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I struggle to get through Blood and gold mostly because its boring in a way that these characters cannot make me feel interested. However, Marius in this book is quite compelling to me, especially the way he justified his actions.

I know this fandom has a soft spot for Bianca and Pandora but somehow these two feel really flat. The way Bianca gave up on Armand is not cruel like Marius but its also very distant, the moment she left Marius is the only time I find she is interesting. Pandora is well... I cant form an opinion on her yet with the way Anne Rice developed her.

Blood and Gold is in my top 3 tvc books purely because I just love digging into all of the things Marius says and does and the way he spins or justifies things. He is genuinely low key one of my favourite characters just not in the way a lot of his other fans seem to like 😂

If you haven't already I would definitely recommend reading the spin off novel about Pandora! Within the main tvc universe she is unfortunately a bit of a nothing character most of the time, aside from the little glimpse we get of her towards the end of Blood and Gold, but her backstory is really interesting and she is incredibly funny. You also get some more Marius lore in that book and it's so fun (for me anyway) to see how incredibly consistent he is a character, but also how little tolerance Pandora has for any of his shit. He's an absolute dick to her and it's really sad but she does also give him shit in return.

HOWEVER lets get into this

The way Bianca gave up on Armand is not cruel like Marius but its also very distant

Because this is such a good thesis prompt for me and I have a lot of thoughts about it, but in order to explain my thoughts about that I have to explain my thoughts about the entirety of the relationship between Marius and Bianca, and the thing about that relationship is that we only have Marius' account of it.

With the relationship between Armand and Marius, we have two separate and often conflicting accounts, and between the two we can parse some idea of what the truth is (which is what I attempted to do when I wrote this essay). What I'm basically gonna do here is take you by the hand and propose a thought experiment: what if all the twisted truths that I picked up on in my essay about Amadeo were also repeated again with Bianca?

It's all speculative, because we will never have Bianca's account. This is just purely me pointing out different parts of his brief account of his relationship with Bianca and saying "Hey, he lied about a similar situation before. What if he's lying again?"

Walk with me, in this 7k word essay.

Because I’m doing this on the fly instead of having much of a real plan, I’m just going to go through the book chapter by chapter from when Bianca is turned up to her discovering what happened to Amadeo, and we’ll just have to hope that in the end it all makes some sense.

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at how Marius treated Bianca is that Bianca very nearly was Amadeo. Here’s how he describes her when, after meeting her for the first time, he spends months wrestling with the idea of turning her:

“Oh, yes, she was to my taste as if I’d made her - the daughter of Pandora - it was as if Botticelli had created her, even to the somewhat dreamy expression of her face.” Page 407

And then again after he has started grooming Amadeo:

“Often I found myself staring at her, wondering what would have happened if I had not turned my attention to him. Why after all had I done it? Could I not have wooed her and persuaded her; and then, thinking these thoughts, I realized, foolishly, that I might still choose to do so, and cast him off, with wealth and position, to mortality with all the rest of my boys. No, she was saved. Amadeo was the one I wanted.” Page 537

I could speak to the end of the earth about why Marius ultimately chose Amadeo over Bianca but I will do my best to keep it brief. First, let’s talk about the great paradox of Marius de Romanus and his ideal companion.

In my opinion, the only person Marius has truly loved as a person is Pandora. She is what he’s constantly seeking to replace with both Amadeo and then Bianca (see: him referring to Bianca as the daughter of Pandora when considering her as a potential companion). The problem is, the thing Marius most loved about Pandora is also the thing he most hated about her, and ultimately the thing which constantly tears them apart, which is the fact that Pandora is opinionated and vocal in her disagreements with him. It drives him insane that she won’t just blindly accept everything he says, and because of that he constantly ends up driving her away. So, the thing he wants from either Bianca or Amadeo is a companion who won’t argue with him (except he doesn’t want that, because that was why he loved Pandora, hence the paradox).

Because of that, Amadeo is ideal. He’s younger, and because of his amnesia the perfect blank canvas for Marius to impress all of his beliefs and opinions on. Bianca is still arguably young and impressionable, but not to the same extent as Amadeo, so Marius chooses him over Bianca.

