I haven't been able to put it into words but there is something to the fact that Lestat's trauma was so wild and tumultuous and came out of nowhere and how Lestat is. Well I mean he put it best. Toxic bitch, anxiously attached, show-pony with a personality disorder. He's a hurricane. He reacts and he reacts hard.
And how Armand's trauma was so prolonged and sustained and almost predictable in the most awful way possible and how he was in pain for so long. And Armand is the one who messes with people's minds and waits and watches and lies. He's a painting, he isn't an active participant in his life.
It really is unstoppable force meets immovable object. They are so similar and so different and I love them. It's never lesmandover
this is actually so true, they are foils to each other in the worst possible ways sjdhisjshdk they make me so sick!!!! the way that I always thought about the reason they deal with their trauma so differently is that they both in some way tend to replicate the abusive dynamics that traumatized them, even when they try desperately not to
For Armand, he always puts himself in positions of power, the maítre/ master role he assumes when ruling his cult or even toward the theatre des vampirs, in the same way that Marius was his maítre/master while he was forced to be the slave. He's trying to break out of that submissive role, at the same time as soon as he gets into a relationship, he falls into his old patterns, letting himself be called Arun and addressing all his known partners in the show as maítre.
For Lestat, his major thing seems to be abandonment issues from when Magnus threw himself into the fire and the drastic way his relationship with Nicki ended. He tries to make a big show of turning Louis consensually and being there for him to teach him how to be a vampire, something Lestat himself never got, but much like Magnus his insecurity makes him prone to extreme abusive violence and a need to control others. This insecurity is also definitely what makes him more easy to manipulate for Gabriella and probably later on Akasha.
While they both superficially try to break out of their traumas, it's very clear they haven't actually worked through them, but I find it so interesting how that has lead them down these extremely different paths :0
