Darla.

After he left Darla, he spent a hundred years eating rats in gutters. After he left Buffy, he sulked for a year or two and then started looking for a new sweetie.

Yes, of course this ignores that it was Buffy who inspired him to get out of the gutter, and he didn't even know her, then. It also ignores that when Darla tried to take him back (in the BtVS s1 episode Angel,) that he didn't go.

edited to correct parens

Um, that wasn't an entirely serious post, Cindy. But yes, point taken.

This is hard- without Darla, no Buffy. Without Buffy, probably no leaving for Los Angelas and starting a supernatural detective agency and, you know, no final battle in which he is on the side of good. Of course, that could be because of the curse, and I can't quite remember whose fault that was....

In the span of Angel's life, it seems that Darla was important longer than Buffy. Buffy was important as Buffy-the-woman for it, seems 3 -4 year, and as Buffy-the-symbol-for all-that-is-good-and-pure until the end of Angel. But for all that Darla was "first", Buffy/Angel seems like a first love, and Darla and Angel and the enormously convuluted entwined,overlapping relationship.

I did like what plei (I think) said about Angelus consumed with the need to kill Buffy, while Angel was consumed with the need to save Darla-- even though Angelus loved Darla and Angel loved Buffy. It is a rather beautiful set-up.

I'm weighing in with Plei, kind of.

To *and* for Angelus, Darla was the most important. But to *and* for Angel, I think it was Buffy. I don't think, soul-having or not, Angel really became Angel until Buffy, and not even all at once. I don't think he was truly Angel until the S1 episode "Darla", in fact.

Liam became Angelus at Darla's hand (er, fangs) and even after the gypsies cursed him with a soul, I think it was the loss of his partner that hurt as bad as the guilt. I think that was part of the pain, too -- the things he did for her and with her, and the memory of the pleasure.

The creature Whistler found in that alley wasn't Angel yet -- he didn't become Angel until he'd spent some time with Buffy. And even after it was clear that they wouldn't be able to stay together, I think it was Buffy's influence on Angel that drove his actions with Darla later.

I see his heroic actions from that point on as more guilt/making amends-motivated than inspired by Buffy.

I disagree. I think he made the choices he made based on his love for Buffy, and his respect for her actions.

And I say all this because I think Angel saw himself and Angelus as two very separate creatures.

And I say all this because I think Angel saw himself and Angelus as two very separate creatures.

Here's where we differ... I don't think he saw them as separate at all. He may have regarded himself as being a different sort of person when soulless as opposed to post-Gypsy curse, but at least up through Season 1 of his own show Angel refered to his evil past in the first person. I think there was a very basic continuity of identity there. (Otherwise how could he feel guilt—perhaps his defining emotion—over things done by somebody else wearing his face?)

I think that Angel and Angelus are two aspects of one person, Liam for want of a better name. Angel is good and guilty and Angelus is bad and fun. Liam combined the two to make bad and guilty with a really bad accent. It's like becoming a vampire divided Liam into good and evil, and threw away the good. Being cursed switched the two, but he was still less than whole. I think that Angel's quest for atonement was also, partially, a quest for wholeness, which (and this is on the fly, so I'm not solid yet) I would argue didn't really start to come together until he slept with Darla and woke up not evil.

So, going back to the original question, I think Darla was most important for Angel. I'm ambivalent on who is most important to Angel. I think he would say Buffy. But saving Darla was pretty important for his own feeling of redemption, and she did give him a son at the cost of her own life. I guess it just goes to show that, like in real life, different people are more important at different times and in different situations. I suspect that most people, if they were honest with themselves, would answer this type of question differently for themselves at different times.

I have trouble equating them, because Darla & Angel made sense to me in a way that Buffy & Angel never did. So for me it's easily Darla.

For those mentioning that Angel killed Darla to save Buffy: do you think that if Buffy was holding a stake over Darla's chest, Angel would have let it happen? It's genuine question, not a "nyah," because I'm genuinely not sure. I feel like if he didn't have time to think (insert cheap shot here) he'd have automatically stepped in there, too.

Some of that's based on the fact that, after he stakes Darla, I remember him having a "Oh, fuck, what'd I just do?" expression. Which may not have been intentional, but it cracked me up when I saw it.

(And what Matt said.)

do you think that if Buffy was holding a stake over Darla's chest, Angel would have let it happen?

I think he would have said, "Buffy, don't!" and that Darla would have done something to make Buffy do it anyway. Maybe one of those Darla Looks and a crooned "Darling boy". Yeah, Buffy would off Darla if she heard that.

I think the relationship with Darla is incredibly interesting and complicated, and obviously one of long-standing, but I can't get over the fact that so many of the things that people are arguing as making her more important to Angel, are things that you could replace her with someone else, and the effect would have been the same on Angel. I mean, if the master had been in that alley, too, and changed him, Angel would be the same. And yes, obviously Liam is more likely to hang out near the pretty girl, but you get what I'm saying. And if it had been Drusilla that had been turned human, I think Angel would have been even more involved than he was with Darla. If Cordy had been the one to have his child, amongst her many demon pregnancies, I think it would have affected Angel just as much. I guess what I'm trying to say is that for me, it seems as though Darla is very much a symbol in Angel's mind. She's completely tied to his past, and vampirism, and what could have been, and as such she's an extremely important figure in his life. But I think she is just a figure to him. I don't think that what's between them is very personal, as such. I mean, so much of their history together was tied up in not caring-- about each other, or anyone else. There's a certain amount of distance in that. Which, honestly, makes their relationship even more interesting to me. I have a much more difficult time substituting someone else into the important Buffy parts of Angel's life, and having it mean the same thing to him. That is why I think Buffy is more important to Angel. If we were discussing for Angel I'd have a much harder time making a distinction. But to? No contest, really. Buffy.

I'm going with Buffy too. He chose the things he did with her, for one. He embraced her fighting-for-good ways by his own free will. Darla turned him into something, Buffy helped him turn himself into something better. Also, in a world with vampires, Darla is pretty hum-drum. Finds a hunk, makes him her evil boy toy, runs rampant... Buffy was the one girl in all the world.

Besides, show not called "Darla the Vampire Changer."