House of the Dragon star Paddy Considine explains the change he made to George R.R. Martin’s original take on King Viserys. HBO’s first Game of Thrones spinoff takes place 200 years before the events of the original series. The new show revolves largely around the Targaryen family, led by King Viserys I, fifth king of the Seven Kingdoms.
The character of Viserys I of course originated in the works of A Song of Ice and Fire author Martin, playing a large role in the Targaryen family history Fire & Blood. In Martin’s writings, the king is described as “plump and pleasant” and “amiable,” and is said to be decisive in his actions despite not being especially strong-willed. Unfortunately for Viserys, the seeds of civil war are planted during his reign, making him ultimately a tragic figure in the history of the Seven Kingdoms.
Now it’s fallen to Tony-nominated actor Considine to bring King Viserys to life in HBO’s House of the Dragon. And according to Considine himself, his version of the king is not precisely what Martin imagined in his original writings on the Targaryen family. Speaking to The Official Game of Thrones Podcast: House of the Dragon, Considine explained how he tweaked Viserys to be a little less “plump and pleasant” and a little more assertive and even dragon-like:
It’s that thing, just because he’s a good man, it doesn’t mean that he’s weak. He’s just trying to do the right thing. And he’s trying to stop war, because in that seat of being king, people, ultimately, around that council and beyond, just want you to serve their needs. And he’s not willing to do that, he’s not willing to go to war to please a few. I think his job is always to see the bigger picture, and he’s inherited… you know, he’s the king now, Jaehaerys was a peacetime king and Viserys sees a virtue in continuing that, but at the same time, there is a part of him that’s egotistical. Later on in the show, there’s a scene where he basically says, ‘How will I be remembered?’ And he basically says, ‘People don’t remember good kings, they remember tyrants. They remember warriors.’ And my job, and I said to Miguel [Sapochnik] early on, was, I said, ‘Look, he’s a dragon. And we’ve got to make sure that, early on, as good a man as he is, that he’s not a pushover.
The main story of House of the Dragon of course concerns the rise of rival factions within House Targaryen leading to the fabled Dance of the Dragons. Considine’s Viserys is in fact a dragonrider himself, but has not actually bonded with a dragon since the death of his beast Balerion during the reign of his father Jaehaerys I. Being grounded as a dragonrider may indeed be part of why Viserys comes across as pleasant and amiable rather than fearsome. But clearly Considine wanted to assure that his character would not seem flat-out weak despite being a man who has left his dragonriding days behind him.
Obviously it’s good for an actor to have internal conflict to play, and that seems like just what Considine is going for in his take on Viserys I. Essentially, he’s a good man who wants to continue the era of prosperity begun by his father, but there’s also something inside him that longs to leave behind a legacy, and of course he was once a dragonrider which means he has that bit of fire inside him despite everything. How much fire Viserys has left, and how that comes out over the course of the story, will be discovered when House of the Dragon hits HBO beginning on August 21, 2022.
Source: The Official Game of Thrones Podcast: House of the Dragon