swapping out actors is very par for the course for a daytime soap but there's something very ... meaningful about it in this show, where everyone exactly resembles an ancestor, and those resemblances are significant to their identity and place in the world, while keeping a face unchanged through the centuries announces you as a harbinger of doom. we have known from the moment barnabas arrives that he is the ancestor in the portrait. we know that cassandra is angelique, because her similarly enduring face reveals her intentions. ancient loves are found and lost again through resemblances. victoria's identity is made and unmade in it over and over again.