Did Angellus love Buffy?

[Scarygothgirl]

When Angel lost his soul in season two, did he still continue to love Buffy? My friend thinks that as Angellus he no longer loved Buffy, as shown by his actions towards her. Whereas I think that he did still love her, hence his fixation on tormenting her, but without his soul he loved her in a very sadistic way. What do you think?

[Randi Giles]

Since Angel said in Season 2 of ATS that he was incapable of loving I'm going to say no. I think his fixation with Buffy was similar to his obsession with Drusilla. Angelus knew that he could hurt Buffy did everything he could to make her life hell. Plus I think at the end of 'I only have eyes for you'(I think that's the title) he seemed pretty disgusted one he realized he was kissing her. I don't really think Angelus ever loved anyone. I would say Darla, but then I'll be being biased. I do however believed that on some level Angelus loved or cared for Darla more than anyone. Buffy and Drusilla was just child's play.

[Scarygothgirl]

Why does he say he's incapable of love? It can't be a vampire thing, 'cos Spike was pretty capable of love. Maybe he just said it because he's disgusted by the way he sees love when he is Angelus? I also would like to think that he loved Darla.

[iigreenii]

Maybe the type of person they were before they were turned contributes to how they are as vampires. Angel did hint something along those lines once.

[The Girl In Question]

I've always assumed that vampires in the buffyverse were incapable of love (due to lack of soul). Spike had very strong, obsessed, selfish feelings for Buffy when he was soulless, imo, and didn't genuinely love her until he had a soul. I also feel Angellus was obsessed with Buffy (but not in a romantic way like Spike was. Just in a wanting-to-corrupt-her way). That's how I've always seen it, at least.

[Scarygothgirl]

I thought Spike and Dru seemed very in love at points. Vampires must at least have some feeling of love even if just friendship love because Abgel Spike Darla and Dru were very loyal to eachother, and you can't be loyal to someone you don't love

[wenxina]

Spike and Dru reeked of humanity according to the Judge. Angel couldn't be burned by the Judge because he had no humanity in him at all.
Angel and Darla never loved each other. Darla loved the cruelty and malice that Angelus had, but the moment he gained his soul back, she spurned him. She even abandoned him to Holtz and his posse and saved herself on horseback once.
Angelus and Darla have a great respect for each other, but I doubt it ever amounted to love.

[jtmaster13]

I don't think Angelus loved Buffy so much as he loved tormenting her. She made him feel like a human being, something that Angelus hates, she was the one to cause that the most, so I think his fixation with her was because of that

[joxerlives]

In his own twisted way I'd say yes, he loved her like Norman Bates loved his mother

[bthomas]

I agree that Angelus was incapable of love, so he did not. I think he was such a cruel vampire that he lost all ability to love after he was turned. I also submit that vampires can love, but it is rare. Spike's love for Dru seems to be one way. I don't feel Dru really loved Spike and instead just depended on him till she was back to full strength. Darla and Angel was a relationship built upon the high of doing evil. They had sexual tension from that euphoric feeling they got when they did evil things.

[tkts]

Regarding the relationships between vampires, it seems like a vampire's sire often has a particularly significant hold on that vampire's emotions. Hence why Drusilla is still very drawn to Angelus, even after he's spent the last century as a human and she's spent the last century with Spike; and why Spike seems more into Drusilla than vice versa.

[Scarygothgirl]

Though Harmony never mentions her sire but is quite obsessed with Spike. Do we think she's in love with Spike? Or just very infatuated?

[SOMNAMBULIST 2.0]

My thoughts are that, in a way, Angelus did love Buffy. So when her tortured her, it was because of his love for her that he did it. He hurt her because he hated the fact that she made him love someone, feel real feelings, especially towards his sworn enemy. As Angel and Angelus are the same person, my thought that contradicts my previous thought is that the love Angel felt towards Buffy was so strong and true that it was carried over to Angel's former self. In that case, I think that maybe it was the love Angel felt for Buffy that made Angelus so horrible to her because Angelus knew that his second self was in love with the Slayer.

