First version of a searchable database of the complete Vampire Chronicles up at Vampire Archive (Currently missing Pandora and Vittorio though).
Please check it out and let me know if you see any mistakes or if there's something you like to see change with the UI, etc.
Yes, I have specs about Armand's state in the opening scene of TVL 3x01.
But first, the context, with the spoiler from the review it was mentioned in:
So yeah, an eyepatch. Which immediately took my mind to the book Memnoch the Devil.
Though yes, in that book, it was Lestat who lost an eye. Armand, meanwhile, had tried to kill himself and was presumed dead, before it was revealed that he was just severely burned/injured and not dead.
I made a post a few days ago about how that scene between Lestat and Armand, where Lestat tells Armand to be himself or kill himself, was to me -- and a few others -- heavy foreshadowing of his Memnoch suicide attempt:
💬 0 🔁 1361 ❤️ 4113 · The only thing I can guess about it at the moment is that, unlike the book, it will be a more deliberate act by Arman
And I've talked before about how I think he'd attempt such a thing here, since -- in the show -- he's already immune to the sun:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 20 · Post by @cbrownjc · How do u think they’ll adapt armand walking into the sun in the show where he seems to be relatively i
However, one key thing about that is... Raglan is also there at the auction. And Memnoch takes place post Tale of the Body Thief.
However, what we might have going on here is a Merrick situation. Where the show will just be taking elements of the Memnoch book and sprinkling them within the arcs of other stories that will be fully adapted.
Which would mean Memnoch the Devil, like Merrick, will not get a full adaptation, like both Queen of the Damned and Tale of the Body Thief both look set to have. But just have elements from the book pulled out and used instead. (So sorry to everyone who was looking forward to seeing Lestat drink the blood of Jesus Christ. 🤷🏾♀️)
However, again, yes, if you know the book Memnoch, it was Lestat who lost an eye, not Armand. But maybe that still happened, and Armand -- before attempting to take his life -- gave Lestat one of his eyes before he did so.
Because yes, that is something that can be done. In the book Blood and Gold, the character of Thorne gives his eyes to his maker, Maharet, as part of his punishment for killing another vampire (I won't say who) that Maharet had already declared would not be judged for a specific set of crimes he committed.
If you don't already know, the character of Maharet had both of her eyes taken out before she was turned. And so she would place the eyes of her victims in the empty sockets so she could see again. But because they were human eyes, they would keep steadily dying in her head, until a point when she would have to replace them.
However, a vampire giving another vampire their eyes -- like Thorne did with Maharet -- basically works as a permanent replacement.
And that could be what happened with Armand's eye. As in Memnoch, Lestat may have lost one of his eyes in some way. But, instead of getting it back the way he did in the book (it was sent back to him), just maybe...
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And BTW, if the Talamasca show showed one thing? It is that the wounds from being severely burned heal pretty quickly in the show's universe. At least they did for the vampire Jasper after he was severely burned. Now granted, I think Jasper wasn't telling the full truth about his age, and he was actually way older than just 60 years old or around there.
But at any rate, Armand not looking burned in the auction scene doesn't mean anything, IMO, wrt him having attempted to take his own life some length of time before the auction scene happened, and then healing pretty quickly from it.
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Anyway, I have to see the auction scene for myself before I can get a full vibe on what is going on, and the time when it might be happening; and if it takes place just post-Queen of the Damned or... maybe sometime during Tale of the Body Thief.
Because IMO, Raglan James -- and how he looks there in the scene -- might be the key to begin sussing that out.
