Liam never met Buffy, so he wouldn't know her. I don't know what happens to vampires when they die -- is it more than an on-off switch? What did Darla have to say?

good point, ChiKat. i guess Spike would essentially be the same thing.

though, how do they know what happened to them pre-curse? how do they have those memories of being a bad-ass vampire?

Did the gypsy curse give Angel Liam's soul back?

I would assume so, but from what we've been shown Liam was pretty much a bastard and re-souled Angel never struck me as such.

do you think the gypsy's just pulled a soul out of the ether and didn't care if they were cursing the right person or not?

do you think the gypsy's just pulled a soul out of the ether and didn't care if they were cursing the right person or not?

Angel was the one being cursed -- not the soul, in my reading. They may have given him a fresh new soul.

so if Liam's soul went to the afterlife after Darla vamped him, he won't know what his physical body did after that fact.

The Restoration Curse recalled Liam's soul from "the ether." In the Jossverse, the soul does not seem to be sentient. Or at least, the soul does not does not seem to house all sentience, because we know people like Jesse knew Xander et al, after vamping, as well as he did before vamping. And we know that having his soul, having it taken away, having it restored (and repeat) did not affect Angel's memory more than momentarily.

Did the gypsy curse give Angel Liam's soul back?

I say yes, because it is a "Restoration" curse, not an "Ensoulment" curse. It makes it much simpler to discuss, as well.

but now we're getting back to what makes us us. is it the soul?

technically Angel doesn't have a soul since vampires are soulless creatures, right? so wouldn't they be cursing the human soul that was Angel, which would be Liam?

I think Joss finally settled on the notion that "soul" in the Buffy/Angelverse was something like "the inclination to do good" - which is pretty flimsy stuff theologically.

I wrote up a whole big thing on soul canon (and my guestimates added in) in the Jossverse, once. Let me see if I can find it. Plei has a copy on one of her sites, but it's unproofed. I think I saved a somewhat edited copy, somewhere.

It's pretty clear that the Gypsy ritual has restored the same soul to Angel each time it's been used, though. I think the simplest assumption to proceed from is that it calls up the soul that's supposed to go with the body.

edit: x-post with Cindy.

Neither Angel nor Darla seemed to have any memories from their souls' disembodied states, but Buffy did remember her afterlife.