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Viserys - Dastardly Villain or Misunderstood?


King Viserys

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I think you have to shed the entire concept of hero and villain in ASIOAF. People are merely acting in their own self-interests.



Viserys wanted his crown back, so he was willing to go to extreme lengths to get it and ultimately failed. Does that mean he is the villain and Khal Drogo is the hero because KD dumped the gold on his head?



Is Joffrey the villain when he cuts off Ned's head, but Ned is not when he does the same to Will?



Cersei's primary goal is to protect her children and she will do whatever it takes. Hero or villain?



Everybody is the hero from their own perspective. The ones who go down in history as heros are the ones who win.


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New to these forums and have been reading ASOIAF solidly since May. This is a good topic as it highlights the depth of Martin's writing. I recurring theme that I have noticed is childhood experiences of tragedy and horror and how indivuals deal with this. There are very few completely 'evil' characters and no completely 'good' characters. Viserys is a monster, and very much the product of his childhood circumstances. But at the end of the day he, as an adult has choices that he makes. Dany in contrast has the same or very similar background, minus the trauma of actually being around when their family is murdered, and her responses to adversity are different. Initially she seems like a victim caught in a Stockholm syndrome of compliance, but her character develops into something else entirely. I also think the Viserys had a touch more of the Targaryen madness about him. Danaerys has that too, but her madness isn't so self centred as Viserys. Viserys was the author of his own demise in his persistent belief that he was better and more powerful than Khal Drogo's hordes. Clearly delusional dickishness.


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Hello, NB poster here....



Interesting question, and harkens back to what kind of impact does loss of family, poverty, possible abuse, etc. have on someones's personality. It is typically argumented that abusers were abused in their own childhood and thus fostered abuse. This is actually a myth. The majority of people who survived abuse, do not grow up to be abusers at all, worse more people grow up to be perpetual victims, rather than abusers.



If we are considering a personality disorder such as psychopathy, then there is a hereditary factor. It is hoped that a child with the genetic make-up that makes a psychopath can still learn to form some empathy and love through positive parenting. But abuse by a psychopathic parent of a child with a genetic psychopathic make-up is considered a double whammy. In any case, circumstances alone do not cause psychopathy.



So what is a psychopath? Someone who lacks or has little empathy and a shallow and limited and shallow range of emotions (almost exclusively rage and envy). A narcissistic amount of feelings of entitlement together with the lack of empathy create a personality who regards other people as objects and means to an end. While psychopaths can know cognitively and even deduce visually that other human beings have feelings and feel pain, etc, they have no affective connection to that. They can feign empathy, but they do not feel it.



The entitlement also figures in a severe degree of wanting and trying to control others, through charm, pity play, isolation and abuse. They cannot ever truly regard themselves as responsible for what happens. They might even perceive themselves as victims of everybody else, and use it as a rationalisation to argument they have cause to act as they do.



They lack the ability of a conscious. They do know the difference between right and wrong, cognitively, but they simply do not care. Conscious already starts to direct and guide behaviour in young children. It is not a process that only happens through education. It are internal choices made born out of conflicting feelings within the individual. Psychopaths lack the care for it. Combined with the entitlement, they usually feel they are the exception to the conscious rule.



The entitlement and lack of care and shame can take grotesque forms regarding the truth. They regard truth as merely a perception (this is an actual red flag argument), and a perception they have control over. So they are notorious pathological liars, often making such blatant stupid lies even that the other person thinks it's too silly to be a lie, and actually ends up believing the lies.



Psychopaths usually also have some degree of paranoia. This paranoia does not come from schizophrenic experiences, but is born out of their own shark mentality. Highly empathic people are usually naturally very trusting of others, because they project the same degree of empathy in other people. It is hard for an empathic person to consider a walking, talking, charming human being right in front of them to be devoid of empathy. The opposite is true for a psychopath. Since they lack empathy, have no conscious and care not one bit what another feels, are filled with envy and rage and see life as a game to win, they project this into every other human being they encounter. Ultimately they do not believe that other people will not end up making selfish shark choices (which is why they are always so eager to see everything as a game that they have to win, before someone else wins it). So, mistrust comes naturally to them and can grow to paranoid proportions, hand in hand with the 'truth is but a perception' delusion.



Lastly, not every psychopath is sadistic: not every psychopath necessarily seeks enjoyment in making other suffer, aside from winning to look out for numero uno. But others are sadistic and gain a great amount of pleasure and satisfaction in making others suffer, even at their own cost. Another common feature are feelings of boredom (not surprisingly if one knows a psychopath is pretty much void of having an internal emotional life) and reckless impulsivity and impatience.



So, can Viserys be regarded as a psychopath? He is an adult, already past 18. He is only filled with rage and envy, an enormous amount of entitlement that twists his recognition of the reality of certain situations. He is convinced he can cajole, manipulate and bully even a whole khalasaar in doing what he wants. He is impulsive and reckless. He is abusive to his sister in a possessive way. He regards himself as the victim. He has no conscious and no empathy at all. And he had displayed this type of behaviour since his teens already. And there is a 'genetic' factor to his "madness". So, personally, I consider him someone who would probably score highly on Robert Hare's test, probably easily above 30/40, and thus a psychopath.



