Armand is one of the most devastating characters I've ever seen, what the hell. Reading excerpts from the Vampire Armand after watching the show broke my heart. Assad truly delivered in the scenes when it comes to Armand's backstory and his trauma.
TW// rape, pedophilia, slavery, colonialism, orientalism, grooming, white supremacy
It angers me so much when people don't read into Armand's character by taking into account BOTH the fact that he was a child when he was enslaved and trafficked, AND that so much of his subsequent treatment is related to racism, orientalism and fetishization as a South Asian boy, then man. He was stripped of his agency, his bodily autonomy, his culture, forced to conform to a culture and customs that were not his, all while being subjected to extreme abuse and rape.
This did NOT happen in a vacuum, this is directly related to white supremacy because Marius is a white supremacist, an ancient Roman who idealizes the "white race" and calls any culture that's not western European (even Eastern European, as per Armand's og background as Ukrainian in the books) "barbaric" and "backwards" and beats it into submission and molds it into fitting the "pure European standard".
And yes, Armand idealized Marius for so long, and he served him, and still somewhat idealizes and romanticizes his idea of Marius because he is a victim of him. He is still deeply traumatized and he was groomed by Marius, and as was confirmed by Louis, Marius bought him when he was twelve.
He was taught to serve him, because that was what he knew, Marius was all he had, no more parents, Marius would be his father. Father, lover, maker. Everything, he would be everything all at once.
That is exactly what groomers do. They replace what should be the safest figures in your life, your parents, a partner, a companion, and twist it, just enough, just enough to make it innocuous, to make it look normal. But it's not. Marius beats him, whips him, and Armand still pleads for him to forgive him. "Basked in his mercy," and what mercy was there to be had?
And even still, Armand still somewhat knows deep down that he was abused, but nobody can fault him for romanticizing anything that happened to him in an attempt to protect his psyche from shattering. He tries to wrap it up by saying he was loved by Marius, ("knowing what it would do to his beloved Amadeo") even though we as an audience know he was groomed and that Marius didn't care, as he calls him a "rotten boy" in s3 when Lestat meets him. Disgusting man.
Btw, this is not the discussion to bring your grievances about Armand's actions into, I do not justify nor excuse them, however I feel like Armand deserves to be analyzed as a victim of slavery, colonialism/orientalism and child rape without bringing in what he did after becoming a vampire, so just some nuance to be had here.
Also, while I am not South Asian, I am Algerian, and specifically Amazigh (the indigenous people of North Africa), so my people have an uncomfortable history with different waves of colonialism (not only from Europeans, but also Arabs, Ottomans, etc) and similar fetishization, kidnappings, enslavement, trafficking and rape.
But discussions about Armand's treatment also need to include the fact that he is a brown skinned Indian man and I feel like a lot of people gloss over this as well.
This would ABSOLUTELY affect the way he was treated in the brothel and by Marius. Colorism is a direct result of racism in how it ranks Black and Brown people and too few people talk about it nor do they acknowledge bias in how they might perceive him. Anti-Indian hatred and islamophobia have become alarmingly high in the past decade or so, and I see it in this fandom too even though people try to claim otherwise.
Nevertheless, I truly love Armand as a character, even if I'm disappointed at the flattening of his motives in s3 and turning him into a simple one note villain (besides the mention of his past during the torture scene, but it was such an egregious anti-Black scene I can't engage with it). I don't know if I can trust these writers to write Armand's backstory and do it respectfully.