Then we get the entire sequence of events of The Vampire Armand, the Children of Darkness attack, set fire to Marius, and leave with Amadeo. And now we can really get into the relationship between Marius and Bianca and what might have been going on outside of what Marius tells us. Let’s start with Bianca’s turning.

Blood and Gold: Chapter 25

So, burned to a crisp, Marius is able to call out to Bianca with the mind gift and she finds him and immediately offers to help him. She reveals that she already knows he is a vampire and that he needs blood, because Amadeo had confided in her before. After a little back and forth about how exactly Bianca is going to get a victim for Marius to help him regain his strength, she says this:

“‘Give me the Blood, my lord,’ she said suddenly, her voice low and quick. ‘Give it to me. Make me what you made Amadeo. Make me a blood drinker and then I will have the strength to bring the Evil Doer to you. You know it is the way.’” Page 560

Marius then weighs this all up in his mind and appears to come to the conclusion that he could never do this to Bianca, could never make such a rash and permanent decision. Throughout this, there is a constant sense of anger, particularly at the fact that Amadeo shared his secret with Bianca, and then, less than a page later, Bianca gives up on trying to convince Marius to turn her and we get this. (Sorry for the long quote but I wanna capture the whole thing).

“She settled back as if she knew that she had pushed me a little too hard. Her voice came softer, yet still insistent. ‘Tell me again the story of your years,’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘Tell me again of how it was that Venice did not exist or Florence either when you were already Marius, tell me this story once more.’ I went for her. She couldn’t have escaped. In fact I think that she tried to escape. Surely she screamed. No one outside heard her. I had her too quickly for that, and we were too deep in the golden room. Pushing the mask aside and covering her eyes with my left hand, I sank my teeth into her throat, and her blood came into me in a rush. Her heart pounded faster and faster And just before it made to stop I drew back her, shaking her violently and crying out against her ear: ‘Bianca, wake!’ At once I slashed my tight dried wrist until I saw the seam of blood and this I forced across her open mouth and against her tongue. I heard her hiss and then she clamped her mouth, only to moan hungrily.’” Page 562-563

People talk a lot about the various rape allegories within this series, but I never see this one brought up. But it’s there, right? Even with the fact that it seems it was Bianca who suggested that Marius turn her (I’ll get to that in a second), this reads very much like an assault.

“She couldn’t have escaped”

“I forced across her open mouth”

Now let’s talk about Bianca’s suggestion that Marius turn her, and this is where we stray very much into the what if side of things. If you haven’t read my comparisons of The Vampire Armand with Blood and Gold (and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t because it’s long as fuck) I talked a bit in that about how differently Amadeo’s dialogue is written when told from Armand’s own perspective compared to Marius. Here’s a tiny extract just to highlight a little bit what I mean.

Returning to the idea that Amadeo’s dialogue in Blood and Gold tends to reflect Marius’ own views, rather than being an honest representation of the things Amadeo said, I want to look at this quote again. “‘Don’t think me cold, Sir,’ I said. ‘Don’t think me tired and used to things brutal and cruel. I am only the fool, Sir, the fool for God. We don’t question, if memory serves me right. We laugh and we accept and we turn all life into joy.’” (The Vampire Armand, pg. 100) Much later in the timeline of events in Blood and Gold, we get this quote from Amadeo after he has become a vampire, explaining why he believes Marius chose him for the blood. “‘There’s a bitter cold in me,’ he said, ‘a cold which comes from a distant land. And nothing ever really makes it warm. Even the Blood did not make it warm. You knew of this cold. You tried a thousand times to melt it, and transform it into something more brilliant, but you never succeeded. And then on the night that I came near to death - no, was, in fact, dying - you counted upon that cold to give me the stamina for the Blood.’ I nodded. I looked away, but he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Look at me, please, sir,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that so?’ His face was serene.” (Blood and Gold, pg. 363) It’s quite a shift in belief, as far as Amadeo is concerned. In The Vampire Armand, Amadeo doesn’t want to be seen as cold and unfeeling, in fact he actively argues against it when Marius tries to imply that this is the case. But in Blood and Gold, it is Amadeo who refers to himself in this way.

