OKAY SO BEFORE I START LET ME BE CLEAR THAT I DO NOT SEEK TO CONDONE ANY OF WHAT ARMAND DID BUT TO EXPLAIN HIS BEHAVIORS AND PRESENT A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW THAN IS THE COMMON PERCEPTION OF HIM. SOOOOOO carrying on, this may be shocking or a n o brainer but Armand a few times throughout the series bites Lestat without permission. In fact in their first instance of trying to hook up even, Armand just goes for it on the newly turned (and mind you, in vampire terms, raped into immortality) Lestat:
"No, no, my dearest one, " he was whispering, "nothing but peace and sweetness and your arms in mine. "
"You know it was the damnedest luck! " I whispered suddenly. "I am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go home. " Yes, yes, his lips tasted like blood, but it was not human blood. It was that elixir that Magnus had given me, and I felt myself recoil. I could get away this time. I had another chance. The wheel had turned full round. I was crying out that I wouldn't drink; I wouldn't, and then I felt the two hot shafts driven hard through my neck and down to my soul. I couldn't move. It was coming as it had come that night, the rapture, a thousandfold what it was when I held mortals in my arms. And I knew what he was doing! He was feeding upon me! He was draining me. And going down on my knees, I felt myself held by him, the blood pouring out of me with a monstrous volition I couldn't stop.
with some serious repercussions that set up their relationship more or less for 2 centuries:
"Devil! " I roared again and I caught him in his swoon and hurled him backwards to the floor. In an instant, I had my hands upon him and, shattering the French doors, had dragged him out with me into the night. His heels were scraping on the stones, his face had become pure fury. I clutched his right arm and swung him from side. to side so that his head snapped back and he could not see nor gauge where he was, nor catch hold of anything, and with my right hand I beat him and beat him, until the blood was running out of his ears and his eyes and his nose. [...] And then I drew my sword to sever his head. Let him live like that if he can. Let him be immortal like that if he can .[...] I waited. I wanted him to beg. I wanted him to give me that powerful voice full of lies and cunning, the voice that had made me believe for one pure and dazzling instant that I was alive and free and in the state of grace again. Damnable, unforgivable lie. Lie I'd never forget for as long as I walked the earth. I wanted the rage to carry me over the threshold to his grave. But nothing came from him [...] He lay a broken child on the gravel path, only yards from the passing traffic, the ring of horses' hooves, the rumble of the wooden wheels.
of course when reading this from Lestat’s POV you think what a monster! He just takes him! Which is all true, absolutely from Lestat’s POV Armand is pretty much raping him from his blood no matter what intimate moment they had shared together a second ago. And why? Because he had no clue what Armand was doing when he gave him his own blood - which most readers have come to understand as a intimate gesture or love or greeting amongst them - and he had never had another vampire who he had not made drink his own blood! The concept of this was a shock to Lestat. But Armand? Should he have known better?
I want to say NO. Armand as we know, is perpetually in the mindsight and body of a youth on the verge of adulthood and leaving childhood, he is suspended in the clash between childish naivety and dark maturity he faced from the horrors of his past. You see, Armand had no concept of consent before he even became immortal. His whole story revolves around his lack of agency and rediscovering it through love and faith.
Being taken from his own home, he was put through awful experiences as a young boy in the child trafficking/child brothel sphere. Rich men and merchants handled him and beat him and raped him with no care for what he felt. And when Marius took him from the brothel into his home, he was only brought into the vampire’s trickery. By that I mean, Marius kept him as a boy lover, preening him and conditioning him to be a perfect acolyte for him but when Marius wanted, he took and gave blood to Armand. It didn’t matter that Armand didn’t understand or was still a victim, in the end Marius got what he wanted. You can see how this affects Armand later on when he “ravages” Bianca.
Even when Marius turned Armand and taught him the “vampiric way”, there was no concept of consent between them. Marius was still his master, his superior and he only taught Armand how to take from mortals. There was no other immortal ( sans that Mael cameo! ) that Armand knew.
Until the Satanic Coven came and kidnapped Armand into their cult. And this gets a little grey but based on small details put through this part of Armand’s life, it doesn’t seem like he was given much time to grow or learn - in fact the coven seemed to act as one great commune of immortals who gave no shit about personal space at times rofl. To put this in perspective, Armand spent THREE HUNDREDS YEARS of his immortality under the control of the “Children of Darkness” worshipping Satan. His skewed behavior and views on death and immortality were 85% formed by what he witnessed and was taught under this people. Not at one point was he ever consensually with them and their beliefs, it was entirely conditioning and another case of stockholm syndrome:
"And when our work is done for Him, we gather without the comfort of riches or
luxuries, in those places blessed by us underground for our slumber, and there with only fire and candles for light, we come together to say the prayers and sing the songs and dance, yes, dance about the fire, thereby to strengthen our will, thereby to share with our sisters and brothers our strength."
Six long months passed during which I studied these things, during which I ventured forth into the back alleys of Rome to hunt with the others, to gorge myself upon the abandoned of fate who fell so easily into my hands.
No more did I search the mind for a crime that justified my predatory feasting. No more did I practice the fine art of drinking without pain to the victim, no more did I shield the wretched mortal from the horror of my face, my desperate hands, my fangs.
One night, I awoke to find myself surrounded by my brothers. The gray-haired woman helped me from my coffin of lead and told me that I should come with them. Out under the stars we went together. The bonfire had been built high, as it had been on the night my mortal brothers had died. [...] I saw the circle had formed around the fire. Two and three deep were the Children of Darkness. [...] My brothers one by one came to kiss me. My sisters, who were few in number, planted their kisses on my cheeks as well.
So I mean, it’s no surprise Armand had no concept of how to express his feelings properly ( where’s that STOP MANIPULATING meme? ) towards Lestat and did not bother to tell Lestat what he meant to do. And even then, the concept is still something Armand struggles with into this very day with cases like Dennis the boy from the Theatre, controversially Daniel Molloy, and again to Lestat when he lay comatose in the cathedral at the start of The Vampire Armand.
And even starting there, this could lead into the conversation of what it means to be a killer as a vampire and losing the concept of consensuality when it comes to blood, and reevaluating even other characters in the series who are guilty of this and have their own reasonings....Idk this is only part of a deep ass meta I’ve mulled over for this series!
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