His outward appearance is that of a beautiful adolescent boy, 5’6, with curly auburn hair, large brown eyes and slender fingers.

His astonished parents eventually reveal his gift to the monks in the Monastery of the Caves, who live ascetically underground, sustained only by water and small amounts of food.

When their ruler, Prince Michael, orders Andriy to paint an icon and bring it to the castle of his brother, the supposedly dead Prince Feodor, Andriy is captured by Tartars, brought as a slave to Constantinople, and subsequently sold to a Venetian brothel, where he is sexually abused and develops amnesia.

[1] Marius, a 1500-year-old vampire living as a painter in Venice, rescues Andrei and gives him an education and a luxurious life, and renames him Amadeo.

Instead, he chooses Amadeo for his beauty, youth, and painting skills (apparently lost, along with his memories) to educate "in the way of the blood", so as to eventually make him a vampire.

He does not understand Marius' hesitation to turn him, and in an act of rebellion and anger he seduces an English lord whom, after a few nights, he eventually abandons.

[1] Roughly two hundred years later, the cult tries to capture Lestat, a vampire turned by Magnus—another old target of the coven—and considers destroying him.

When Lestat brings back Veronica's Veil from his journey in Memnoch the Devil, Armand is struck by the sight of it; his religious fervor revived, he goes into the sun in an attempt to destroy and redeem himself.