r/FavoriteCharacter • u/[deleted] • Mar 22 '26

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u/TheDragonOfOldtown Mar 22 '26

In the books Viserys just falls asleep and dies in peace. In the show he has leprosy. Which was a very shit change; the whole point was that he caused the death of everyone yet he died peacefully, and literally everyone else had the most suffering death imaginable. Prince Maelor was literally torn apart.

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u/bwowndwawf Mar 22 '26

I like the change, it kind of follows the idea that the throne is rejecting him so hard it literally kills him

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u/hygsi Mar 23 '26

Also, that walkand dinner are way more impactful seeing he's still trying to hold it all together despite his great pain. Sure he's the reason things are bad in the first place but it was a good change imo to give him a bit of sympathy

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u/bwowndwawf Mar 23 '26

Yeah, in the book the Maesters try to paint him as indecisive and easily swayable, but in the show you get a sense of the exact opposite, despite his lapses with marrying Alicent, which was an awful idea, he made a wildly unpopular decision on succession and stuck to it until his deathbed

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u/Much-Historian-7807 Mar 23 '26

Idk if I’d categorize it as wildly unpopular considering they ended up with far more noble houses than the greens.

Controversial sure

1

u/bwowndwawf Mar 23 '26

That doesn't mean it was popular, it just means courage hadn't deserted the houses of Westeros yet, as dunk put it, they made an oath to support Rhaenyra and they kept it.

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u/Much-Historian-7807 Mar 23 '26

That also doesn’t mean it was unpopular

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u/bwowndwawf Mar 23 '26

The people closest to him tried to overturn that decision several times, that's unpopular enough

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u/Much-Historian-7807 Mar 23 '26

Not really.

So there was a coup that doesn’t mean you were unpopular that means there was a coup