5 best (and 5 worst) dads from sci-fi and fantasy

Image: Game of Thrones/HBO

Third Best Dad: Tam al’Thor, from The Wheel of Time

First of all, yes, that is a picture of Roose Bolton from Game of Thrones, not Tam al’Thor from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I include it here because that actor, Michael McElhatton, is going to play Tam in Amazon’s upcoming TV adaptation of the series, so we might as well get used to seeing him in a medieval getup again. I assume he’ll go for less of a creepy vibe as Tam.

And he’d have to, because Tam is a warm, loving father who does everything he can to give his son, lead character Rand al’Thor, a good life. There’s just one catch: Tam isn’t actually Rand’s biological father. He found him as an infant on a mountainside after a great battle, his real mother dead and his real father nowhere to be seen. Left there, the child would surely die. But Rand picked him up and took him to live near the sleepy village of Emond’s Field, where he raised him as a simple sheepherder. The life agreed with Rand, and even after Tam’s wife Kari died, father and son forged on, working and living and enjoying it all.

True, Tam never told Rand where he really came from; Rand learned it by accident, and when he does, he refuses to believe it, so happy is he with Tam as a dad. But Tam had good reason to hide the truth from Rand: outside Emond’s Field, the world was violent and dangerous, whereas in the peaceful Two Rivers Rand had a chance at a normal life. Even long after Rand discovers more about himself, he still consider Tam his father; that’s the kind of love and mutual respect they shared.

Tam is a model of a good dad: dependable, nurturing and empathetic. Like Geralt, he proves that there’s much more to being a good father than having the same genes.