#marikasha

[palamedestragedy]

reminder that this is our marikasha

[wolfkller]

im feeling things that have never been felt before

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

thinking about the way race inevitably interferes with Marius and Akasha's relationship is always kind of a trip because Anne Rice seems to have viewed Akasha as a white woman (both considering physical descriptions and while she wasn't racist about Aaliyah playing the role, she also didn't consider book!Akasha a "person of color," which I don't even want to unpack). However, Akasha is a vampire of color, more specifically Iranian [edit: Iraqi] (ntm married to an Egyptian man), and if the iwtv writers know what's good for them will most likely be a woc in the show as well. and then there's Marius, a man whose life is built on Roman ethnic supremacy, and who connects the worst moments of this life to an overturning of these ethnic structures--such as his captivity and forcible transformation at the hands of "barbarian" druids or the sack of rome by "barbarians."* You can see this ethnic paranoia manifesting with shit like his orientalist fears of Constantinople or his really fucked-up talks about the West vs East with Lestat.

so we've got Marius, this man whose entire identity is tied to inbuilt structures of ethnic supremacy, spending literally thousands of years in a toxic mommy-issues relationship with Akasha, a queen from an ethnicity he's historically programmed to look down upon. Marius clearly worships her but he violent denies this worship, battering and temporarily abandoning Bianca during an argument on the subject. besides basic shame about abandoning his proudly held atheism (itself not specifically ethnicity-based consider his lack of belief in Roman gods), it would be logical for these issues to be amplified by his not wanting to admit he's spent most of his immortal life worshipping a woman of "lesser" racial origins, especially one who won't give him the time of day.

Furthermore, she stands in for his own "barbarian" Keltoi mother, reflecting both Marius's own desire for that lost part of himself and his internalized ethnic hatreds. this also ties into his possessiveness of her: Marius's determination not to share Akasha with anyone stems from a mix of justified paranoia about her falling into the wrong hands, a desire to maintain his control over vampire knowledge, his apparent viewing her as an exotic trophy he wants to keep for himself, and his likely self-loathing at falling for such an "exotic" system of faith so completely.

of course of all this comes back to Amadeo, who is in every universe a kind of anti-Akasha (same way show!Antoinette was picked by Lestat for her role as an anti-Louis, meant to fulfill a perceived flaw in the primary partner). Marius seesaws a lot on this, but he originally picks Amadeo as a blank slate to carve into the perfect vampire, as opposed to Akasha whose "blank slate" nature renders her unapproachable and ultimately beyond Marius's control. if we're continuing with my hc about the way race operates in marikasha's relationship, then this would be Marius attempting (subconsciously ofc he's obviously not laying it for himself this explicitly) to find someone of a "lesser ethnicity" to sculpt into a proper vampire; i.e. someone who listens to him and responds to his orders, something Akasha never does. Both versions of Amadeo's fit the bill of a lesser ethnicity in Marius's eyes, although showmadeo's Desi origins are a more explicit representation of this than bookmadeo's Slavic ones. by controlling/creating him, I could easily see Marius trying to correct whatever balance in the ethnic structure he's created by worshipping a vampire woman of color.

moving into show territory (and thus more explicitly headcanon-based), I'm haunted by the line "worshipful mercy" and the apparent contradiction in Marius openly worshipping a brown boy after so long denying his worship for a woman of color. But of course what Marius is looking for is a solution to his shameful worship of Akasha so consider: Amadeo as an anti-Akasha who can be safely defiled and brutalized, who can be shared with others as Marius would never dare to share Akasha, who can soak up the violence Marius directs at him as Akasha never did.

when I look at shit like the adoration of the shepherds, I see Marius using the work of others (and possibly his own, but using others for this level of "worship" might be more effective) to render Amadeo as pale, pliable, and in service as a greater mythology as Marius quietly wishes he could render Akasha pale, pliable, and in service of (his) greater mythology. in the process, of course, he plants the seeds of internalized racism that are nourished by the CoD and lead to Armand wielding white supremacy against other poc, perpetuating the racial stratification that has shaped Marius's whole life.

I'm hoping that the writers of amc's iwtv are taking all of these possibilities into account when writing Marius/Akasha's relationship, which I personally consider one of the most pivotal bonds of the entire tvc universe and any universe that stems from it. like I said, the racial aspects here were never explicitly Anne's focus, but she was clearly chasing some kind of vibe with Akasha's non-Western origins clashing with Marius's endless fixation on Western philosophy, and I hope we'll finally get the opportunity to confront what that really means in full.

*side note: Marius being traumatized by the sack of Rome, but leaving out shit like the Second Great Temple Burning while discussing Roman history with non-Roman religions and framing the Jews as "antisocial" is probably one of the craziest parts of his book actually. of course he'd be probably be one of those 'they rebelled so we get to destroy their religious institutions types' we're plagued with today...

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

actually we are overlooking the potential for modern marimand aus where akasha is marius's second or third wife who fucking hates his guts but can't work up the energy to divorce him. she also can't work up the energy to do anything when he starts badtouching their recently adopted son, but maybe she can find some time in her schedule to fujo out or even join in.

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

the thing about marikasha is that it's never one thing it's master/pet it's goddess/worshipper it's captor/captive it's shitty mom/damaged child it's layers of helplessness it's colonialism as ownership (and colonialism as erasure if we consider anne rice's own inability to recognize akasha's racialized identity) it's a love triangle with pandora that becomes a love "triangle" with lestat and armand and bianca and enkil, even. it's the horror of spending centuries together that were really just a blip on the other person's life and religious fanaticism that only survives by disguising itself as atheism. it's the gear on which much of their world's universe turns and when it breaks everything else does along with it. also it's two different yet mirrored breeds of sex criminal locked in a box and making each other worse for a couple thousand years, so that's great.

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

yeah

oh, yeah

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

it's fascinating how the more you read the books the clearer it becomes how determined AR was to present Marius as her world's moral center, this flawed-but-wise mentor character, and how radically the show shifted this by introducing Marius first and foremost through the harm he inflicted on Armand, the ongoing reverberations of that. like it was definitely the more interesting and bolder creative choice, but it's going to be so wild seeing how they play out things like the conflict between him and Akasha when he's no longer serving as the (semi)stable moral counterpart to her destruction.