Armand isn’t a narcissist. While he can absolutely be bratty, manipulative, and conniving, and while he may appear to lack empathy, those behaviors don’t come from a grandiose sense of self-importance.
Armand is not self-obsessed. He’s not entitled. He doesn’t crave the spotlight and is not even really that concerned with being in control for its own sake.
All Armand really wants is to feel safe. He desperately craves a North Star, a compass, someone to whom he can relinquish control.
But he can’t allow himself to do that.
He has been denied the safety he craves over and over again, from a childhood locked away from the world in service of God, to being sold into slavery, to being used and abused for his appearance. Safety for Armand has always been synonymous with pain, and where a small scrap of security was granted, it has been viciously snatched away by circumstance or some cruel twist of fate.
Unlike Lestat, he doesn’t crave the spotlight. He did not become the leader of the Paris coven because he wanted to be in charge, to control others. He has been thrown from one horrifying trauma into the jaws of another time and time again, and his only means of survival has been to cling to structure, routine, and purpose.
Lestat effectively fucks that purpose all the way up when he dissolves Children of Darkness. And Armand, desperately hoping Lestat might be a new North Star, a new safe harbor, is instead left with a void and an absence and a theater full of vampires who bore and depress him.
He doesn’t want the stage. He doesn’t want the puppet strings. He begrudgingly takes them because it is better than feeling the acute and empty howl of eternity, of being alone with his own thoughts.
Why does he manipulate and scheme? Why is he so vindictive? Because he is terrified the small scraps of routine and comfort he has assembled will once again be torn away from him. And yet he can’t allow himself the honesty and vulnerability that might lead to a deeper and more profound connection with another being because to be vulnerable is to open yourself up for further pain.
He does not think he is better than everyone else. He doesn’t act as though he is. He is a frightened, lonely child desperately longing for someone to take care of him.
Everybody leaves. Everybody is taken from him. So he hardens, he schemes, he learns to play games instead. It’s the only way he can mimic the kind of love and connection he truly wants, but can never have.
And THAT is why Daniel becomes his favorite toy. Daniel won’t leave. Daniel can run, but he can’t escape. And if it gets to be too much, if the game becomes too perverse or traumatic, well—you can simply wipe the memory and start over. Rewind the tape. Press record. Over and over again.
The world has taken so much from Armand. But nothing and nobody can take away Daniel. He’s the one constant, the North Star, that will belong to Armand forever.