[Iceeh★]

No. As mentioned above, the Judge said that Angelus had no humanity in him. The ability to love is a part of humanity. What he felt for Buffy was hatred, and a fantastically sexy scary obsession with torturing her to the point of insanity.

[tkts]

Sept 22, 2010 19:23:17 GMT -5 Scarygothgirl said:

Though Harmony never mentions her sire but is quite obsessed with Spike. Do we think she's in love with Spike? Or just very infatuated?

For that matter -- do we think Harmony had ever been in love before she became a vampire? She never exactly demonstrated all that much depth.

I wonder if Harmony even knows who her sire is. He might have died in the Mayor's last battle. (How he managed to find the time to turn her in the middle of all that is anybody's guess. Maybe he dragged her off to a quiet corner and sat out the rest of the battle?)

[midwesternwatcher]

I don't think anyone has mentioned Heartthrob, Angel 3.1, where James seeks vengeance against Angel for staking Elisabeth. James certainly thought he was in love with Elisabeth, and apparently Elisabeth thought she was in love with James.

At the very least, it seems vampires are capable of adolescent-style infatuation of an extreme kind. Is that love? When Elisabeth died, we could imagine James shrugging his vampire shoulders, and asking himself, "Where's the next cutie?" He didn't.

Suppose that Angelus had captured Buffy so she was helpless. What would he have done?

I don't think he would've raped her. Not artistic enough, no class or style about it. Angelus is a gentleman in his own way.

Would he have tortured her? Yes, I think.

Would he have killed her? How would it have been before he lost interest and disposed of her?

My feeling is that his interest in Buffy was shallow, connected to a complex of feeling floating on the surface of his mind. At some point, something else would've caught his interest, and he would've killed her just to have done with her. So I don't think he loved her in any sense of the term.

[iigreenii]

Each vampire to me is different. I believe that the type of person they were as human has some affect on the how they are as vampires. I do believe that some vampires in Buffy can love.Some appear to be capable of feeling human pain (crying etc.) & loving someone in a very sadistic way. They have no conscience so of course their way of showing their love for someone is going to be sadistic and not at all how humans would show theirs. Others appear to have no feelings or humanity at all.

In my opinion Angelus doesn't love Buffy. Angelus has no humanity in him whatsoever. He eventually lost focus on just tormenting Buffy and decided to destroy the world instead. In Orpheus he could have easily left LA and went to Sunnydale but decided to stay and torture Faith instead. I don't think him tormenting her means he loves her. It just means he likes to torment people in general and to me his lack of caring is makes him one of the beat villians in Buffy/Angel .

[Scarygothgirl]

On the subject of how Spike can love but Angelus can't, Angel changed massively when he became a vampire, then massively again when he regained his soul. Whereas Spike didn't change at all when he was turned, his biggest change was several years into being a vampire when he started to become more like Angelus. Then when Spike was given a soul again he was crazy for a few weeks and then right back to the same personality as when he didn't have a soul.

[jtmaster13]

I think Angelus was just a sadistic vampire who liked to torture people in the end. He always went for the hurt instead of the kill because he got extreme joy out doing so. He didn't kill Buffy right off the bat because he wanted to hurt her in the same way that she made him "feel" like a human being. That was his way of getting back at her.

[The Girl In Question]

Sept 22, 2010 23:00:50 GMT -5 tkts said:

Sept 22, 2010 19:23:17 GMT -5 Scarygothgirl said:

Though Harmony never mentions her sire but is quite obsessed with Spike. Do we think she's in love with Spike? Or just very infatuated?

For that matter -- do we think Harmony had ever been in love before she became a vampire? She never exactly demonstrated all that much depth.

If you rewatch Graduation Day pt 2, Harmony's sire is a woman with a rather large afro (or at least she bit her, I'm not sure who gave Harmony their vamp blood but I always assumed she pulled a Harth and bit the afro vamp back or something).

And I still don't believe vamps can love. Not like humans do, anyway.