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"The Vampire Armand" Santino and Religion
Apr. 2nd, 2026 09:01 amAnon Asks:
Im the one who send you this ask, so sorry that I dont comment directly into the post I just have so much anxiety whenever I do that. This is the first time I see someone headcanon Santino to be Islam, its quite interesting and I have to admit I dont ship Devil's minion since I enjoy Loumand and Lesmand more but I really love your meta about Armand, its is always so thoughtful.
We probably wont have all these things we hope to see appear on the show but no one taxed hope right? And really if you find the way I keep sending you ask like this annoying please just ignore it
Im the one who send you this ask, so sorry that I dont comment directly into the post I just have so much anxiety whenever I do that. This is the first time I see someone headcanon Santino to be Islam, its quite interesting and I have to admit I dont ship Devil's minion since I enjoy Loumand and Lesmand more but I really love your meta about Armand, its is always so thoughtful.
We probably wont have all these things we hope to see appear on the show but no one taxed hope right? And really if you find the way I keep sending you ask like this annoying please just ignore it
Oh, you're alright! I get it 🥰 Glad to have you in my inbox. Our hope is a beautiful free thing, and as long as we don't put more worth on it, then we can never truly be disappointed!
Ah yes, my beautiful complicated headcanon for Muslim Santino. I have so many reasons for it, and have wanted to make a meta post about it since I read TVA, but I wanted to do research first (since alas, I am a white woman who was raised Mormon in Utah, there's so much I just don't know about everything) and while I have read a lot and have many many PDFs saved on the subject, I was hoping to get to it this summer. College really takes a lot out of me, haha...
I have 3 main reasons for the headcanon which I won't go into a ton of detail for since I am simply not prepared for the meta post of my dreams, but I can talk about it anyway.
We know that Armand's story is inseparable from faith. Many many people, like Murf and nightislands, have talked about the missing key to Armand in the show, and there's so much we either are not sure of or just don't know at all, but one thing that is certain is that Armand cannot be adapted without discussing religion. Since the base of a lot of The Vampire Chronicles is created through philosophical treatise, this element is extremely important to understand if you're going to understand Armand.
Before I get into all of that, though, I do think it's a fascinating--yet ultimately understandable--chasm in the Devil's Minion side of the Fandom that we don't discuss this core element of Armand much. Reason number one being that it's not a theme really present in the chapter; Daniel is mirroring Amadeo in the way that hedonism has taken the place of religious practice. In Amadeo's case, this was because Marius and trauma were being soothed by drowning in excess (Anne was so catholic, lol), however in Daniel's case religion is nearly absent (his cute little bible quote before he gets turned). It's part of his thing as a modern American vampire, and I could probably write an essay about this being why Daniel sticks with Marius for so long (let me finish B&G first though), but that's a huge reason why religion doesn't get brought up. There's no adaption gap in the story waiting to be filled with Muslim Armand headcanons. While I headcanon show!Daniel as Jewish, it would be with a heavy layer of American assimilation that leave traces of that Jewish heritage rather than someone who is actively practicing the religion, and that has some effect on Daniel but not so much that HE ends up interested in Armand's religious journey as a narrator.
So anyway, back to Santino and Armand.
1) Santino was able to get through to Amadeo to philosophically break him in the book because he appealed to Amadeo's missing faith that Marius could not fill. There's a lot to be said about the torture underneath Rome, and I have and will say more about it (months in the show 😱) but all of that happened AFTER Santino put strain on Amadeo's sense of self THROUGH an appeal to his religious childhood. But show!mand is not rooted in Catholicism, as far as we know. While book!mand had a childhood where he was to serve as a monk in Eastern Orthodoxy, and Santino presenting as a twisted Roman Catholic-esque Satanist cult was able to appeal to the same sense of Catholicism, that shared-yet-different heritage is not available for show!Santino to break Amadeo on. Unless... Arun was Muslim who had largely suppressed his religious practice through Marius's grooming, and Santino--who also had that suppressed, but was forcefully converted to Catholicism instead of Athiesm--was able to use that shared heritage deep inside them to break an older Amadeo on, too.