And that makes him automatically a very unreliable narrator. We only know what he told Daenarys about what he "had to sacrifice and do" for them to survive. Daenarys was too young and too much under his mental and physical control to be familiar with the particular events that led them to their beggar state. I greatly suspect that he and his behaviour was the reason that he wasn't welcome anymore with the nobility for shelter, or never for a long time. Like a typical psychopath he would be painting a picture of victimhood, but is probably no more than pity playing, projecting blame onto others and lying pathologically. We actually witness this happening with the khalasaar. He behaves so entitled, obnoxious, disrespectful, haughty and aggressive that it earns him a molten golden crown. Did he behave any better with his previous hosts? I very much doubt it. Even the most empathic loyalists would have wanted to be rid of such a reckless and obnoxious person fast enough, certainly if they had daughters.



In that sense, he is not misunderstood but misrepresenting himself to Daenarys.


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My understanding of psychosis is that it is the inability to distinguish between reality and unreality. So as long as people like Joffrey and Viserys are able to relate to the real world around them, and not, say, think they are being hunted by giant pink bunnies, then they are not psychotic.



Call them mad, deranged, paranoid, whatever, but not clinically psychotic.


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Psychopathic is not the same as psychotic, though it is a common mistake for people to mix the two up. I did not mix those two terms, and I never wrote "psychotic". Psychopathy is a personality disorder, not a mental disorder or episode such as psychosis. Psychopathy is the term used for people who are not suffering from hallucinations, but operate and think in a moral way that is amoral and unempathic in most people's eyes. In the 19th century it was labeled as 'moral insanity'... sane person, except for their moral thinking: no guilt, no shame, no conscious, no empathy. Another outdated term is "sociopath". The DSM label is anti-social-personality disorder. However, the characteristics of ASPD are broader than the tested characteristics for psychopaths: that means that all psychopaths are ASPDs, but not all ASPDs would be counted as psychopath (aka getting at least 30/40 on Hare's PCL-R's test). The point is, I was describing psychoPATHY, not psychoSIS, and the two are indeed two different things, and you are correct that psychoPATHS do not suffer from hallucinations. That is why I said that though psychopaths often form a paranoid perception of other people, it is not based on hallucinations, but based on the automatic mistrust of projecting their own dog-eat-dog nature into other people. Even people who do not suffer hallucinations can still suffer from delusional views. While psychoPATHY is a clinical term too and only can be diagnozed by someone professional, we are talking about a fictional person, and "mad", "deranged" and "paranoid" are either too general a description or describe only one aspect of the "madness". But the correct description for a character like Viserys is "someone with psychopathic tendencies" or "psychopathic", at best a "malignant narcissist".



And the reason I mentioned it was because somebody else used the term and that once you consider someone a psychopath (aka sociopath), then this has some consequences: a genetic factor, and pathological lying (which is different from compulsive lying). So, the stories Viserys tells Daenarys on all he did and sacrificed for her are very unreliable, and most probably misrepresentations of the reason why they were turned out so often. It is also very doubtful that his living circumstances are the cause alone of his deformed personality, because of the genetic factor. And the poor misunderstood and living through hardships image is a very common mask and spiel used by psychopaths to manipulate people into giving them what they want. So, I do think he's a villain, and certainly not misunderstood. It was a good thing that he never had much power beyond his sister to do more damage. But I do pity him for one thing: it is always pitiful when someone's emotional life only comprises envy and rage.


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One of the clear lies that Viserys tells to Daenaris about the beggar years is that the Usurper sent assassins for them: during the conversation at KR between Ned and Robert, Robert admits that Jon Arryn had been against killing Viserys and Daenarys and that Robert had listened to Jon Arryn. And Jon Arryn had been Robert's Hand since he became king. And if Robert and Jon weren't sending assassins to kill Viserys and Daenaris then who would have?


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I think that a lot of what he became was due to circumstance, but the seeds were already there due to Targaryen madness/that sort of pampered privilege. They just found the perfect soil to nourish them in his bitterness, his hate and his humiliation.



Do I think Viserys would've been a good king? No. That said, I do wish he had lingered longer.


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  • 3 months later...

My response would be, he's a vicious (psychopathic?) bully, with a terrible history. His history makes him slightly more sympathetic (the reader pities him, but doesn't root for him) and more plausible as a character. I believe a lot of (all?) clinically psychopathic people have had a horrific upbringing, which is in the end what makes them who they are. Many years ago I had the horrible misfortune of living in a shared house with a clinically psychopathic housemate. He never seemed to stop talking about his abusive upbringing (and it really was abusive), and he remains the closest thing to pure evil I've ever met.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Psychopaths, according to DSM-5, display a callous, unemotional interpersonal style across multiple settings and relationships. They coldly manipulate people for their own purposes, but don't act out emotionally. Viserys was no psychopath.



He may have been a narcissist, a megalomaniac and a sadist, but his temper ("do not wake the dragon") shows he was no psychopath.



If anything, as a member of a family who's been decimated through massacre, he's a product of his environment. In a world where cruelty and strength are rewarded, it should be no surprise that someone with Viserys' background and ambition has a strong incentive to act out cruelly.