Considering that, is it possible that Bianca never asked for the blood? Is it possible that what is presented to us as dialogue from Bianca is in fact just a representation of Marius’ own thoughts, which he then proceeded to argue with himself about internally? I’ll keep stressing it: we don’t know, because we have no alternative account. But it seems like quite a dramatic shift, for Bianca to go from insisting on being given the blood to the turning being described with heavy implications that she isn’t consenting. We’ve seen that it’s possible Marius has been putting his own words into Amadeo’s mouth, so is it that much of a stretch to say he might have done so with Bianca too?

The power imbalance between Marius and Bianca is already, obviously, huge, with him being an ancient vampire and her being a twenty something year old woman, but the circumstances of Bianca’s turning make the gap between them even bigger. Because Marius is almost on the brink of death when he turns Bianca, he doesn’t have enough blood to feed her to fully complete the transformation. He ends up having to drain her boatman just to feed her enough blood to get her to wake up, and then he is able to take her out so that both of them can feed on more humans together. The human blood continues to strengthen Marius, but not Bianca, because she needs vampire blood.

“Meantime, Bianca waked from her daze and suffered the pains of her mortal death, and now longed to return to her rooms for fresh clothing so that she might return with me to the golden lined room, in garments fit for her to be my bride. She had all too much of the blood of the victims and needed more of mine, but she did not know this, and I did not tell her as much.” Page 565

Bianca is an incredibly weak vampire because of the way Marius created her, and he lets her remain that way willingly. Just in terms of vampiric strength, there is a much bigger power imbalance between her and Marius than there was with Amadeo and Marius, and, as you can see in the quote, Marius keeps it that way on purpose. Why? For the pure love of the game I guess.

Just kidding. The reason probably has something to do with the fact that Marius is also in a weakened state at this point, and is so unbelievably insecure that he can’t stand the idea of somebody else being more powerful than him, even temporarily. It’s an incredibly negative reading of his motivations but this is all he’s giving me to work with and I just can’t think of any other reason why he’d purposefully withhold that information from Bianca and keep her powerless. If I really wanted to reach for a sympathetic explanation, maybe the loss of Amadeo is making him act more selfishly, keeping Bianca reliant upon him because he doesn’t want to lose her too. But the thing is that Marius was already going to great lengths to do similar things to Amadeo. This isn’t some anomaly in his behaviour that could be indicative of grief, it’s a pattern that he repeats over and over again.

So that’s Bianca’s turning, and before we move on to the rest of their relationship I wanna briefly highlight a conversation that happens just before her turning because ALL OF THIS is leading to me addressing Bianca’s response to what happened to Amadeo, so here’s the first proper mention we get from Marius about what happened to him.

“‘Where is Amadeo gone?’ she said desperately. ‘South by sea,’ I confessed, ‘and to Rome, that is my belief on it, but don’t question me now as to why. Let me say only that it was an enemy of mine who made this siege upon my house and those I love, and in Rome is where he dwells, and those he sent to harm me and Amadeo come from Rome. I should have destroyed him. I should have foreseen this. But in my vanity I displayed my powers to him, and brushed him aside. And so he sent his followers in great numbers so that I couldn’t overcome them. Oh, how foolish I was not to divine what he would do. But what is the use of saying it now? I’m weak, Bianca. I have no means to reclaim Amadeo. I must somehow regain my own strength.’ ‘Yes, Marius,’ she said. ‘I understand you.’ ‘I pray with all my heart that Amadeo uses the powers I gave him,’ I confessed, ‘for they were great and he’s very strong.’ ‘Yes, Marius,’ she said, ‘I understand what you say.’ Page 556-557

Again this is something that I could (and probably will at some point) talk for hours about, which is the subject of how Marius did nothing to prepare Amadeo for the cult. What powers is he referring to here? In terms of vampiric strength, yes, Amadeo is very strong because of the blood he was given, but at no point has Marius shown him how to use that. Amadeo has sword fighting knowledge from his time at the Palazzo but nothing about how to fight vampires. And, even if he did, these are the same vampires who were able to overpower and almost kill Marius, who is infinitely stronger than Amadeo. That’s all I’ll say for now but I’ll be coming back to this because it sows a seed for the way he talks to Bianca about what happened to Amadeo later on. Also I’d just like to note again how flat Bianca’s dialogue is here, in the same way that Amadeo’s is presented by Marius.

