I will also raise you this idea: I do not think there is a version of events where Armand turns someone into a vampire where he doesn’t consider it an act of violence. Daniel’s turning was absolutely violent. I just think we are thinking of that word wrong.
Vampirism is abhorrent to him. That does not change after he turns Daniel. Armand perhaps has the most realistic view of being a vampire. He sees it for exactly what it is because his existence has almost exclusively been horrific. He knows the depths of loneliness better than anyone and spent four hundred years festering in self-hatred underground. He has such severe identity problems when it comes to how he feels about being a vampire, but I don’t think those feelings are misplaced. The universe did nothing to sugarcoat how bleak it can get when it came to him. He has seen it all, and that is why he wouldn’t turn Madeleine. Because it is the very worst thing he thinks you can do to someone.
That is why Armand tells Daniel that it is him who he has done the most harm to in the bowling alley. Nothing could ever be worse than making a vampire. Even if he was gentle, which he almost certainly was, it wouldn’t matter. He murdered Daniel and damned him for all eternity. He polluted the veins of someone so very dear to him with this evil filth that has made his existence a living hell for half a millennium now. That is violence. It is perhaps, to him, as pure as violence gets and I think that is a perspective you can only really understand when you’ve lived for as long as he has and you’ve endured what he’s endured.
But he loves Daniel. It’s purely selfish. He cannot let him die. He loves Daniel so much it overrides everything. It’s not just his need to be loved, it is Daniel specifically. He can’t exist without him, so he does the very worst thing, in his mind, that he has ever done.
