On Saturday, October 27, 2001 at 4:50:02 PM UTC-5, Natasha wrote:

Tante Joan wrote:

Well, yes, he did undergo a drastic transformation, but I wouldn't
call him a normal father in those early years. He wasn't warm, he
wasn't truly affectionate with Viki (perhaps marginally more so with >Meredith), and he was terrifically high maintenance. His daughters
dreaded him while they dutifully loved him, primarily because he held
them to such high standards they were in constant fear of
disappointing him. Because he had no acknowledged sons until Tony
popped up, Viki especially was loaded down with expectations even a
son would have been hard pressed to satisfy. It wasn't such a great
leap, once Tony surfaced, to believe that Victor Lord had a penchant
for sex on the side, albeit a much greater leap to know that the
penchant was for under aged girls and, ultimately, for his own very
young daughter. It was much easier to picture him as someone who
could wipe out his daughter's memory to conceal Megan;s birth and the >existence of a liaison with Roger Gordon, because his initial
resistance to his daughters' early love relationships was largely one
of class and the Lord name. Well before Victor's character was
blackened sexually it was already pretty dark -- he championed Steve
over Joe to such a degree that he concealed the fact that Joe was
alive, for example, and Larry Wolek, working class med student of
Polish descent, was never welcomed with open arms.

I would call yours an accurate assessment, and one that reflects my own closely. I never really had any trouble accepting the revelations brought
out over time re Victor Lord until the sex abuse of his own daughter, from young childhood, no less. That was just too over the line for me...not because of the subject matter....I know full well things like that go on, even in the seemingly best families, and I'm not opposed to its theme being explored in Daytime. It's just I couldn't accept it as part of Victor Lord's history. I could see him going after a young college student, a friend of
his daughter, and I could see him as a habitual adulterer. And I could buy the business of him getting rid of Viki's memories of Roger Gordon and baby Megan, in addition to getting rid of Megan herself (aside from the absurdity of him being able to have Viki's memories erased), because that does fit in w/ the control freak issues presented in him from the first....and the class thing, too, and being hung up on maintaining appearances of propriety and respectability (having a teenage daughter w/ a baby does not fit w/ the
class image Victor strived for so vigilantly). I could even see him building Eterna, as goofy and far-fetched as that was.
But taking his own 7-yr-old into his bed night after night (didn't it come out finally that Viki remembered being 7 when it started?) and making her
his "little wife"? No way! Victor was never that depraved.
But like I said...I know soaps are classic for this kind of history revision and some good stuff came out of it, namely Viki's other alters in action...Jean Randolph especially was a real gas! So I don't complain too much about the mess made of Victor's memory. :-)
Natasha

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