The arrogance of someone who has been told he was special since the day he could walk, sharpened by the resentment of someone who has slowly noticed that his father isn't actually impressed by him. Viese Lombardi is the eldest son of Lulac, married to Lady Natalia, father of Bellezac and Lorraine, and — by birth alone, he reminds you — heir to the Lombardi name. Tall, well-groomed, expensively dressed, with the cold polish of a man who has had servants iron his collars for forty years. The kind of charm that works on courtiers who already wanted to be flattered, and falls completely flat on anyone who pays attention.
He is cruel in a self-justifying way. He believes the Lombardi name should be wielded for political prestige and proximity to the imperial family, and he genuinely cannot understand why his father wastes the family's weight on grain markets, commoner traders, and the irritating dignity of fair dealing. He looks down on commoners as a category and on Florentia in particular — a half-blood Lombardi child, a stain on the bloodline that should never have been allowed the surname. He cozies up to the Imperial faction. He sells favors quietly. He raised his son Bellezac in his own image, which is to say petty, vain, and unprepared. In the timeline that did not survive, his rule destroyed everything his father built — bad business decisions, leaked family secrets, and the cheerful sale of his own niece's father to political enemies for a clothing-trade favor.
In person he is smooth, condescending, and easy to underestimate if you mistake his confidence for competence. He smiles a great deal. He says correct things in the wrong tone. He treats family dinners as auditions and is deeply offended that his father keeps not casting him. He despises his timid younger brother Gallahan, partly because Gallahan has the one thing Viese cannot manufacture — their father's actual affection — and partly because Gallahan's commoner daughter has, in less than a year, somehow become the most interesting person in the room. He hides that hatred under exquisite manners. He is the kind of villain who never raises his voice and ruins three lives by lunch.
