Viserys’ dinner party
why representations of death matter (spoilers)
A lot of people aren’t loving the House of the Dragon tv series. It doesn’t have enough action and is too thinky; the dragons are too expected and normal looking; there’s too much icky childbirth, and there isn’t enough fighting. There are more complaints, but these are the highlights.
But I’m really liking the series and two nights ago after watching episode 8, I really feel strongly that it’s in its own way a wonderful series — at least so far. The reason it has been wonderful is Paddy Considine and his performance as the ageing, ever-weakening, and — in this episode — dying King Viserys. On the NYT website, watchers complained that his dying took too long, and that the process got boring. But for this 68 year old viewer, it was a moving, scary, and ultimately inspiring vision of an old, sick person — literally on his last legs — making an attempt to heal his family, get as close as a dying person can get to the people he loves, and then making peace with the end, and… ending.
From his impossibly long walk from a throne-room door to the throne itself, to a dinner table lined with relatives who hate each other, the King presides. In the earlier scene, he slowly and painfully walks the floor with the help of a cane up to that terrible throne of swords. He almost collapses, but is hauled back to his feet and up the final steps by his violent and dangerous brother, who picks up the king’s crown and puts it back on his head. Actor Matt Smith is at his best in this emotionally complex moment.
Later Viserys stands up painfully at his dinner party table and makes a speech about reconciliation. During this speech, he takes off a half-mask he has been wearing to conceal his diseased face; he displays his wrecked visage to his family and appeals to them to try to f — ing get along and not kill each other.
The words that leapt to my mind at that moment were from King Lear: “every inch a king.”
Watching the king, I remembered two people: my grandfather who continued to sit at a formal dinner table with all of us, wearing his grey Beatles wig and a big turquoise ring, despite his terrible health; and my mother in law who actually presided over a dinner party in her honor, hours before she passed.
Although my grandfather claimed a royal lineage, it was my mother in law who more closely resembled the fictional dying king I was just talking about. My mother in law was dying of pancreatic cancer (a terrible disease that kills quickly [she lived THREE years past the diagnosis]). Yet, she sat luminescent at that family dinner party, which was celebrating her birthday (she died that night — an honor in Jewish tradition reserved only for the most virtuous and good). At one point she made a short speech about what a great family she had and how lucky she was. We all have never forgotten it.
Viserys understands what my mother in law understood. That how you go out matters — to the people you love, but it also matters to you. There is such a thing as death with dignity, even under terrible circumstances.
Watching Viserys die, I feel less afraid of dying myself. I have a heroic role model I can think about and yearn to emulate in some fashion. I felt honored by this portrayal, and seen, in a way that we must all see ourselves, because we are all going to have to host that final dinner party. Artistic representations can help us imagine how we’d like to set that table.
