There is a huge difference between "sending assassins" and actually
liking someone. You can actively hate people without paying killers to go after them. And his "Dragonspawn" rhetoric is similar enough to racist KKK rhetoric to make sense for there to be a modifier at the least.
Also, we don't know that Viserys was wrong. Tywin once gave Robert dead Targ children so that he didn't have to do the deed himself, there's no telling that he didn't try again, if only for the sake of eliminating threats to his future grandson's throne. Tywin is a family person after all. Excepting Tyrion. And honestly even with Tryion he is, if he hated anyone else as much as he did Tyrion, he'd treat him even worse. His being family is the only thing that tempered him to act as "kind" as he did. Relatively, of course.
Hmm? I'm sorry if I was unclear, but I certainly never meant to claim that Robert
liked the Targaryens.
I'm not sure how you get the KKK into the "dragonspawn" comments. The KKK is incredibly extreme and I don't see any parallells between them and Robert Baratheon at all. The "dragonspawn" comments were about the Targaryen family, not racial comments. Houses Velaryon and Celtigar are also Valyrian houses, and they continued to rule unmolested after Robert's Rebellion. In fact, both declared for their liege lord Stannis during The War of the Five Kings, and the Velaryons are actually among the few arch-loyalists that stayed loyal to Stannis after his defeat at the Blackwater.
So the notion that Robert is driven by anti-Valyrian racism is directly disproven by the text.
We don't know what Tywin did, true, but we were talking about Robert Baratheon, no? And we know that Robert did not send assassins after them from his conversation with Ned:
Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around them, and now he's handed them over to the Dothraki.
I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was easy to get at them, but
Jon was as bad as you. More fool I,
I listened to him.
AGOT - Eddard II...or from the exchange during the small council, when sending assassins it put up for question:
Lord Renly shrugged. "The matter seems simple enough to me. We ought to have had Viserys and his sister killed years ago, but
His Grace my brother made the mistake of listening to Jon Arryn."
"Mercy is never a mistake, Lord Renly," Ned replied.
AGOT - Eddard VIIIApparently Robert listened to Jon Arryn and did not try to kill Viserys and Daenerys.
You misunderstand me - I'm not saying that
you implied that Robert liked them, the entire reason for my proposal is that
in game Robert likes me, despite me being the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, and this being a
known fact, I'm not a "secret bastard". My parentage is freely known throughout the world, and I am a claimant to his throne. That is the context.
As for the Celtigar/Velaryon thing - Robert's lack of action against them isn't proof of his lack of animosity - and neither is their declaring for Stannis. You seem to be forgetting that Robert and Stannis have Targ blood from their grandmother, and without any Targs to follow they would of course, follow the closest they could get out of loyalty. Still it is odd that they supported Stannis instead of Robert, they supported Stannis instead of Robert's children too. Also, Robert's lack of action is simple - it's for the same reason he didn't send assassins after Viserys and Dany right away. Because it would alienate other allies like his best friend, Ned Stark.
Remember that Ned had to remind Robert that "they're just children half a world away" and Robert
still ended up sending assassins after them eventually, even before the dragons were born, out of fear of the Dothraki. Now consider the Velaryons and Celtigars - him taking action against them,
after they declared their loyalty to his brother? Would be
even worse. It would get him seen as another Aerys - people would start saying that maybe he was mad too, that the Targ curse was on Robert just as much. That maybe he'd caught the madness bug. Him not acting was
political not an indication of his lack of racism. It is merely him listening to his friend Ned, and his mentor Jon, not his personal feelings. As your own quote shows. "I should have had them both killed years ago." "Jon was as bad as you, more fool I." Robert
wanted to kill them, and was
talked out of it.And assassins
were sent if you recall, particularly the one who tried to poison Dany on her wedding day, the one Jeor stopped because he was obsessed with Dany because she looks like his ex-wife who left him. So yeah, Robert was being held back by his friends, and politics they didn't make him not racist IMHO. He just took a while to stop listening. I know racist people, who act in public like they aren't, because they don't want to lose their jobs. I worked for a wealthy guy as his personal assistant for over a year, not knowing he was racist until one day he let his mask slip and called me a nigger because I wouldn't come work for him at night as well as during the day - it doesn't take much to see racism in a person when you know what it is like first hand. People hide their racism because of politics
all the time. Robert? Was no different. Not to mention, that there are varying levels of racism. Not every racist wants to see all of a certain race burn, some merely don't want to mix, some think they are superior and need to be in charge, but the other races can live, so long as they are under the rule of the "superior" race. Some want to exterminate every other race but their own. Robert? Is racist, but not stupid enough to let that ruin his political position, especially with it being a precarious as it was.
Robert himself said his rule was tenuous, and that he still had people calling him usurper when he talked with Ned after making him his Hand of the King. He wanted Ned's help to stabilize his position precisely
because it was shaky, so he couldn't just act unilaterally against the Velaryons and Celtigar like he most likely desired to. Just like he
couldn't act against Daenerys and Viserys without alienating his two staunchest supports outside of his own family, Ned and Jon Arryn. He could not risk losing the support of the North and the Vale, because then he'd only have the Westerlands for him, with the Crownlands still being loyal to the Targs, Dorne hating him, the Iron Isles being rebellious as always, and the Riverlands would side with Ned due to the marriage to Caitlyn. The kingdoms would have torn themselves apart if he'd lost his allies. He was being smart, not acting on his desires.
You have to look deeper than just the surface actions, but at the surrounding situation to explain
why a person took those actions. People are very often in life doing things they don't want to do. Assuming that just because they did something they wanted to do it, or didn't want to not do it, is a very, very, naive way of seeing reality. That isn't to say
you are naive, because many books are surface level stuff so you'd
normally be okay using that as your measuring stick, GRRM writes well enough that I would not consider surface actions the be all end all. He writes well enough that these types of things have to be taken into consideration. This isn't some shitty fanfiction where you can just judge by surface actions.
As for the KKK comparison, it was just to compare the racist context. They're both racist as fuck IMHO.
