Paddy Considine played by actor Paddy Considine
Paddy Considinethe actor who walks as King Viserys in HBO’s latest spin-off House of the Dragon, has finally shed some light on the uncertainty surrounding King Viserys’ deadly and rotting illness.
Dragon House is a new HBO original series exploring the events that took place centuries before the events of The Orignal Game of Thrones and will explore a major event in Targaryen history, i.e. dragon dance.
Throughout his reign, Viserys was subjected to several challenges. He lost his pregnant wife and newborn in the span of hours in the first episode of House of the Dragon.
Since then, he has been under constant pressure from members of his small council to marry a new queen who can provide Westeros with the long-awaited male heir. He also banished his brother, then kicked him in the gut upon learning of his alleged mating with Rhaenyra, and some gossip about the prince who was promised.
Viserys suffers from leprosy
The challenges of ruling a kingdom are compounded by the fact that he is also trying to find a suitable match for his defiant daughter. Viserys’ unknown illness, which was originally revealed in the pilot episode and steadily worsened throughout the season, added to his already considerable stress load.
The actor shed some light on the King’s illness during an interview with EW for the Game of Thrones West of Westeros podcast. He not only explained the importance of the disease, but also its root cause. Read on to find out what Considine has to say:
“He actually suffers from a form of leprosy. His body is deteriorating, his bones are deteriorating. He’s not really old. He’s still a young man in there. He just, unfortunately, had this thing take over his body. It becomes a metaphor for being king, and the stress and strain that puts on you, and what it does to you physically, what it does to you mentally.
For the uninformed, leprosy is a recurrent and curable infectious disease that mainly results in nerve damage and skin damage. Affected individuals may experience loss of sensation, numbness, and weakness in the hands and feet, as well as patches of clear or red skin. And maybe, just maybe this new illness would be the cause of Viserys’ eventual demise.
In Viserys’ time, the only way to deal with the disease was to heal the wounds it left, but as we can, with the dark spots on his skin as he mates with Alicent and his loss of fingers indicates otherwise. The author of the Ice and Fire books, George RR Martin, has implied that Viserys is a good man who is simply unprepared for the demands of reign, and Considine’s words support these claims.
