House of the Dragon Star Paddy Considine Breaks Down Viserys' Death Scene
This weekend, the first official Game of Thrones fan convention has been taking place in Los Angeles. The event has seen stars from both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon with many actors doing panels and talking about their characters. One such actor is Paddy Considine who played Viserys in House of the Dragon's first season. The character was slowly deteriorating throughout the season and finally met his end during the show's eighth episode. During the convention this weekend, Considine explained his character's death scene and how it mirrored the death of his wife, Aemma (Sian Brooke), in the show's first episode. In fact, Considine confirmed the person Viserys sees when he utters "my love" was his first wife.
"I made it up in my own mind that when he dies he sees Aemma because her death is the spiral. That's his downfall really," Considine told con crowd on Saturday. "He never gets over that death, which was kind of misunderstood I think by people early on. I think they thought I killed my wife, but that wasn't the case. They were both going to die."
He added, "They had the chance of saving Baelon, but it meant putting her through a horrific procedure ... I think it was misunderstood that he killed her, but he was trying to save the child or they were both gonna die ... I don't think he ever recovered from that." He continued, "It just became the catalyst for his journey really ... He was only ever really in love with her. And if you watch the show... the sicker he gets, he's never asking for a cure. He's never the one asking for help. It's everybody else around him. It's almost like he's accepting what's happening to him physically as a punishment."
"Ultimately, when he dies, I just had this idea that, before he leaves that realm, Aemma is the one that comes to meet him and he's finally back with her," Considine explained. "So that was it. It was a line that was improvised."
How Does Viserys Die in the Books?
Considine previously revealed on Entertainment Weekly's West of Westeros podcast that Viserys suffered from a form of leprosy. However, George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, the source material for the series, does not mention Viserys having a disease. In the book, he simply died in his sleep during a nap.
"He's actually suffering from a form of leprosy. His body is deteriorating, his bones are deteriorating. He is not actually old. He's still a young man in there. He's just, unfortunately, got this thing that's taken over his body. It becomes a metaphor for being king, and the stress and strain that it puts on you, and what it does to you physically, what it does to you mentally," Considine previously explained of the show's version of Viserys.
The first season of House of the Dragon is streaming on HBO Max.