Anne Rice — Pandora/The Vampire Armand

Pandora — Pandora was born with the name Lydia in the Roman Republic in the year 15 BC to a Senatorial family. She is tall, with rippling brown hair and gold-brown eyes. Like many Patrician Roman females of the time Pandora was taught how to read and write and is well versed in epic poems, especially Ovid’s works. She meets Marius for the first time when he is twenty-five and she is ten. Marius asks for Lydia’s hand in marriage, but her father rejects Marius’ offer. Five years later, Lydia sees Marius at a festival and begs her father to allow her to marry Marius. Her father again refuses.

The Vampire Armand — With Lestat de Lioncourt still in slumber since Memnoch the Devil, the vampire coven is reunited around the “brat prince” and the vampire David Talbot asks Armand tell his life story.

Born somewhere in the Kievan Rus in the late 15th century, Armand (at this time called Andrei) becomes an icon painter in a monastery. He is forcefully taken out of this life of prayer and devotion by slave traders, who transport him to Constantinople and then to a brothel in Venice. Soon after his arrival, he is purchased by the vampire Marius de Romanus, who names him Amadeo.