I’m a show only person, and it’s so interesting to see the different opinions that (some) book fans have.
I go to Reddit (I know) and I see that some people really like Marius as a character and hate what the show has done with him, and I’m over here like “didn’t he use Armand as a sex slave? Why do people like him??”
Is he that different in the books? Does Anne Rice somehow redeem him? Because people are out here saying he’s one of their faves and I think that’s wild!
Marius is a complicated one because I wouldn’t say the books try to redeem him so much as they never really wanted you to dislike him in the first place. When he’s introduced in The Vampire Lestat, Lestat adores him right away. He sees him as wise and beautiful and essentially the ideal vampires (and there is a heavy emphasis on the whiteness of his skin, the lightness of his blond hair and how blue his eyes are.) Mind you, this is after he’s heard Armand’s backstory. The show didn’t include that, but Lestat knows exactly what happened between Armand and Marius and still went searching for him.
(Warning for sensitive topics being discussed, namely CSA and SA.)
The narrative tells you to love Marius, so many do, but he still sexually abused Armand. He just did. These two concepts coexist within the book series. Marius is seen as one of the most perfect vampires, because this was yet another instance of Anne playing favourites to the detriment (in my opinion at least) of her own work and yet literally the first action he takes after purchasing Armand (purchasing, not “saving”) from the brothel is to sexually assault him. Armand is too little at this point for his body to even respond to what is being done to him and he’d just woken up in this strange place he’d never been in before so he was disoriented too. People attempt to make excuses because Armand gives the impression that he enjoyed it (and every subsequent assault) but what would you call a 40 year old (who is also 1500 years old) performing sexual acts on a child, and a deeply traumatised one no less? I feel like we have invented words for such acts and for people who do things like that, and for good reason.
This event takes place before Armand gets to discover all the beauty of Venice. It sets the tone for everything, so you are never able to fully appreciate the safety Armand is able to feel. He is having such a good time meeting boys his own age, exploring the local culture, taking up different hobbies, never having to worry about food or shelter, and you as the reader can enjoy none of it because you know what’s happening in the background. Armand doesn’t know, but you do. The very first thing Marius does is show us exactly who he is in private and it is horrific.
TVA has to be read like a perspective flipped version of Lolita, and it does work in that regard but the issue comes in the other books when we aren’t getting Armand’s perspective. Particularly when it’s Lestat narrating, Marius is portrayed as the greatest vampire in history. There is virtually zero questioning of his actions even though everyone knows what he did to Armand. That’s the worst of it. Everyone knows and nobody cares.
There is a certain corner of the fanbase (Reddit mostly) who believe that you are not allowed to question Anne’s intentions. If she intended for you to like Marius, as she did, then you have to like him. No matter whether she was successful in executing these intentions. You have to like him or you are reading the books wrong. TVA should be read like a regular romance, and not the gothic horror that it is. Even worse, they suggest Armand is lying in show about being abused. Never mind the fact that even in the books, Armand responds to what Marius does to him as a real victim of that sort of abuse would. The text does not explicitly say what is happening is wrong, but he reacts in very realistic ways and his trauma manifests in ways that they would with real victims.
It’s especially upsetting to me when you draw comparisons between how Armand is treated by the text and Marius. Marius, one of the largest perpetrators of abuse against Armand, responsible for so much of why he’s like that, is this otherworldly purveyor of wisdom and Armand is pitiful, small and vicious.
We’ve barely gotten Marius in the show but so far, I am thrilled with his portrayal. I know I just talked so much shit about him but I don’t completely hate him. I just think his character is the biggest missed opportunity ever. His abuse of Armand is explicitly a colonisation. He strips away every identifier of who he used to be, gives him a new name, and attempts to rebuild him into the ideal lover/student/son. He directly states his intentions to groom him. He uses that actual word, and yet there are so many people who insist this was a consensual relationship and a normal romance. I am thrilled the show is being more critical of him.
I’m not sure what you’ve personally seen, but when I see people say the show ruined him, it’s for a few recurring reasons. (Book spoilers ahead, but I’ll try to leave out the specifics.)
