cloudsinvenice:

aflyingmotorbike:

cloudsinvenice:

kissingandsnugglingdeadthings:

Warning; I’m about to wax at length about a
Daniel thing in Prince Lestat.
I’m probably “interrogating the text from the wrong perspective”, but so be it!
😀

So I’m poking my way through Prince Lestat again, because I
cannot resist squeezing every last bit of interesting detail out of any of the
Chronicles that has to do with Daniel, and I couldn’t resist taking a good long
look at this particular bit because I was also made to suffer four years of
seminary during my late teens, so any chance to use that knowledge for
something I actually enjoy is occasionally entertaining for this heathen.

The line from Prince Lestat I’ve been
pondering the last day or so:

Prince Lestat: He
and Daniel had to leave Brazil. This was a safe place no longer. Daniel said he
understood. “Whither thou goest, I go,”
he had said.

This is, of course, a partial quote from The
Old Testament which is full is:

Ruth 1:16: And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to
return from following after thee: for whither
thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God

With the last name Molloy,
it’s obvious that Daniel is of Irish descent, and so it seems to have become a
fairly consistent fan belief over the years (based on the fic and discussions
out there) that Daniel was likely raised in a Catholic environment. Personally,
this quote just cemented that fan-canon thought for me even more, and with that
in mind, it really added a new layer of depth to what Daniel is saying here.

I know it’s also been
speculated post Blood And Gold
that Daniel is in a situation he has little or no control over, being left or
taken into Marius’ care. That somehow he’s become a ‘lackey’ or he’d become a low-level
replacement for Those Who Must Be Kept. I know because I was a party of that
fan-camp of thought for quite some time. So believe me, this is a really big 180° for me to be taking.

It’s become clear in Prince Lestat that Daniel has
come back to his senses, but this particular line seems to also establish that
Daniel has remained and continues to remain with Marius of his own volition. His reference of The Book of Ruth is a pretty
subtle but clear indication that he’s accepted his companion and wants to
remain at his side. Wherever Marius goes, he’s going, and where Marius chooses
to live, that’s where Daniel will live.

It also adds an additional
potential layer of Daniel’s mindset toward Armand. In the Bible, Ruth
chooses to stay with her mother-in-law, Naomi, instead of going home to her
family, hence the famous quote. I can’t help but wonder if Daniel’s also subtly
referencing that even though Armand isn’t dead in the literalist of senses,
their relationship is. That of course also begs the question if he then thinks of Marius in a ‘familiar, paternal kind of way’ but I’m not going there right now. That’ll be for another time.

I am flailing so hard right now because I’ve wondered about that line and I love you to death for drawing this out and pointing out its implications in the context of Daniel-as-Catholic, and the relevance of the passage to Daniel’s situation. 

Personally I got the feeling that Marius was doing some recovery of his own, and that possibly Daniel is staying with him for the time being because he’s needed, and Marius has done a lot for him. That’s not to say that I disagree entirely about his thinking re:Armand, I do think their reunion in PL is probably the first since Daniel ‘went mad’. So he wouldn’t have any particular reason to think they could pick their relationship back up, but he still seems pretty eager to go to Trinity and see everyone – and if going to Trinity meant ‘seeing the ex’ I think we could expect slightly more mixed feelings on Dan’s part? So while I do think he’s definitely staying with Marius by his own choice at this point, I guess I’m not sure about the finality of it. (But this post is really awesome and I love it.)

Yeah, I like the idea that the relationship (whether it’s just paternal or romantic) between Marius and Daniel has been therapeutic on both sides. I think that because neither made the other there’s a lack of pressure, and they were living together at what was clearly a very difficult time for both of them. 

We get very little from Daniel’s POV in BaG but I suspect that for every one of Daniel’s worst moments as described by Marius, Daniel has also watched Marius spend an entire night just staring at the wall, or constantly putting an order for paint in an Amazon basket and then deleting it, putting it in and deleting it…