Most of us are vaguely aware of the Vigenère cipher: basically, you use a key word to encrypt a message, and then that keyword is able to decode it. But without knowing the word it's extremely difficult to guess a solution. You can try to guess a word, but it'll just wind up gibberish.
Believe it or not, there are some fictional characters like that -- they seem so confusing and complicated, incomprehensible! âŚUnless you know the key.
**SPOILERS**
for Interview with the Vampire, Seasons 1 & 2 & The Vampire Chronicles
**SPOILERS**
TRIGGER WARNING
In addition to the expected topics in vampire stories, Armand's backstory involves child sex trafficking, starvation, multiple instances of the rape of a minor, brutal violence against a minor, torture, brainwashing, and suicidal ideation.
Armand from AMC's Interview with the Vampire is one of those Vigenère characters. And I'm getting frustrated watching people try to guess or even force a personality trait onto him that doesn't apply at all and creates nothing but gibberish meta as a result.
A perfect example is the popular fandom insistence that Armand loves to be in control, that it's an end in itself. For whatever reason -- he's egotistical, sadistic, or just evil -- everything Armand does is because he just wants to control everyone.
But then why would he constantly let go and let God like he does in the show?
Like, if Armand wanted Louis for himself, why did he side with his coven and let them (try to) kill him?
Oh, you say he wanted Louis dead? Then why let Lestat save him? Why not use his powers to stop him? And why set Louis free from the coffin in the wall?
Oh, you subscribe to the conspiracy theory -- based on *checks clipboard* "vibes" -- that Lestat was the one who set Louis free? Okay. Why did control-freak Armand allow that? And if Lestat was only going along with the Trial because he was weak, like many people believe, why didn't Armand just kill him then?
And why would Armand let Louis kill his coven?
Why would he bring Louis to Lestat, knowing Lestat could rat him out, or that Louis would might try to kill Lestat, or that Lestat might try to kill Louis, or that both might turn on Armand? Why stand around making Bambi eyes while they decided his fate?
Why did he allow Daniel to live back in San Francisco? And why let a reporter in his apartment in Dubai to do an interview when his companionship was built on a lie?
The answer, of course, is that "control" is not the keyword and won't decode jack shit.
I need to get this out of my system.
I read somewhere that Rolin Jones said Book!Armand was different from novel to novel, basically whatever Anne Rice needed him to be. Except for one thing that was the same in every iteration...
But he wouldn't say what it was. Well, having long since read all the pre-aliens books and skimmed the later ones, I'd say there's definitely a theme in regard to Armand and his issues. Here's some quotes that stuck out in my mind.
From "The Vampire Armand":
"They must have raped me on the boat because I don't remember coming to Constantinople. I don't remember being hungry, cold, outraged or afraid. Now here for the first time, I knew the particulars of rape, the stinking grease, the squabbling, the curses over the ruin of the lamb. I felt a hideous unsupportable powerlessness."
"Oh, poor child, I thought. You might have had a little more compassion for everyone if you had known how beautiful you were, and you might have thought yourself a little bit stronger and more able to gain something for yourself. As it was, you played sly games on those around you, because you did not have faith in your own self or even know what you were."
"Once I broke one arm loose only to have it imprisoned by three other figures with hard pinching fingers. [âŚ] No matter how loud I cried out I could hear the dying cries of the boys who burned..."
"...These compulsions died like weeds sprung from my mind stung by a northern wind, the deep frozen wind of my will dying inside of me."
"It seemed the monks were there from the old Monastery in Kiev. They laughed at me, but gently. They said, "Andrei, what made you think you could escape? Didn't you know that God had called you?"
"From various choices given me, Allesandra chose the name Armand. So I became Armand."
"For years and years, he had been one of them. His mind, his soul, his body belonged to those he ruled; and nothing that I had taught him had given him the strength to fight them."
From "The Vampire Lestat":
"When a being reveals his pain in such a torrent, you are bound to respect the whole of the tragedy. You have to try to comprehend. And such helplessness, such despair is almost incomprehensible to me.[âŚ] You've been the slave of everything that ever claimed you."
From "Interview with the Vampire":
"And I looked up to see his face unutterably sad. He looked away from me as if he felt it was futile to try to convince me of this, and I could feel his overwhelming sadness, his near defeat. I had the feeling that if I were to vent all my anger on him he would do little to resist me. And I could feel that detachment, that passivity in him as something pervasive which was at the root of what he insisted to me again, 'I could not have prevented it.' "
"And it was amazing to me that it took me such a long moment to see Claudiaâs face in that attitude [âŚ] That same helpless look, that defeat which seemed to be so heartfelt that everything beyond it was forgotten."
And finally, from "Memnoch the Devil":
"I never choose my victims anymore, you know this. I can stand before a house as always, and out of the doors will come those who want to be in my arms."
Yeah, so what if "control" wasn't the word?
There's a story that's very popular among self-help jerk-offs these days. They love it as a motivational allegory, but I first heard it as a child and it deeply upset me. (Possibly because I assumed it was true.) It's now called "The Elephant and the Rope."
A gentleman was traveling through an elephant camp and he saw that all the elephants were each of them held in place not with chains but with a little rope around their ankle.
The gentleman was amazed by this. He asked the trainer why he didn't use heavy chains to hold the elephants. "How did you train those powerful animals not to run away?"
The trainer explained that you have to start when they're cubs. You tie a rope around their ankle, just like that, only they're so small, the rope can hold them. Eventually they learn they can't break the rope and they just stop trying.
So even though they grow bigger and stronger and infinitely more dangerous, fully able to free themselves and destroy their captors, they remain prisoners.
They still believe the same size rope will hold them.
We have so many repeating themes in Armand's definitive moments, you could pick any one and run it through the cipher. See what you get. Maybe you'll agree with my choice, maybe you won't. But as you can see, it's by no means a blind guess.