Finally, for the sake of just trying to keep a record of the conversations about Amadeo, he’s their final conversation about him before the end of the chapter.

“‘And what is happening to him?’ I asked, ‘or have they merely destroyed him in some hideous fashion, for you know of course that we can die by the light of the sun, or by the heat of a terrible fire.’ ‘No, not die, only suffer,’ she said quickly, looking at me questioningly. ‘Are you not living proof?’ ‘No, die,’ I said. ‘With me it’s what I told you, that I have lived for over a thousand years. But with Amadeo? It could be death very easily. Pray that they do not design cruelties but only horrors, that whatever they do, they do it quickly or not at all.’” Page 568-569

I don’t have much to say on this for now. I just wanted to include it so that we can keep track of all the information Bianca is presented with about what is, or could be, happening to Amadeo.

Blood and Gold: Chapter 26

Did you think the horrors were over? Think again. We’re thrown right back into it in this chapter.

“What finally jarred me from my uneasy slumber was the sound of Bianca screaming. Over and over in terror she screamed.” Page 570

This is not a formal essay which means I’m allowed to say “me after realising I’m stuck with Marius de Romanus for eternity”. But the actual reason for Bianca’s screaming is that she is trapped inside the coffin (Amadeo’s coffin, actually). Mind you these aren’t just little wooden coffins like most of the modern vampires would have, these are stone sarcophagi, so lifting the lid would be practically impossible for a human and a struggle for a vampire as weak as Bianca. Funnily enough, lifting the lid of the coffin is something of an initiation for Amadeo when he is turned in The Vampire Armand, and according to what Marius says, the same seems to be true for Bianca too.

“‘You have the strength to open the coffin,’ I said. ‘I revealed this to you last night. Put your hands against the lid and move it.’ ‘Let me out of it, Marius,’ she pleaded, sobbing. ‘No, you must do it for yourself.’” Page 570

So it seems like Bianca is just having a panic attack after waking up inside a coffin, which is fair enough, but I do have to point out that we only have Marius’ word that he showed her beforehand that she was capable of lifting the coffin lid herself. Even then, we aren’t shown it. It’s only in that throwaway line of dialogue “I revealed this to you last night” that he suggests he did this at all.

“Softer sobs came from her, but she followed my instructions. There came a grinding noise from the marble and the lid moved to one side, and then she rose, pushing the lid out of her way, and she freed herself from the box altogether. ‘Come here to me,’ I said. She obeyed me, shivering with sobs, and with my gloved hands I stroked her mussed hair.” Page 570-571

The reason I’ve lingered on this part is because, again, this whole thing is a sort of thought experiment about how Marius’ account might have differed from Bianca’s, if we had such a thing. In Marius’ account we see him being quite gentle and patient with her, comforting her after she is out of the coffin and reassuring her. But the main thing that comes to my mind here is Armand’s turning, and how different that scene was from his perspective compared to Marius. This is part of my comparison between the two in my other essay:

“I lay on the floor. He stood above me, and his hands were open to me. ‘Get up, Amadeo. Come, come up, into my arms. Take it.’ I cried. I sobbed. My tears were red, and my hand was stained with red. ‘Help me, Master.’ ‘I do help you. Come, seek it out for yourself.’” (The Vampire Armand, pg. 159) “‘Come, Amadeo, come and take it from me,’ I said, my eyes full of tears. ‘You are the victor. Take what I have to give.’ He was in my arms instantly, and I held him warmly, whispering close to his ear. ‘Don’t be afraid, child, not even for a moment. You’ll die now to live forever, as I take your blood and give it back to you. I won’t let you slip away.’” (Blood and Gold, pg. 351) In The Vampire Armand, Amadeo is on the floor, crying and begging for help while Marius barks orders at him and refuses to do anything to ease his suffering, but in Blood and Gold we get a completely different picture. Marius describes himself as overcome with emotion, as holding Amadeo “warmly”, whispering words of comfort to him.

My point being, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Marius was a lot harsher to Bianca than he describes in his own account.

