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."

Buffy helped him turn himself into something better.

Doyle and TPTB could get some of the credit here. I don't think Angel honestly tried to do good until he left Sunnydale. In Sunnydale, he just followed Buffy's lead because he was in love with her, not out of any desire to do good for good's sake. Once he got to LA it took him a while, but he eventually got the point.

It struck me that he was kinda sorta working toward the greater good even before he fell for Buffy (or at least before they retconned the love at first sight thing while stalking her 15 year-old self in LA), but he didn't have much of an impulse to do the job himself until he returned from Hell. He intitially seemed content to skulk around and occasionally use his knowledge of vampires and the occult to point others in the right direction. But almost all examples of him getting his hands dirty were in defense of people he knew, rather than on the behalf of innocent bystanders.

'Cept for the time he saved that puppy.

I heart Heather! Now I'm giggling all over again, remembering that scene.

Of course, the argument could be made that in saving the puppy, he was saving himself. Since he's just a big fluffy puppy with bad teeth, etc.

Mmmm, loving the spicy brains on display here, I must say.