House of the Dragon star Paddy Considine on Viserys’ death
We tend to believe that for quite some time moving forward, this is going to remain one of our favorite characters within this universe. After all, we don’t think that Viserys was a bad person; he just was not a great King. He didn’t have the ruthlessness and seemed to want to believe everyone had the same level of morality he did. That was never the case, and it plagued him for a significant chunk of his reign.
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Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Considine had an interesting perspective on his character’s failings, in particular when it comes to his treatment of some of the children he had with Alicent Hightower:
“I think he neglected to be a good father to his second family … I think he neglected putting any effort into those children. They didn’t like him. I was on set one day and one of the actors playing one of my son says, ‘You hate us.’ And I went, ‘What?’ What do you mean? That I hate you as people — like Paddy [the actor] hates you?’ And he was like, ‘No, Viserys hates us, because you hate your children.’ I was like, wow, that’s amazing. That was so profound for him to say that.
“Viserys doesn’t hate his children … He just doesn’t love them the way he loves Rhaenyra. Because Rhaenyra’s mom Aemma is the love of King Viserys’ life. In a way, he’s responsible, because he was so dogged about wanting a male heir, and there were several failed pregnancies, and he feels greatly responsible for pushing her to have a child so many times. That’s his big regret. That’s part of the reason he chose Rhaenyra as his heir — there’s a bit of guilt there.”
We do wonder here whether or not Viserys could have turned Aemond and the other children into more functional characters had he put more time into him, but that is a hard thing to truly figure out. We do think that Paddy’s comments speak largely to how he was likely picturing Aemma when he reached out his arms at the time of his death; his heart remained with her, even in the many years after his death.
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.