Was Viserys evil?

[A spoon of knife and fork]

Fair enough. I'm not saying their time was great, I'm saying he seems to have shouldered the majority of the load, that unlike most wannabe players we see he put his family ahead of his ambition (back then) and that there must have been many many nights when he went to bed a lot hungrier so Dany wouldn't starve. As a kid on his own, that deserves acknowledgment more than back-handed dismissal.

Nice head canon, I guess, but afaik there is no evidence direct or indirect for this sort of selflessness. Yeah he sold their stuff to but food and shelter but what makes you think he ever went without?

From Danys remembrances he sounds like your typical abuser - sometimes sweet, sometimes cruel, and does what he needs to do to keep the abused reliant upon him.

[ambi76]

Mostly just dumb as toast IMHO. Which of course can pass into evil, especially if you "want that goddamn crown OMG1!11!!!"

[Hans Gruber]

Mostly he was just stupid

[Dany Girl]

Cersei only loves her children as an extension of herself IMO. She has no redeemable qualities either.

You forget her cheekbones....

Visaerys was a very tragic character that i have a lot of sympathy for, but that doesn't excuse his actions in the end. Yes, we've been told he had the "taint" but who's to say how that would have eventually played out if the rebellion hadn't occurred? He was never supposed to be king, so even with his madness he never would have been a real threat to anyone. He possibly could have been a good person, Aerys was a good king in the beginning afterall. But the stress he was put under ended up cracking him like an egg.

Visaerys wasn't inherently evil, no more than a schizophrenic is inherently evil. It's the things that happened to him that pushed him over that edge into dangerous territory. Even Dany recognizes this and therefore doesn't really hold a grudge against him and remembers him fondly more often than not. But she recognizes that he was broken and tries to avoid making the mistakes he made.

[ummester]

I agree. I just can't decide whether the reason is to up the drama, or because the demented sickos are better equipped to fight apocalyptic battles than good guys are.

Perhaps both.

Make the situation as dire as possible so that only an apocalyptic battle can resolve it, whilst also also generating plausible sides for the conflict.

Just say Jon and Dany do bring their respective powers int play as very destructive forces, we need to be able to understand why the destruction is a good thing, don't we?