Yeah not making Armand a real rival to Lestat for Louis makes a lot more sense than not making Lestat and Nicki a real relationship. We've already seen that memories of Nicki really affect Lestat (so I don't think the show will decide not to go there), and I think he loves Louis more/more deeply, but the way the tragedy of that relationship affects his relationship with Louis matters to the story.
(x)
That's really where I'm at with it too, anon, and I'd even say the writers had a harder task with adapting the relationship between Louis and Armand because no matter which way you cut it, Armand is the orchestrator of Claudia's death. I actually quite like the way they structured that dynamic / relationship, and do think there was a real tenderness and love if not deep love for a time, but I can also appreciate why other people feel it was undermined too.
Nicki's really a completely different situation to Armand, and it's crazy to me that people would feel it was in competition with Lestat's relationship with Louis at all. Like it's a first love vs a last love situation, y'know? First loves are so important and so foundational to how someone realises what they want (and don't want), and I think opens up someone's sense of self in terms of who they are in a romantic partnership. They're revealing! And important! And usually, inevitably, a first big heartbreak too, which is absolutely what Nicki is to Lestat. Like, it's so important to me that Nicki and Lestat break up before Nicki dies, and that they do so so cruelly, because I do think that also does away with the sentiment that Nicki and Lestat would ever have made it in the way that Lestat and Louis will.
Their relationships are different, and yes, the wound Lestat carries over Nicki probably will be one he has forever, but that doesn't tip the scales of these relationships. It certainly has nothing to do with Louis himself, but it does inform Lestat's behaviour in his relationship with Louis, particularly in the Rue Royale days, and to me, that's the good stuff! That's the meat and potatoes of good storytelling! Characters should have histories! Reject the idea that any love story on the way to the Big One is somehow less than, or meaningless! Let them love and lose and love again! It's delicious to me, haha.
