedicated the next thirteen years of his life to raising anakin and guiding him, forming an attachment to him that was so strong it blinded obi-wan to anakin’s darker qualities—george lucas used the word “seduced”, which is crazy work—and who never stopped loving and honoring and mourning the memory of anakin even after he rejected obi-wan’s teachings and became darth vader, even though in his heart anakin skywalker died when anakin took on the name darth vader and swore his loyalties to palpatine (under extreme physical, emotional, mental duress btw don’t get me started on the obikin x marimand parallels)

in summation:

the jedi grooming anakin to become a jedi knight ✅

palpatine grooming anakin by isolating him radicalizing him and abusing him ❌

marius grooming armand to become a vampire ✅

santino grooming armand by isolating him radicalizing him and abusing him ❌

finishing this off with the usual round of disclaimers because i know where i am:

1) i said vampire chronicles and not amc’s interview with the vampire. i’m not discussing marius’ character or his relationship with armand as it’s portrayed on the show—those are two very different beasts and this has nothing to do with that. it would be a very different essay if i was going to go in that direction

2) i have read TVA and B&G, i know there is a sexual element to marius and armand’s relationship, however in my opinion this does not constitute either definition of grooming. there is no manipulation and coercion involved and it has nothing to do with marius wanting to turn him into a vampire, it occurs because armand wants it and finds pleasure in it