1. They don’t think he’d call Armand a rotten boy
Oh he absolutely would, especially with the larger context of what he’s referring to. I think the way he says it tells us everything we need to know. He says it almost fondly, and that to me is their dynamic in a nutshell. That is how Marius views Armand at this point in the story. As a rotten boy beyond saving. It’s a perfect line in my opinion. He “saved” Armand from the brothel just to continue to do to him what was done there, but in a far more sinister way because he was gentle and he convinced Armand it was love and broke him as a result. That’s why Marius is so evil. Armand under Marius’ care, was not a meek submissive child like Marius wanted. He was curious and combative and had such a strong will despite what had happened to him before they met, and he questioned Marius constantly. He was, in that way, a disappointment. The colonisation was not entirely successful. He still held onto who he was. The rot was arguably there from the beginning.
There’s also this passage that takes place at the same point in the book as Marius makes this comment in the show. Marius expresses to Lestat that turning Armand was the biggest mistake of his life, that he’s essentially damned him for all eternity. Armand is going to suffer for the rest of his immortal life because Marius turned him when he was too young (or when he was stunted emotionally at a younger age as I suspect is the case in the show.) Essentially, even without any of the trauma, and there is so much of it, Armand still never stood a chance at being well-adjusted. Marius broke two of the great laws by turning him. Do not turn children, and do not turn anyone if you are an ancient because your blood is too powerful and it will break them.
And then, on top of it all, Armand is taken by the Children of Darkness and utterly destroyed by them. I mean destroyed doesn’t cover it. He will never be able to return to who he was before they found him. There aren’t sufficient words to quantify the horror that was inflicted on him. It’s incomprehensible to a human being because we simply wouldn’t be able to survive it and yet he has to carry it forever. Marius, in that scene, is referring to Armand after this happened, after they were separated. Marius considers him beyond saving, placing the blame on Armand for what was forced onto him. He leaves him there to languish in his loneliness, while he and Lestat become close. Lestat never tells Armand he is alive.
So rotten boy makes sense to me. That’s what he is to Marius at that point. Rotten. He loved him, and still does in a way, but not enough to save him.
2. They don’t think Marius would donate Armand to his friends.
I absolutely think he would. This show has a tendency to take things from the books and dial them up to eleven, like making the emotional incest between Gabrielle and Lestat sexual and explicit. I think know the exact scene from The Vampire Armand they were evoking with the donations line. There’s a scene where Marius takes Armand around a bunch of drunk, handsy men and, though he has the intention to kill the men eventually, there is no regard for Armand’s safety. He does not care about his autonomy or the fact that, by this point in their relationship Armand has fully succumbed to the sexual side of their relationship. He’s still a child, but this is normal to him now. The conditioning worked so Marius had 100% of the responsibility to watch out for him but obviously if he’s willing to sexually abuse that child himself, and he is, then Armand’s personal comfort and boundaries aren’t really a priority to him. The only thing I think that would stop Marius from donating Armand to his friends would be a possessiveness over his property, not because he loved and cared about him, which is usually the reason given when people insist he’d never do that.
Marius loved him. That love, like virtually every other love Armand would go on to encounter, was conditional. He’d definitely donate him.
3. They dislike aesthetic or minor character changes made to Marius.
As I’ve said, the way Marius is described is concerning to say the least. Pale skin, pale blond hair, striking blue eyes. He is a curator of Western ideals, which he pushes onto Armand, and is basically universally adored by every vampire.
They’ve changed him a little. He’s older and he has the roman hairstyle. I think it’s fine? It’s definitely more interesting. I like the look. He looks like a statue and I think he’s beautiful.
As for his personality, he’s so much more interesting already. On top of all the horror, Marius is also so fucking boring in the books. But they turned him into a mad lighthouse keeper during his time with Akasha and I am genuinely obsessed with the change. I can’t stop talking about it. Marius was my favourite part of the entire season. I want to love this character in the books so much but as I said, there was serious missed potential. If he’d been framed slightly more realistically, as the other characters are, I’d have no issue saying he was one of my favourite characters. Because these books are about monsters, right? And what is more evil than a character who is western colonialism in human form? Conceptually, that is fascinating. So the combination of the show making him quirkier and acknowledging that he’s a monster in a way the books simply don’t have me very very excited about season 4.
Long as fuck answer and I’m so sorry but it was originally even longer. People are mad about Marius because they’re in denial about who the character is and what he did. They think gothic romance = there’s a world where children can consent to sex and that it won’t damage them. Marius is not this cool guy they think he is, he’s a fucking monster and I’m thrilled to see that finally being taken seriously. The show took Lestat down a few pegs and they’re going to do it to Marius too and it’s about time.