The rest of the chapter is mostly Marius and Bianca hunting together, Marius starting to regain some of his strength, and telling Bianca stories about his past. He also tells her a little more about the cult who took Amadeo, which I’ll include here once again just to keep track of everything Bianca is being told about Amadeo and the people who took him.

“And it was the first time that the Satan worshippers had come, you see. Those of the very same ilk that burnt my house and took Amadeo. Only it was centuries ago, can you understand? [...] But it was the same tribe, the same ones who believe they are put here on Earth as blood drinkers to serve the Christian God.’ [...] ‘So this was why they cried out about blasphemy.’ she said. ‘Yes, and long long ago, they said similar things as they came to us. They threatened us, and they wanted, they wanted what we knew.’” Page 584

Blood and Gold: Chapter 27

At the start of this chapter, Marius transports Bianca to the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept, only to find that neither of them currently have the strength to get inside, and we get a glimpse of the Marius we know and love.

“Bianca began to weep, and I became angry with her. I made another assault upon the door just to spite her, and then stood back and bid the door open with all the power of my mind. There was no result, and the wind and the snow beat down hard against us, and Bianca’s weeping infuriated me to where I spoke words that weren’t true. ‘I made this door and I shall open it,’ I declared. ‘Only give me time to determine what I must do.’ She turned away from me, visibly hurt by my anger” Page 589-590

Marius de Romanus angry? I’m shocked to hear it. I’m gonna come back to all of Marius’ anger later (because trust me, there’s a lot more of it) but for now I wanna focus on something else. In both this scene and in the scene where Bianca is trapped in her coffin in the previous chapter we get these lines from her.

“‘Forgive me for my fear,’ she whispered.” Page 571 “‘Forgive me that I cried,’ she said gently. ‘You won’t see tears from me again.’” Page 591

With Amadeo, I argued that he seemed to be presented as a much flatter and more submissive character in Blood and Gold compared to The Vampire Armand. It seemed as though Marius basically just wrote over his personality completely. And the version of Bianca we see here is also very different to the fiery, headstrong woman from The Vampire Armand, but I don’t think this is a case of Marius watering down her personality. I think she really does change. Here’s a scene of her arguing against Marius which appears in both TVA and Blood and Gold:

“There was a great high-strung dignity to her. She craned her neck and raised her chin. ‘Murderess,’ my Master said. ‘I see it now within the solitary cell of your mind, a dozen confessions, a dozen cruel and importunate acts, a dozen crimes–.’ ‘No, you cannot judge me! A magician you might be, but you are no angel, Marius. Not you with your boys.’” The Vampire Armand, page 98 (PDF version)

“‘Tell him, Bianca, of wine laced with potions, and lives forfeit for those who have made you the instrument of their most wicked plan.’ ‘Leave me now,’ she said again without the slightest fear of me. Her eyes blazed. ‘Marius de Romanus, you cannot judge me. Not you with your magician’s powers, not you with your boys. I will say nothing except that you must leave my house.’” Blood and Gold, page 460

So, this timid personality, who submits to Marius and begs his forgiveness for any emotional outburst that triggers anger in him, is a new trait. Something that seems to come about only after her turning which, again, very much reads like a rape scene. She never feared Marius before, even when she knew he was a vampire (because Amadeo had already confessed to her long before Marius revealed himself in desperation). This is something that only comes about after he turns/rapes her. Just something to consider going forward.

What Marius does to Bianca in the next part of the chapter isn’t analysis or speculation, he just outright says it, but we’ll go over it anyway just for the sake of including every instance of him being an asshole.

After failing to get into the shrine, the doors open by themselves and Akasha grants Marius and Bianca access. Marius briefly explains the story of Those Who Must Be Kept to Bianca, then takes Akasha’s blood to heal himself faster, during which he sees visions of Pandora. Then, he feeds Bianca his own blood, to make her stronger as well but in turn also feeding her the visions of Pandora. Why? Because Marius cannot use the mind gift to find Pandora himself, since she is his fledgling, but Pandora can hear Bianca’s thoughts. He effectively turns Bianca into a beacon to try and lure Pandora home. And yes, he really does say that out loud (speaking to Akasha).

