Story in Vanitas no Carte is a story told by Noe, from Noe's point of view. This is one gigantic retrospection, full of his memories of Vanitas. This wasn't must have for this story - it could have been created without this entire premise that one character is writing about his memories of another one. And that wouldn't have changed almost anything - besides occasional comments by Noe about how this will end, other comments seemingly not that important... And besides amount of gay you can feel. So let's talk a little bit about that.
You see - there is a woman in Noe's life. Dominique. Theoretically, we can hear that they are engaged. But we can't even say that Noe is actually in love with her! If it was so certain, Noe wouldn't feel the need to ask Vanitas "what is love" during that dance scene... He would know what is love, because he would feel it towards his fiance. Right now we can even suppose that the engagement was just something that Dominique came up with and then Noe just went along with simply because he saw complete rejection of her as a little bit more hassle than just... Tolerating situation. You can feel that Dominique is important to our vampire, of course. He knows her almost his entire life, she was one of his first friends. But despite that, Dominique isn't the most important person in story told BY NOE. She just... Is there. It could have been story of Noe and Dominique where Vanitas played very important role... But no. It is story of Vanitas and Noe. Told by Noe. And Dominique just... Is there. Part of Noe's life, but not so important part of his story. The most important here is Vanitas. Noe choose to focus on Vanitas. It is rather safe to conclude that he considers him someone very important in his life... Someone who had lasting impact on him. And you can't deny it - no matter if you ship them or not.
