Marius de Romanus

Marius de Romanus is a fictional character in The Vampire Chronicles novels written by Anne Rice. He is the primary character in the novel Blood and Gold.

Fictional biography
Marius De Romanus was born in 30 B.C. in Rome. He was an illegitimate child of a Roman patrician and a Celtic slave from the land of Gaul. In his mortal years, he travelled the Empire and much of the known world compiling a travelogue/history of the world. Contrary to his appearance in the movie Queen of the Damned (in which he was played by Vincent Perez) he has white-blonde hair curled at the shoulders and cobalt blue eyes. Due to his age, his skin is often described as being as pale and hard as white marble.

When he was approximately 40 years old, he was abducted by druids (from a tavern) who followed the religion of the Gods of the Groves and was taken into their Grove. There, he was made into a vampire by the God of The Grove just before the yearly Feast of Samhain and instructed by the said God to go and try, with any means possible, to find out why vampires in other places - and himself as well - had been burned or destroyed when they have not been exposed to fire or the sun. Marius travelled to Egypt and became the caretaker of the original two vampires, Those Who Must Be Kept.

Marius lived in a number of different places in his two thousand years of life. He lived in Antioch with Pandora for two centuries after becoming the caretaker of Those Who Must Be Kept. After separating with her, he moved to Rome where he had the silent companionship of Avicus and Mael. He went into a coma-like sleep for "far more than half a century" before he was awoken by Avicus and Mael and the three set sail for Constantinople. It was there he knew Zenobia. They lived there for a very short while before Marius went off on his own and visited many places while drifting through time before Going Into The Ground again in 1200.

He awoke again in 1482 and visited Rome and Florence briefly before settling in Venice as a rich eccentric gentleman who painted for his own pleasure. Here he opened a home for neglected and abused boys who had talent, fell in love with the Venetian courtesan Bianca Solderini, found the mortal Armand, and lived for many years before the Children of Darkness (led by Santino) destroyed his house, severely injured Marius and took Armand (whom he had made a vampire by this time). After the ordeal, Marius and Bianca, who helped him in his recovery and whom he made a vampire to aid him, lived very briefly in many northern Europe towns before they settled for awhile in Dresden. Here Marius found Pandora and begged her in vain to leave her companion, Arjun, and return to him. It was also here that Bianca left him. The last two places in which Marius lived was an island in the Aegean Sea and somewhere in the north.

Personality and powers
Marius is an intelligent, wise and optimistic vampire, one of the oldest who are known to be still surviving, a Child of the Millennia. Due to his many drinks of blood from the now-dead vampire queen Akasha from whom the vampiric life fount originated, he is immensely powerful and possesses a number of advanced powers, including the ability to cause combustion (the 'Fire Gift') and the ability to fly (the 'Cloud Gift'). He can also read minds with much ease and block his own mind from being read by using the 'Mind Gift'. Another ability he possesses is the 'Killing Gift' (killing people through immense amounts of air pressure).He is a great painter and scholar, who loves to read and has had several treasured libraries which have been lost due to fire.

"Children"
Marius's fledglings include (in respective order): Pandora, Armand, Bianca Solderini, Sybelle and Benji. The last two were Made for Armand.

Other Relationships
Marius loved easily and loved many over the course of his long life: Avicus, Zenobia, Akasha, Botticelli, Bianca Solderini, Lestat. However, the two great loves of his life are Pandora and Armand. He has, however, lost both of them as lovers - Pandora due to his temper and pride, and Armand due to the drastic religion-driven actions of a Roman vampire, Santino.

"Lestat the Musical"
In the musical, Lestat, Marius was portrayed by Michael Genet.