The Two Characters I Relate to the Most are Probably the most Problematic
Marius and Mael are like onions. They make you cry, they probably on occasion smell, and they have layers.
Also they are, at their core, just two divorced men screaming “YOUR CULTURE IS BARBARIC” at each other for two thousand years while both being objectively insane. I love them deeply.
Because Marius is fascinating once you remember he is not fully Roman. He is half Keltoi. Half Celtic. The son of a Roman patrician and a Celtic woman from one of the territories Rome was busy “civilising,” which usually meant conquering, enslaving, taxing, and then writing twelve essays about how morally superior they were while actively attending executions for entertainment.
And yet Marius spends centuries trying to become Rome incarnate. Not merely Roman. Rome itself. He clings to language, philosophy, aesthetics, discipline, architecture, order, restraint, painting, refinement. The man curates himself the way he curates art collections. He practically turns himself into a marble bust with emotional repression carved into it.
Even his love of beauty feels deeply Roman in that terrifying aristocratic way. He collects beautiful things. Preserves them. Elevates them. Sometimes destroys them trying to keep them untouched. Which is SUCH a Roman imperial mindset when you think about it for more than thirty seconds.
Then in walks Mael. Mael, beloved catastrophic Druid nightmare that he is, feels like every Roman anxiety about Celtic people manifested into one immortal man. Emotional, theatrical, sensual, spiritual, impulsive, violent, deeply tied to nature and ritual. He does not care about Roman polish because he sees straight through it. And that is what makes their dynamic so good.
Because Mael recognises immediately that Marius is performing. Beneath the Latin quotations and expensive fabrics and carefully controlled voice is somebody still haunted by the part of himself Rome taught him to suppress. Mael is basically the ghost of Marius’s own ancestry standing in front of him going, “You can buy all the Renaissance paintings you want, sweetheart, you are still one bad emotional breakdown away from running naked through a forest.”
Historically, the tension between them is painfully accurate. Roman writers constantly described Celtic peoples as irrational, emotional, sexually excessive, theatrical, drunken, and primitive. Caesar practically wrote about the Gauls . Meanwhile Romans were out here feeding people to animals in amphitheatres and nailing people to wood.
And honestly? I think this is why I adore both of them so much. I am literally the product of this exact cultural collision. I am a Celtic person living in the Celtic diaspora. Yes, I absolutely have Mael energy. I will drink you under the table, threaten to fight somebody over a moral principle, disappear into the woods for emotional processing, and return quoting poetry like nothing happened.
But unfortunately I also Mariused too close to the sun.
I have three degrees in art and art history. I can read, translate, and speak Classical Latin, which is perhaps the least employable skillset imaginable outside of becoming a vampire archivist. I lived in Italy for two years. My Florence flat was directly across from where Botticelli’s workshop historically stood, which is either the coolest thing I have ever done or proof that I was cosmically destined to become insufferable.
At some point I stopped asking myself “Do I want to be Marius?” and had to confront the much darker reality of “Oh God. I think I accidentally became him.” But not financially, unfortunately.
I possess the emotional volatility of Mael combined with the aesthetic pretension of Marius, which is genuinely one of the worst personality combinations a person can have.