“I looked down at Bianca who rested so trustingly on my arm. ‘I have planted in her mind the image of Pandora, haven’t I?’ I whispered, ‘so that wherever she goes with me she will search. And from her angel mind, Pandora cannot fail to pluck my image. And so we may find each other, Pandora and I, through her. She doesn’t dream of what I’ve done.’” Page 600

I think the most interesting thing about Marius’ relationship with Bianca is that it’s the one that Marius is the most open about his wrongdoings in. And I do wonder whether that was a conscious writing choice because Anne knew she was never going to revisit these scenes from Bianca’s perspective, so we get a slightly more objective view of things compared to the scenes with Amadeo or Pandora.

Blood and Gold: Chapter 28

This chapter is less about Bianca and more about Marius convening with the Talamasca about Amadeo and Pandora, so there’s only a couple of things to point out in regards to their dynamic here. First, let’s all just bask in the pure assholery of this quote:

“Whatever the case, from the night we arrived at the shrine I was set upon a course of recovery and of a search for Pandora. If anyone had told me that both would take some two hundred years, I might have met with despair, but I did not know this. I knew only that I was safe within the shrine, and I had Akasha to protect me, and Bianca to content me.” Page 602-603

Again, it’s at least refreshing that Marius makes no secret of Bianca mostly existing to fill the void left by Pandora and Amadeo, but it’s still fucking sad.

He describes life with Bianca as pretty easy going, ironically, she kind of does become the companion that he wanted in Amadeo, now that she has been broken and lost most of her fight, she’s essentially just happy to go along with whatever Marius wants with little resistance.

“Never had I known such peace with Pandora. Never had I known such warm simplicity.” Page 605

As I said, this chapter is more about his correspondence with the Talamasca but it is worth pointing out that Marius makes a point of hiding this from Bianca. It’s funny, because when Marius first tells Bianca about Pandora pretty much her first question to him is “would you leave me for her if you found her again?” to which Marius says no.

“‘Would you leave me for her if you could?’ ‘No, if I found her, we would all of us be together.’ ‘Oh, that’s too lovely,’ she said. ‘I know it can be that way, I know it can and it will be, all of us together, you and she and I. She lives, she thrives, she wanders, and there will come a time when you and I will be with her.’” Page 585-586

Yet at every turn, Marius keeps his searches for Pandora a secret from Bianca, which again Marius is very open about.

“When I entered the shrine I found Bianca sleeping. No question came from her as to where I had been, and I realised the lengths I had gone to avoid her knowledge of my letter.” Page 611

That’s all of the Bianca content from this chapter, however what we also get in this chapter is Marius’ letter from the Talamasca about Amadeo, which is a very important part of the argument I’ll be making when we finally come to addressing the point that prompted this entire essay to begin with. Here’s the information Marius receives in his letter:

“He who guides this voracious and mysterious band of Paris creatures is none other than your young companion from Venice. Won over by discipline, fasting, penance and the loss of his former Master - so says this young infidel - your old companion has proved to be a leader of immeasurable strength and well capable of driving out any of his kind who seek to gain a foothold in Paris.” Page 615

And just for a full picture, Marius’ reaction to this:

“And here lay the proof now that he had not destroyed my beautiful child, rather he had made of him a victim. He had won him over; he had taken Amadeo to himself! He had more utterly defeated me than ever I had dreamt. And Amadeo, my blessed and beautiful pupil, had gone from my uncertain tutelage to that perpetual gloom.” Page 616

And then the infamous:

“Gold and gold and gold. And Amadeo had chosen ashes!” Page 620

Blood and Gold: Chapter 29

Let’s take a moment to appreciate this.

“I waited a long time before showing the letter to Bianca. I never really concealed it from her, for I thought such a thing was dishonest. But as she did not ask me the meaning of the pages which I kept with my personal belongings, I did not explain them to her.” Page 622

Yeah, god forbid Marius do anything dishonest. After covertly using her as a tool to find Pandora, and sneaking out to correspond with the Talamsca, he wouldn’t want to be dishonest.

We also get this line which struck me as weird even the first time I read the book, before I’d started doing any analysis on all the ways Marius seems to lie/twist the truth in his narrative.

