Interesting to read here about your gut reaction to Viserys, which was much more sympathetic than my own. The stooped man playing with his models like a child obsessed with a doll house - it seemed to me to imply contempt - but after watching Episode 2 I think your take is sounder. Viserys is wise - he is measured - he is a king for peaceful times, committed to war as a last resort only.
Like Tennyson's Telemachus, son of Odysseus (Ulysses), of whom the father says:
"This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine."
Television specials are about men that strive with Gods, not administrators, and yet... you are right: Viserys deserves our sympathy and a kind of respect.
It's possible the truth of him is between how we both initially saw him.
He wants to do good, but he also absolved the brutality of his brother and allows his wife to be butchered open in case there was a baby boy trapped in there.
Maybe he is a father and brother like any other, just a man trying his best, but he has been hardened to brutality to the point that he doesn't even blink in its presence.
Interesting to read here about your gut reaction to Viserys, which was much more sympathetic than my own. The stooped man playing with his models like a child obsessed with a doll house - it seemed to me to imply contempt - but after watching Episode 2 I think your take is sounder. Viserys is wise - he is measured - he is a king for peaceful times, committed to war as a last resort only.
Like Tennyson's Telemachus, son of Odysseus (Ulysses), of whom the father says:
"This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine."
Television specials are about men that strive with Gods, not administrators, and yet... you are right: Viserys deserves our sympathy and a kind of respect.
It's possible the truth of him is between how we both initially saw him.
He wants to do good, but he also absolved the brutality of his brother and allows his wife to be butchered open in case there was a baby boy trapped in there.
Maybe he is a father and brother like any other, just a man trying his best, but he has been hardened to brutality to the point that he doesn't even blink in its presence.