2) But where would Muslim Santino come from? Well there are a few historical options, since Islam has been very present in Europe through trade, the Near East (Constantinople. God, Marius is so fucking Orientalist) and the Ottoman Empire, and then of course across the Mediterranean in North Africa. He doesn't HAVE to be from Islamic Spain, but with the thematic possibilities of reconquista right around the time Santino would have been turned, I think I have a decent argument. That mostly exists in my head because I need to do research to make it compelling 😅, but decent nonetheless. A lot of it boils down to: it lets Santino be very race-flexible since Al-Andalus was very metropolitan, but it keeps Santino on a cultural home-ground (Southern Europe) while maintaining Amadeo/Armand's much more fragile presence as a victim of continental slave-trade.
3) Santino, for whatever reason, leaves the cult not long after Armand is sent to Paris. Why? I don't think we ever get a Watsonian explanation, but I have a couple Doylist ones. First: often times in a cult, someone who is doubting will overperform the rituals to soothe the doubt and seek proof that the doubt is just from flawed personal practice rather than flawed practice. Santino lets Marius be for a while before sending the CoD to burn the Palazzo, but why on earth would he choose to convert Marius's pupil? The on-page reason is because he sensed a kindred spirit (religious) in Amadeo, but I could very reasonably see this as an extension of overperformance to self-soothe. Second: once the doubt has become unignorable due to external proof of flawed practice, the cultist will finally leave and begin to deconstruct. Through the process of breaking and reshaping Amadeo into Armand, Santino somehow finds the external proof he was looking for, and leaves--Amadeo is his legacy but one he can't bear to look at himself. These elements are just me psychoanalyzing loose elements in him from TVA and QotD, but if Santino was initially Muslim... it makes that self-reflective doubt and flaw he found in Amadeo much more compelling (and horrifying). By connecting through a buried shared faith in order to break Amadeo, Santino enacts the cycle of violence he experienced by forcefully converting Armand, but through the process has to rewalk the philosophical seams holding his ritualistic practice together. With new perspective, he is able to begin breaking that seam and eventually put together the will to leave, all because Amadeo reminded him of something ritual has buried deep.
After my semester ends and I have a nice break to recover from the stress of school, I'll definitely be reading and putting the last pieces of this in place to develop a more formal approach, but I really do appreciate the curiosity! Questions can sometimes reveal the most compelling information I would never have revealed otherwise. So, thanks! I hope you enjoyed my sleep-deprived rambling.
3) Santino, for whatever reason, leaves the cult not long after Armand is sent to Paris. Why? I don't think we ever get a Watsonian explanation, but I have a couple Doylist ones. First: often times in a cult, someone who is doubting will overperform the rituals to soothe the doubt and seek proof that the doubt is just from flawed personal practice rather than flawed practice. Santino lets Marius be for a while before sending the CoD to burn the Palazzo, but why on earth would he choose to convert Marius's pupil? The on-page reason is because he sensed a kindred spirit (religious) in Amadeo, but I could very reasonably see this as an extension of overperformance to self-soothe. Second: once the doubt has become unignorable due to external proof of flawed practice, the cultist will finally leave and begin to deconstruct. Through the process of breaking and reshaping Amadeo into Armand, Santino somehow finds the external proof he was looking for, and leaves--Amadeo is his legacy but one he can't bear to look at himself. These elements are just me psychoanalyzing loose elements in him from TVA and QotD, but if Santino was initially Muslim... it makes that self-reflective doubt and flaw he found in Amadeo much more compelling (and horrifying). By connecting through a buried shared faith in order to break Amadeo, Santino enacts the cycle of violence he experienced by forcefully converting Armand, but through the process has to rewalk the philosophical seams holding his ritualistic practice together. With new perspective, he is able to begin breaking that seam and eventually put together the will to leave, all because Amadeo reminded him of something ritual has buried deep.
After my semester ends and I have a nice break to recover from the stress of school, I'll definitely be reading and putting the last pieces of this in place to develop a more formal approach, but I really do appreciate the curiosity! Questions can sometimes reveal the most compelling information I would never have revealed otherwise. So, thanks! I hope you enjoyed my sleep-deprived rambling.