“But I did leave Bianca alone in the shrine more and more often. Never of course did I abandon her there in the early part of the evening when she depended upon me totally to reach those places where we might hunt. On the contrary, I always took her with me.” Page 622

Is it just me or is that a really weirdly specific, really defensive thing to say. Like… if he had said nothing at all I would have simply assumed he wasn’t abandoning Bianca with absolutely no means of feeding until he got back, but now that he’s gone out of his way to say it I’m more suspicious. I don’t know, it’s like he’s trying to preemptively defend himself from an accusation that hasn’t even happened. I think Marius might have actually been abandoning Bianca when she depended on him…

On that note, we also get more of an idea of the immense power gap between them.

“Of course I gave Bianca my own blood, but as I grew stronger the gap between us became very great and I saw it widening. [...] Of course she possessed nothing of the Cloud Gift herself, and was dependent upon me in a manner which neither Amadeo nor Pandora had ever been.” Page 623

But now we finally come to the main point: Marius explaining Amadeo’s fate to Bianca and her reaction. The only reason Marius finally reveals the letter to Bianca is because she keeps begging to return to Italy, but Marius refuses because he fears the Children of Darkness and because it would just be a reminder of his grief for Amadeo. I could talk for ages about how Marius is very much denying Bianca her own grief for Amadeo, who was one of her closest friends, but that’s besides the point. This is a chunky quote but I wanna get the full reaction and Marius’ explanation.

“I went to my belongings and took from them the letter from Raymond Gallant. ‘Read this,’ I said. ‘It will tell you, among other things, that they have spread their abominable ways as far as the city fo Paris.’ For a long time I remained silent as she read, and then her immediate sobs startled me. How many times had I seen Bianca cry? Why was I so unprepared for it? She whispered Amadeo’s name. She couldn’t quite bring herself to speak of it. ‘What does this mean?’ she said. How do they live? Explain these words. What did they do to him?’ I sat beside her, begging her to be calm, and then I told her how they lived, these Satan worshipping fiends, as monks or hermits, tasting the earth and death, and how they imagined that the Christian God had made some place for them in his Kingdom. ‘They starved our Amadeo,’ I said, ‘they tortured him. This is plain here. And when he had given up all hope, believing me to be dead, and believing their piety to be just, he became one of them.’ She looked at me solemnly, the tears standing in her eyes. ‘Oh, how often I’ve seen you cry,’ I said. ‘But not of late, and not so bitterly as you cry for him. Be assured I have not forgotten him either. She shook her head as if her thoughts were not in accord with mine but she was not able to reveal them.” Page 625-626

So Marius reveals that Amadeo was tortured and made to join the Children of Darkness but here’s what I wanna look at.

“They starved our Amadeo.They tortured him. This is plain here.” Is referring to this line in the letter: “Won over by discipline, fasting, penance and the loss of his former Master”.

The thing is, the letter doesn’t say starved or tortured, it says fasting discipline, and penance, which carry very different weights. Let’s break it down because I do also have beef with Raymond Gallant over this.

Fasting is a very different thing to starving somebody. To me, at least, fasting implies an active choice and is more of a typical religious practice than what actually happened to Amadeo (being locked in a cell and starved almost to death).

Discipline can mean, pretty much anything. Marius disciplined Amadeo in a number of ways including but not limited to literally whipping him, and regardless of how you feel about that, what Santino and the coven did to Amadeo was still a completely different ballgame. Nothing they did to him can really be called discipline. They were straight up torturing him.

And as for penance… Raymond gotta die for that one.

What the hell is my point? My point is that the picture Raymond Gallant paints in his letter is very different to the conclusion Marius appears to have drawn by the time he explains to Bianca what happened to Amadeo, and I think there are two explanations for this.

Explanation 1: This is a reflection of Marius’ negative views towards religious practices. Throughout the books he makes no secret of his views (despite being a religious fanatic in his own right in regards to his worship of Those Who Must Be Kept), so it’s entirely possible that, to Marius, fasting and starvation are one and the same. Torture and penance are one and the same. Let’s not forget the line “Amadeo had chosen ashes.” which certainly doesn’t imply that he’s acknowledging all the straight up fucking torture that forced him to join them.

And let’s not forget that Marius already views Amadeo as somewhat predisposed to this kind of religious fanaticism. Among countless other things, it’s exactly why he avoided revealing anything about Those Who Must Be Kept to him.

