I know the common interpretation of Armand's choice of the coven over Louis is to see it as coming from self-preservation and cowardice, but I also do think we could see it as, in a way, an act of self-respect, which is honestly kind of rare for him actually so it's interesting that he got to a place like that. It was a choice he made to avoid future suffering for himself. He wasn't going to choose a guy who didn't love him as much as he loved him. It was absolutely a betrayal, and the show frames it as such, but I don't think the emotional reasoning behind his choice is as irrational as it is sometimes painted when looked at without an understanding view. Armand understands that Louis loves him, but he also understands that it isn't a deep, consuming love that he can build his life around. Louis isn't going to choose Armand in the same way Armand wants to be chosen. So when he chooses the coven, he isn't really ruining his chances of being the love of Louis' life, because he never had that chance to begin with. In that moment, he seems to understand something very painful but very important: Louis loves me, but he isn't going to love me like I want to be loved.
That's why I find it so interesting that he eventually loses that clarity right before the trial. After making the choice, he starts to doubt himself and regret it, and the scene with Madeleine feels like the turning point. When she tells Louis to tell Armand how much he loves him, and Louis says, "Oh, he knows," Armand turns away with this pained expression that feels almost like a moment of realization: he didn't actually know that Louis loved him, and now he's suddenly hit with doubts about his choice. It feels like he's thinking, What am I doing? Did I just throw away my chance to be truly loved by someone? Madeleine's words give him just enough hope to start doubting the conclusion he'd previously reached.
And that's the tragedy, because from the perspective of the viewer, who knows where the story is heading and watched, in the front row, Louis and Lestat's all-consuming love, Armand wasn't necessarily wrong. Louis can genuinely love him and still not love him in the way Armand needs. We know Louis will never love anyone more than he loves Lestat, and Louis leaving Armand for Lestat, even if Armand had chosen him, was always a very real possibility. Armand's moment of clarity was actually closer to the truth than the hope that replaced it. Maybe Madeleine was sensing Louis' love for Armand, maybe she was sensing his love for Lestat, and maybe the distinction wasn't even clear to her. We'll never know, I suppose. But either way, Armand starts questioning what he thought he understood about Louis at exactly the moment when he has already made the choice that will ultimately destroy their relationship.
Then, after the trial, because of his newfound faith in Louis' love, he does choose Louis over the coven. He takes Louis out of the wall and lets him destroy the coven, hoping that Louis still loves him. But Louis doesn't love him anymore, not even in the "not good enough" way he did before. He does seem willing to remain companions, at least partly to spite Lestat and partly because he doesn't want to be alone. And that's where Armand slips into denial. He clings to the hope that he hasn't completely destroyed Louis' love for him, convinces himself that he was wrong to doubt it, and stays with Louis for 77 years. He lies about his betrayal and accepts being resented by him. It's all worth it because of love.
That feels like the point where the self-respect of his original decision has completely collapsed into desperation. He had once been able to say: You won't choose me, so I won't choose you over the structure that gives meaning to my life. But afterward, he becomes someone who would rather remain beside a romantic partner under false pretenses and be secretly hated by him than accept losing him. He discards the very self-respect that allowed him to make the original choice in the first place.
And I think what's especially interesting is that this self-respect doesn't disappear completely. We see it fighting its way back throughout their almost-century-long relationship. Armand has these moments of clarity where he seems to realize, I should leave. He loves Lestat more. I cannot make him love me the way I want him to, not with devotion and not even with lies and manipulation. But he never reaches a point where he can sustain that clarity for very long. He always falls back into denial and recommits himself to the hope that their love can somehow become what he needs it to be. By that point, he's not enjoying the relationship, he's justifying the sacrifice. Letting the coven be destroyed and seventy-seven years of lies, resentment, loneliness, manipulation and humiliation have to mean something. Otherwise what was the point?
So Armand is constantly oscillating between knowing and not wanting to know. He knows what Louis can actually give him, and then convinces himself that he was wrong. He realizes that he cannot make Louis love him enough, and then finds another reason to stay. He understands that the relationship is destroying him, and then decides that the love makes it worth it anyway.
It takes someone external, like Daniel, to finally break him out of that self-imposed, hard-to-sustain fantasy. And once he does break away from Louis, Armand seems to regain some of that clarity and self-respect. He's angry, too, at Louis, but I don't think it's only at him. He's angry at himself for spending 77 years in this relationship, for accepting so much suffering, and for believing for so long that he could somehow make himself loved enough to justify all of it. There's almost an element of I knew better. I understood this once. Why did I spend all those years convincing myself otherwise?
And that's why I think the tragedy of Armand in his relationship with Louis isn't that he chose the coven over true love. It's that he briefly understood what Louis could actually give him. He had an actual sense of self-respect for once, and he made the choice that followed from that understanding. Then he threw that self-respect away in a moment of doubt and spent the next 77 years desperately trying to convince himself that he had been wrong. He manipulated and harmed someone he had already harmed enormously, humiliated himself for someone who would never love him back in the way he wanted, and accepted being hated just to remain close to him all in the name of the type of love he hoped he had with that someone but he never had and at some point he knew it before he started lying to himself.
The Armand who makes the morally terrible choice at the trial may actually be more psychologically lucid than the Armand who spends the next 77 years trying to redeem that choice through the relationship. And I think that's what makes his eventual break from Louis potentially good for him, even if he doesn't recognize it as such. Yes, he loses the structure that gave his life meaning, but he's finally getting back the part of himself that he spent 77 years sacrificing in the hope that the relationship could become what he wanted it to be. He lost Louis, but he might also have lost the need to spend his existence proving that Louis was worth everything he sacrificed.
Maybe, with that part of himself back, the part that won't let himself be humiliated and devoted for nothing, he can finally build something actually worth living for. He's free despite himself; what's he going to do with that freedom? He finally has ahead of him a life that hasn't been decided for him; he might finally have to confront what he actually wants out of existence and actually go looking for it instead of waiting for it to fall into his lap.
