House of the Dragon’s biggest surprise: Paddy Considine’s deep performance as King Viserys
The standout performer from House of the Dragon’s early episodes is one of the last characters we expected to blow us away.
SPOILER WARNING: We shall be discussing events from the first three episodes of House of the Dragon. Don’t read on until you’ve seen them (but then definitely do read on).
Back in July, weeks before House of the Dragon premiered, George R.R. Martin revealed an interesting morsel about one of its key characters.
Martin, whose novel series A Song of Ice and Fire was adapted for television as Game of Thrones, also wrote Fire and Blood, which is the basis for this prequel series.
Having viewed rough versions of House of the Dragon’s first nine episodes (before most of the special effects had been added), Martin singled out the show’s portrayal of King Viserys Targaryen as a marked improvement on his own source material.
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“In some ways, I think they’ve made some improvements. I’m particularly thinking of Paddy Considine’s portrayal of King Viserys,” he told the podcast Game of Owns.
“Viserys, when I wrote Fire and Blood, was I guess not a character who particularly engaged me. I saw him as … I kind of liked him, but what Paddy Considine has done has, to my mind, made him much more of a tragic figure and less of an amiable guy who doesn’t really realise what’s going on around him.
“This is not the first time this has happened to me with adaptations. Sometimes you get an actor, director or screenwriter who changes your stuff in a way you like. You kind of wish you could go back and do that version.”
A month earlier, Martin wrote something similar on his personal blog, saying he was “hugely impressed” by the show’s version of Viserys, and Considine had given the character a “tragic majesty that my book Viserys never quite achieved”.
Three episodes into the series, I think we have all seen enough of Considine’s performance to confirm Martin was right. The reinterpretation of Viserys is one of two significant changes the showrunners have made to Fire and Blood, and both have unambiguously succeeded.
(The other smart change, if you’re interested, is the show’s decision to de-age Alicent and make her close friends with Rhaenyra. This has already added a great deal of intrigue and tension that would have been absent otherwise.)
The Viserys originally crafted by Martin is a bare bones version of what we see on screen. He’s a personification of the idea, which pops up several times in Martin’s literature, that a good person is not necessarily a good ruler.
Viserys is a conflict-averse, indecisive people pleaser. He isn’t evil like Joffrey or ruthless like Cersei, but in the wrong circumstances, his haplessness can do just as much damage.
The show has taken that outline of a character and added an astonishing amount of depth, turning a person who readers of the book may have expected to be forgettable into someone equal parts maddening and sympathetic.
Viserys is constantly making poor decisions, yet still we feel for him and even root for him. Why? There are a few crucial scenes that do a great deal to humanise him.
In episode two he makes the questionable call to marry Alicent Hightower instead of the more logical (if unsettling) option of 12-year-old Laena Velaryon.
In so doing he spurns the advice of his one unbiased adviser. And he manages to annoy both the most powerful lord in the realm, Corlys Velaryon, and his own daughter, Rhaenyra.
Not a smart choice, then. But we understand his reasons.
In one of the episode’s key scenes, he is seated with Alicent, discussing the Velaryons’ marriage proposal. Viserys confesses that he does “not know Laena well”, which is to say she’s a total stranger to him.
A few moments later, Alicent presents the king with a gift: Earlier, he’d broken a dragon statue from his treasured model of Old Valyria (the Westerosi version of Lego, essentially – Viserys is a geek). She has had it mended.
“This is a very kind gesture, Alicent. Very kind,” Viserys says.
Written down, that line doesn’t convey much meaning. It is Considine’s delivery and body language that imbue it with emotion.
He injects the moment with immense vulnerability. You implicitly understand that this is a deeply lonely man, who has sunk into depression and guilt following the death of his first wife (which was harrowing, as a result of his own decision to cut her open against her will during childbirth. The feeling of guilt is more than justified).
We see a man who knows he is surrounded by false people who seek to manipulate him for their own political ends. Who knows that no one genuinely cares about him.
One small gesture of kindness, the slightest suggestion that Alicent understands him and his weird hobby, is almost enough to make him dissolve into tears. It’s incredibly relatable, and just as sad.
He ends up marrying Alicent instead of Laena because she has shown him compassion; because she has made him feel that tiny bit less lonely.
Fast forward to episode three, where Viserys is on a royal hunt to celebrate the second birthday of his son Aegon.
There is a sequence here in which the King gets very, very drunk (or “deep in his cups”, as they say in Thrones-speak). This is partly reinforcing the sense of loneliness – he sits on his own, drinking, while the revelry rages around him.
But beyond that, something interesting happens: The people pleaser we’ve come to know and cringe at falls away, revealing Viserys’ true thoughts.
He mocks Jason Lannister for presuming to think he could add to House Targaryen’s strength. He bluntly defends his decision to name Rhaenyra his heir. When the Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, suggests marrying Rhaenyra to the two-year-old Aegon, Viserys straight up laughs at him.
These are the impulses Viserys normally suppresses in fear of offending one subject or another. In his cups, he’s more honest and assertive. Strangely, it kind of works for him.
It culminates with him standing before a bonfire outside, Alicent alongside him. Viserys opens up about the apparently prophetic dream that showed his male child upon the Iron Throne. In an anguished voice, he says his “obsession” with the dream “killed Rhaenyra’s mother”.
“I thought Rhaenyra was the way out of my abyss of grief and regret,” he says.
He goes on to wonder whether he was wrong to name Rhaenyra his successor. But by the end of the episode, having sobered up, his resolve is restored.
He tells his daughter she will not be supplanted under any circumstances. Knowing that many lords of the realm would disapprove, he stands by her, showing the slightest hint of a spine.
Considine has built a layered, complex character here. He’s turned someone who was on the periphery of Martin’s original story into the richest character of House of the Dragon’s early episodes. If this were the first act of a stage play – and it does actually feel like that sometimes – then Viserys would be the central, tragic figure.
He isn’t just an amiable and ultimately pathetic king. He is a man struggling with deep sadness, guilt and regret; with the desperate loneliness that comes from losing the one person who truly understood him. It is a spellbinding performance.
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