“‘Those Who Must Be Kept,’ he whispered. He said it like a prayer. I shivered.” Page 452

As a boy, Andrei idolised the monks he lived with for exactly those things: fasting, discipline, and penance. It’s not a stretch to say that Marius could easily believe Amadeo would revert back to those practices with the Children of Darkness. His use of the words torture and starvation aren’t there to imply he believes they were actually torturing him, but just a reflection of how he views the “harmful” religious practices he tried and failed to “save” Amadeo from.

Explanation 2: This is a rewrite. This whole story is being told in the present day, by a version of Marius who now knows the extent to which Amadeo was tortured by Santino and the coven (presumably, anyway, because I’m assuming he read Armand’s book). Again, this one plays more into the thought experiment side of things based on the ways he seemed to slightly alter the narrative of his relationship with Amadeo compared to how it was told in The Vampire Armand. In this case I’m thinking particularly of the fact that in his version, the timeline was slightly altered so that he was present in Venice at the time Amadeo was fatally injured and could attend to him immediately, rather than Armand’s account which said that Marius had gone away, despite being aware of the threat to the palazzo.

Is it possible that what Marius actually said to Bianca at the time was far more callous, far more dismissive of what Amadeo might have suffered, but with the benefit of hindsight he is now rewriting his own dialogue? Don’t get me wrong, even in the version he does present he still sounds pretty callous about the whole thing, but a theme throughout Blood and Gold as a whole is Marius attempting to admit to his wrongdoings while simultaneously appearing to play down those wrongdoings (again, see the entirety of his relationship with Amadeo, and his admitting to his betrayals of Bianca’s trust while in the next breath saying he would never want to be dishonest to her).

Mind you, the conclusion Bianca finally draws from all of this is that Marius is to blame for his treatment of both Santino and Amadeo, and for refusing to share the secret of Those Who Must Be Kept, and she says this:

“‘But don’t you see, all my understanding of our powers is reinforced by their beauty and their majesty. I know whence we come! I have seen you drink from the Queen. I have seen you wake from your swoon. I have seen your skin healing. But what did Amadeo ever see? What did Santino ever see? And you marvel at the extent of their heresy.’” Page 629

The grouping of Amadeo and Santino together, referring to both of their actions as heresy, does not suggest to me that Bianca is aware of the extent of what they did to Amadeo.

And so, my beautiful anon to whom I have just rambled for [checks notes] over six thousand words, we reach your point. Bianca does seem to give up on Amadeo almost instantly, and I think it’s because she was never aware of the extent of what happened to him. She receives the information third hand from Marius, and because he is not a reliable narrator and we never get an account from Bianca, we can never know the truth of what he told her. Marius himself didn’t know how horrific Amadeo’s torture was, so he never could have described it to her. And the information he does give her, if we go by explanation 1, is still more judgemental than anything else. If we go by explanation 2, it may have been worse.

And the thing is, Marius needs Bianca, if nothing else just to fill the hole in his life left by Pandora and Amadeo, but also lets not forget that she’s become his singular hope of finding Pandora again.. When she calls him out for his mistake with Santino and Amadeo, he flies into such a rage that he ends up abandoning her and telling her he never wants to see her again, but before the night is out he returns and begs for her to return to him. Marius also fears Santino and his coven. If Bianca had known the truth of what happened to Amadeo, might she have insisted on trying to seek him out again?

I don’t think it was necessarily a calculated move on his part, I think Marius just quite literally did not know what had been done to Amadeo, since the only information he had was Raymond Gallant’s account which barely scratched the surface. But it would also have served him to cut off any attachment Bianca still felt towards Amadeo.

And as for Bianca, she truly needs Marius. She is still almost entirely reliant on him, and her one and only attempt at trying to challenge him on his treatment of Amadeo is met with him threatening to abandon her completely. This is a woman who has already been completely broken down by Marius, to the point she seems like a shadow of her former self. Her argument about Amadeo is one of the only glimpses we see of her old self, and Marius snuffs it out immediately.

So, my point is, I don’t think Bianca’s abandonment of Amadeo is a reflection of her love for him, it’s a reflection of what Marius has done to her.