#(just from some of the inflections with assad's performance)

[pynkhues]

Hiii what’s your take on the loumand scene where louis invites armand over to his to turn madelaine? I see everyone making a fuss about armand asking louis “are you asking or making me?” And how that was kinda the turning point in armand choosing to actively work with the coven and plan louclaudia’s murder but idk ive never really known how to read that interaction!

Hi! Oh, that's a really interesting question, anon. I actually tend to think Armand had already chosen the Coven by that point, actually? They're already in the midst of rehearsing the fake play after all, and I've mentioned it before, but I've always read the fact that there were no roles for women as a way for them to justify sending Claudia on errands outside of the theatre so that they could rehearse the real play while she was out.

In a lot of ways, I think it depends on when and how you think Lestat got to Paris. This is totally speculation, of course, but I tend to think they'll keep fairly true to the books where Lestat's shown up looking for Armand to help him finish healing from the murder attempt, and that Armand ends up imprisoning him. I'm not sure when I think that happens exactly, given the show is so different in its timeline, but I do think it's happened by the time they're rehearsing the fake play, and I think there are a few insinuations of that.

In particular, the scene before the one you're talking about includes the voiceover about the Coven's crimes in news clippings - and note when the dialogue changes hands between Armand and Louis:

On its own, it's pretty innocuous, but when you pair it with this beat in the next scene:

I think the Coven did go and hang off the eiffel tower trying to reach Lestat, as they say during the trial and in those clippings, I just think they found him a lot closer to home than they anticipated.

I don't know, I could be way off base of course, haha, but I do think it's a loaded beat and if Armand has already chosen the Coven, than I can see him trying to talk Louis out of turning Madeleine as being more about mitigating risk for all of them, and potentially trying to alleviate some of his own guilt. He feels he cannot prevent the trial, and perhaps that's underscored by the fact that he cannot prevent Madeleine's turning and inevitable death too.

But yeah, I also think that scene works on another level as both a showcase of how undercommunicated and undernegotiated Louis and Armand's relationship is, and in juxtaposing Lestat and Louis' turning of Claudia, which we're about to revisit in the next episode. It really underscores, I think, that Armand was never as fully in with Louis as perhaps he wanted to be, because turning Claudia may have been something terrible and messy and gutwrenching, but it firmed up the foundation of Louis and Lestat's home together, and Armand's refusal to even be present for Madeleine's turning, I think, only weakened theirs for Louis.