this poignant melodrama's based on fact.

2) “ #yes this is the same grandfather who was gaslit into joining the CIA “

he was an incredibly funny guy, and for most of my childhood we'd meet up with him and my grandmother in Hawaii, and we'd visit the Starbucks that used to be the grocery store that his father owned, where he was actually born in one of the storage rooms, and we'd ask the baristas if they ever saw any ghosts there and they'd freak out and ask us how we knew about that.

By the time we left Italy I was playing dangerous little games with mortals. I’d see a man, or a woman—a human being who looked perfect to me spiritually—and I would follow the human about. Maybe for a week I’d do this, then a month, sometimes even longer than that. I’d fall in love with the being. I’d imagine friendship, conversation, intimacy that we could never have. In some magical and imaginary moment I would say: “But you see what I am,” and this human being, in supreme spiritual understanding, would say: “Yes, I see. I understand.”

I think it's very notable that Amadeo isn't whitewashed in Marius' portrait of him compared to the public art we've seen of him.

I don't think that the whitewashing is anything to do with Marius, and is more likely down to more established artists who plan to display/sell their work. I think for Marius, Amadeo's dark skin is something that he will emphasise and draw attention to.

The appeal of Amadeo in the books is his amnesia. The fact that he's essentially a blank slate for Marius to shape into the perfect companion (which to him just means turning him into Marius 2.0). Amadeo is, to all intents and purposes, a project. An experiment. It's nature vs nurture put to the test three centuries before the theory was even coined.

In the book, there's always this underlying theme of Amadeo being something wild and barbaric which Marius is then able to tame which stems from Marius' xenophobic views of Ukraine. In the show this is going to be even more apparent, because now it's more than just a cultural difference. Amadeo is visibly, tangibly different. In the book, only Marius is aware of Amadeo's history because of the mind gift, but in the show the difference in background is going to be apparent to everybody, and I think that's something Marius will want to show off.

Marius always wants to be seen as the most intelligent, the most worldly man in the room, and what better symbol of that than Amadeo? The dark skinned, wild, barbaric boy who Marius transformed into something sophisticated? Amadeo's dark skin is a bragging point. A glaring reminder of the extent of the transformation Marius was able to accomplish.

In the Talamasca's files, Armand's name is listed as "Armand Maurius", Maurius being a name which literally means dark skinned. This seems to be a name specifically used by the Talamasca, because as far as I've been able to find, all of the posters in the Theatre Des Vampires list him as "Armand Marius"

Now that we have a hint that the Talamasca is already in posession of some of Marius' writing, it's possible that Maurius was the name he assigned to Amadeo (and since Armand doesn't appear to continue to adopt that name, it's also possible he wasn't aware of it).