Posted by The Black Rose on November 24, 1997 at 23:44:50:
In Reply to: Re: Santy's Faith posted by LP on November 23, 1997 at 17:33:34:
: : : He would naturally want to find more about these two legends. Where to learn this? Well, Marius, obviously. However Marius would most likely kill him, and Marius was also a threat to his standing as coven leader. Especially after he made Armand. So Santino had to kill Marius to keep his position safe, but he didn't have to kill Armand.
: : This strikes me as a chancy bit of planning on Santino's part. Santino only had an outsider's perspective to work from. Marius definitly knew something, Armand (assuming he knew about Armand to start with) may or may not have. Why go through the effort to get that close to the best source of information, only to kill him?
: Because Marius had this nasty reputation and habit of killing anyone who even *knew of* the old legends, let alone those who actively sought to confirm them. It wasn't chancy at all really. I think that the main motivation behind Santino's attack was that Marius threatened his power. Those Who Must Be Kept were merely a possible bonus.
Yes and no. And just to prove that I'm not totally incapable of looking up page numbers as well as the next person... "Lestat, I have destroyed others of our kind who came in search of me. I have destroyed them simply because they knew the old legends and they knew the name of Marius, and they would never give up the quest." (Marius, TVL, pg 478)
Now, this could be argued in one of two ways. Either your version, in which Marius had the nasty habit and reputation of killing people who heard a scrap of rumour, which would definately make him something of an unpredictable threat, OR you could argue in favor of self defense. He says that he killed those who came in search of him - the ones who knew and wouldn't give up searching. The "quest". In which case, assuming that Santino might have known more than casual rumour about Marius, makes it rather silly to have gone after him - sort of like seeing a rabid wolverine in a cage with warning signs all over it and then going over to stick your hand in anyways. =( Well, it's a sort of moot point anyways, and the phrasing in the book is hazy, but I hate seeing the Roman painted as a blood thirsty killer... even if he technically is... ;)
: :If Santino's coven had the ability to kill Marius then they also had the ability to simply hold him, since the threat of his death could, in theory, keep him prone. Therefore why trust a months-old fledgling when one could have the source?
What ifs... pity Santy's coven didn't do more research before the fact. Marius tells Stat in TVL that he's frankly not sure what could kill him any more "I am immortal... truly immortal. to be perfectly honest, I do not know what can kill me now, if anything." (TVL) and later, when talking about drinking from Akasha, which he admits to having done on more than one occasion and very heavily - "A few droplets will strengthen you, but if she gives you more then that, a full measure, hardly any force on earth can destroy you after that." So Marius didn't have much to fear about his own safety. On the other hand, he would have had quite a bit to fear for Armand's. So if the coven had wanted to pin him down and extract information from him, why not use the time honored method of using a loved one against him? A threat to Armand would have gone alot father than pouncing on Marius with torches, you'd think. So that leaves one with the conclusion that the entire 'searching for Those Who Must Be Kept' alibi was a weak second in favor of doing away with the potential threat that Marius represented. Either that, or they just didn't think the entire thing through very well, now did they? =P
: : Alright then: Louis and Gabrielle are obvious. Marius too, and since Lestat had been told Marius loved Pandora she was allowed to live too. Armand and Lestat had an adversarial relationship but Lestat in his heart cared for Armand and I think Akasha would have known that, hence Armand lives. Daniel was Armand's fledgling and gains protection there.
: Explain *that* one. *Why*? The only reason I can come up with so far is that Daniel might have been easy to manipulate or control because he was so new to the game, and therefore Akasha might be able to bend him to her will.
Hmmm... Or the fact that he was created virtually more or less on the last night of her great vampiric purge. Daniel, at that point, must have barely registered as a vampire - he was still going through the process of dying. Plus the fact that he was more or less glued to Armand's hip, and the truth of the matter might have been that Akasha just missed him entirely.
: : What, then, about Santino? He's not old enough to protect himself and he and Maharet don't seem to have a close enough relationship that she could protect him. Moreover he wasn't near Maharet when Akasha started her destruction so he wouldn't be able to hide himself by being in close proximity to her.
He *was* with Pandora, however, and as has been noted Pandora was spared because of Marius, and, presumably, because she was going to aide Marius. Might not Santino have been spared for the same reason, and because he was, as you put it, close enough to Pandora to have 'hid' in her shadow?
: Okay, here are my theories:
: 1) Marius was trapped under ice. But Akasha didn't want this to be permanant. Pandora needed someone to help her, and it ended up being Santy. And then Akasha was too busy to get around to destroying him, especially since he was now with Marius.
(trying to puzzle out rather nubulous time frames)... Slightly before Stat's concert, Akasha rises, traps Marius in the ice, and goes on a world wide vampire killing spree. Marius sends out his call, to which Pandora responds... hmmm... might have been a good week or so before the concert no? I'm not sure. At any rate, the concert more or less summed up the end of Akasha's vampire purge - after that she had Lestat to keep her busy and turned most of her efforts to her crusade instead. The only vampire that she killed while with Lestat, that we know of, was Azim. So it's entirely possible that if Santino met up with Pandora early enough in the week before the concert (even Akasha had to have started at point A and gone to points B and C consecutively... even she couldn't have been in more than one place on the globe at once!) Santy might have just lucked out and kept out of her way, and then ended up tagging along in Pandora and Marius' shadows. By the time Akasha would have realized she missed him everyone was already in Sonoma.
: pg 277: "They were all of them magnificent in their own way. The tall heavily built Santno was elegant in his priestly black, with his lustrous black eyes and a sensuous mouth." No one else, other than Maharet, is given such an in-depth look by Marius in this section.
I wouldn't necessarily say that... in fact, that bit you quoted is pretty much *it* as far as Santy goes. One line, compared to a paragraph or two about Daniel and a good few lines for everyone else. Santy was almost tossed in as an afterthought.
: So here's the theory, reading between the lines. The lines of protection from Akasha's fury came from three distinct lines: Age, Lestat and Marius. At no point in the book is Marius ever hostile to Santino.
Hostile? No. Brisk might be a better word for it. Bristling. Pushing away Pandora and Mael and everyone, snapping at Maharet - that was a picture of Marius in one hell of a bad temper, as far as he goes.
: But, isn't that what it's all about? *g* (Wonder what people are going to think about this post...)
(grin) It was fun. I'm one of those of the opinion that pairings like Santy and Marius are just begging to be defined as the "Slash" of the VC universe, which is why I toted out what defense I could think of... which isn't much at the moment, I'm too tired to go line by line. =) Still, that's my $.02 worth.
Heather (TBR)
: Cheers, LP.