Tell me, if we one day get an episode, or even part of an episode, where Armand tells more of his story, of how he was chased down by slavers and sold to a brothel as a child, how he was abused so badly that he can't even remember his own name, how he was "rescued" as a teenager by a man who would go on to molest him, beat him black and blue, send him into more brothels so he can be exposed to everything including bestiality, so he can learn how to fuck better, and then loan him out to others (plus whatever else the show ends up adding from the existing book lore); how he was kidnapped after Santino burned down the palazzo; how he was made to watch all his brothers get thrown onto a fire and burn alive; how he himself was thrown onto that fire before being taken off, imprisoned, starved, fed his best friend, indoctrinated, and sent to yet another foreign land to lead a cult...
Tell me, if he tells us all of this, is it still going to be, "omg Armand is such a lying master manipulator!" Is it still going to be funny the way everyone throws his horrific past back in his face?
And the thing is, I don't blame the characters in the show for treating him the way they do. He has wronged them all in terrible ways. They could be so much worse if they wanted to be, and I still wouldn't blame them.
But I do have to raise an eyebrow at the very real people in this fandom who refuse to extend the slightest bit of empathy to this character, who has endured unspeakable trauma, when every other character is offered some. I side-eye the hell out of anyone who wants to downplay it or accuse him of lying about his abuse, because spoiler alert, his abuse is very much book canon, whether Anne wanted to frame it that way or not.
The Vampire Armand doesn't give a fuck if you downplay his trauma, or laugh about his abuse, or claim that he's lying about it to manipulate whoever. But the very real victims of abuse can see you doing that shit, and I bet they give a fuck about it.
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