#since this is the week everyone else agreed Vampires are Problematic™️

[hekateinhell]

Do you think Armand knows or understands that he was groomed by Marius? I think often about how Marius’ “education” for Armand only served to reinforce old traumas and provide new ones. The healthiest education Armand received in Venice in terms of socialization and emotional well-being was the little time he spent with the other boys.

Also, thanks for your great writing and posts! They always make me smile!

Girl, first of all, thank you so much for your sweet words! Makes my heart happy 💕 not sure how you'll feel about me by the end of this lol but that's Future!Hekate's problem.

Second, you made me reach for the wine at 5pm. How could you?

Tl; dr: Armand does not!

Rambling, long answer below the cut (because apparently my brain chose to ignore my fic-writing plans & do this instead).

Okay, SO… my Marius feelings and takes are complicated (much like Armand’s). But separating from that for a minute, there are a few things I want to break down that hopefully haven’t already been said elsewhere a dozen times (they might be idk I haven’t been active on here that long).

"Does Armand know/think he was groomed by Marius?"

That’s not the read we get from TVA. In fact, up to that point, Venice seems to be the highlight of his very long, tragic life! And it’s understandable.

Even when it upsets me (and it does, often!), when I want to play around in their heads (because tbh once it comes off the page it’s headcanon, so I do what I can to try and get a decent read that makes sense with respect to characterization), I have to make allowances for their individual time periods and experiences.

Armand would have very little reason to know (care about) anything relating to psychology, child development, or trauma, even. Those are human concepts that don’t apply to him. Most of the way he behaves is logic-driven (not that his logic isn’t faulty sometimes lol he’s weird, even by vampire standards). I doubt he would see any sense in exploring this 500 years after the fact, after much worse stuff happened.

"Marius’s 'education'"…

I want to preface what I'm about to say by stating that I have zero stake in this game! This isn’t a ship I write about or want to write about, and I’ve never had any big feelings about what other people ship (it just wasn’t a “thing” back in the day in VC so this is new to me now that I’m rejoining the fandom lol). I’ll enjoy it if it’s well-written in fanon though.

This is the repetitive part: Marius is coming at this from the perspective of being a 1500 vampire. I’ve said many times that I don’t think Armand truly realized how far he was pushing Daniel over the emotional/psychological limits of a human being. I think that applies to Marius and Amadeo as well, to an extent.

Marius thinks that he’s providing Amadeo with a good life, and in a lot of ways, he is—by the textbook definition. He’s getting a very well-rounded academic education, he’s socializing, etc. Marius essentially sees Amadeo as a blank canvas, given from what he can tell from his mind (and again, the concept of trauma wasn’t something that would’ve occurred to anyone a few centuries ago, it just didn’t exist). Adding to this, wasn’t uncommon for brothels at the time to be used to supplement a sexual education, in the most literal sense of the phase. As far as Marius is concerned, he’s going the extra mile to prepare Amadeo for the world (yeah, I know).

As for the traumas themselves, I think I know what you’re getting at (but correct me if I’m wrong!)…

So Amadeo is 15 when Marius rescues him; his mental state is in pieces, and he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Marius absolutely sees him as a kid, in the same sense that Armand and the other vampires later see Daniel as a “boy.” He’s not thinking child development here, he’s thinking about what would settle him down and feel good to a messed up human being (having not been one himself for over a thousand years).

Anne was clearly a sex-positive writer, and there’s something to be said for the idea of “replacing” a traumatic memory with a more pleasurable one. Unlikely that Marius was thinking about it in those terms (he was not, we know this), but more as so how to distinguish himself as a “man” that didn’t just want to use Amadeo for his body, but to provide him with pleasure (for the first time in his life). Marius gets literally nothing out of this. He could bite him and induce a swoon, and they’re both happy, no further effort required.

Now, what I think are the Marius traumas...

We know that Marius really Struggles With His Emotions. And he doesn't ever seem to make any real sense of progress there (Pandora and Armand can attest). I've said before (on your post actually lol), Marius is the parent that you don't realize how fucked up they are until you grow up and it's like, "Oh wow, that's why I am the way I am. Whoops!"

Amadeo has human needs and longings for validation, attention, and connection, and Marius just absolutely misses the mark here. The switch scene and the return from Kiev scene are perfect, heartbreaking examples of this (even if Amadeo is a new fledgling in the second instance, his mind hasn’t lived beyond 18 years yet). And Marius does seem to regret his outbursts afterward (it doesn't make it right, but I think it adds a sort of context to the idea he knows he's failing in at least some regard).

And for Armand, it's easy to see how this became his blueprint for what a "relationship" should be. Because he didn't know the behind-the-scenes stuff that was happening with The Parents, he didn't know Marius's own history with kidnapping and cults, etc. And because ultimately, he never had a better reference until much, much later.

In TVA, Armand says he can't claim to never have hated Marius for giving him the Dark Gift, LEAVING HIM IN PARIS, being besties with Lestat... but nothing about their time together factors into it.

By the canon read and my interpretation, Armand doesn't consider himself as having been groomed by Marius in any modern (or otherwise) definition of the word. (And just to throw something else in there, let's not forget what Armand himself did with Denis and the others - now, that's dark!).

~ hekate out