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If anything, as a member of a family who's been decimated through massacre, he's a product of his environment. In a world where cruelty and strength are rewarded, it should be no surprise that someone with Viserys' background and ambition has a strong incentive to act out cruelly.

Personality disorders are usually assumed to be caused by a combination of nuture and nature, so being a product of his environment doesn't change him being whatever he might be.

As Landed Knight said, impulsivity, feelings of extreme anger and paranoid reactions are often found in psychopaths (which you can also read on the wiki page for psychopathy). I agree with LK's diagnosis, Visirys is a good example for one.

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I can't remember which character said it, but it has been pretty much broken down that, due to inbreeding, half the Targaryens are insane while the other half are normal and perhaps noble. I suppose Viserys and his father (the Mad King) would fall under the former, while Danerys and their older brother Rhaegar the latter.


Martin makes them a pretty obvious parallel to the inbred Lannister children, and the Joffrey/Tommen dichotomy.


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  • 5 months later...

From my perspective, you calling Daenerys ungrateful completely demolishes any sympathy one could foster for Viserys.


She's not ungrateful by any means. He has threatened her (and later on, her unborn child as well) insulted the Dothraki people and their culture (whom she now is one of), has attempted to strike her, has verbally berated her, and it goes on and on.


Despite all this, she still loves her brother, and offered him gifts. The reason why he was killed because he went too far by threatening to kill her son.


Not only that, but even when you completely take his sister (and how he treats her) out of the picture, this guy is a complete asshole to everyone else. He is a huge narcissist and is incredibly egotistical.


In my eyes, he isn't a horrible villain. But he certainly isn't a misunderstood victim.

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Sure take it out of context like that, it sounds horrible.

But what you seem to forget is he psychologically damaged his younger sister, through mental and physical harming, till she was this weak, submissive girl, terrified of her brother and what he would do to her if she "awoke the dragon".

I get the sense your a daenerys "hater". And people who don't like daenerys tend to ignore certain facts and pick out bits that suit them, I'll admit I do it with characters I don't like.

If you read AGoT more carefully you'll see she tried to reason with him, tried to make him more respected amongst the dothraki because she viewed him as her rightful king.

Do I sympathize with him, definitely. No child should have gone through what he did. But no child should have gone through what daenerys did either.

Both sides can be thought of as wrong, and I'm sure that's what GRRM wanted.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Psychopaths, according to DSM-5, display a callous, unemotional interpersonal style across multiple settings and relationships. They coldly manipulate people for their own purposes, but don't act out emotionally. Viserys was no psychopath.

He may have been a narcissist, a megalomaniac and a sadist, but his temper ("do not wake the dragon") shows he was no psychopath.

If anything, as a member of a family who's been decimated through massacre, he's a product of his environment. In a world where cruelty and strength are rewarded, it should be no surprise that someone with Viserys' background and ambition has a strong incentive to act out cruelly.

Wrong.

Psychopaths are indeed callous and lack or have a low degree of emotional life, except for envy and anger/rage. Their rage is a very cold/calculating one. BUT they wear masks and with these masks they act out emotions to manipulate people. So, the actual callousness, coldness, emptiness and calculating way of thinking is masked by acting out emotions basically, and very convincing acting. One of the most typical descriptions by people who lived with psychopaths for years (family or partner) is that of a 5-year-old throwing fits and temper tantrums. Vyserys is a grown man who throws fits and temper tantrums like a 5 year old... there's no more typical red flag of psychopathic masking behaviour than that. What is its purpose? It's environment violence. Breaking down doors, windows, breaking stuff and hissyfits is a way to signal the target "watch out, I can be very violent, and I'm breaking the door now, but if you don't go along with me, I might break you". It's actually a very calculated way of using violence to manipulate someone. The ex's masks were very good. But when he started to act out like a 5-year-old throwing stuff, I always did have a sense of - wow, this is over the top, and it actually once made me laugh about it, because it was plain stupid (btw he never physically abused me; never laid a wrong finger on me though I once saw him smash a belt buckle in a man's face, but stealing, breaking stuff, environment abuse, keeping me from sleeping, pathological lying and attempts at emotional put downs, and always getting himself in constant trouble for me to bail him out were his MO).

You left out that violence is a feature of psychopathy, that includes stomping about, physical abuse, environment abuse. Also, the DSM gives an outline of ASPD, not psychopathy. While every psychopath is an ASPD, not every APSD is a psychopath.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Definitely an interesting thought


I have to say though that he really annoyed me in both books and series.



One of the amazing things about GoT is that you can really connect with most of the characters and understand their actions even if you didnt like them at first - Jaime is one of the best examples for that



However Viserys was just completely annoying imo. We all know what he wanted but how he tried to achieve it and how badly he wanted it was not cool



If George RR Martin wanted us to like him he would have written him diferently


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What I don't understand is that Daenerys didn't do anything to stop Drogo from killing him. Ofcourse, I understand that Daenerys hated him, but he was the only chance to build up the Targaryen house again.

She can do that plenty and better on her own... though she's taking her sweet time for it.

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