This is honestly the first time I've seen anyone give him any thought other than the few paragraphs devoted to him in canon.

RE: the timeline. Dumbledore says he showed up in Little Hangleton again a few months after the runaway marriage, and that Voldemort was born a year after the marriage. Assuming that means exactly twelve months, she probably wasn't more than two months pregnant, tops. He also says that Riddle claimed he'd been hoodwinked, which the villagers assumed meant that he'd married her thinking he'd got her pregnant, only to find out that wasn't the case. The bit about him staying for the baby is, in Dumbledore's own words, guesswork, although we all know how accurate his guesses tend to be.

 

This is definitely an interesting topic. When I first read HPB I never really thought of Tom Riddle Sr. as being a really bad guy but I never thought of as that great either.

We know of him from book four where he and his family are described as rich snobbish and rude, and he is described as being worse.

I'm not going to say that Merope was innocent in drugging him, but in many ways I think she was as much a victim of that incident as he was. We know from canon that she was abused by her family and admired him from afar for his status and good looks. She also saw him as a way out of her crap life, and I think in a twisted way she really did love him and that's why she stopped feeding him love potions. In fact as Dumbledore said she died of sadness when he left her.

Riddle Sr. was was not a bad guy. I think he was appropriately described as being an asshole who got the short end of the stick when he got raped by a desperate woman and murdered by his unknown son.

If anything is to blame for all this it's the arrogance that comes from excessive wealth. The desperation that comes from living in an abusive household. And having a certain psychopathic son who hates you for being a muggle.

 

Does anyone know if canon says anything about Tom Riddle Sr. being obliviated or not? It would have been quite a challenge for him to care for his son if he wasn't even aware that he had a son.

 

It was unlikely that Merope would had Obliviated Tom Riddle Sr. She hoped that he would stay for the sake of their unborn child.

 

I recall a fanfiction where Riddle Sr did sort-of remain in his son's life, but that was as a ghost. I think it was Quest for Tenure?

 

Honestly, reading some of this thread, I feel as if us, as readers of Tom Riddle Jr./Sr. and Merope related fanfiction, sometimes confuse what we feel whilst we read those biased and twisted views of the Riddle situation with what we know, fact for fact, about the actual characters.

Therefore, looking at the whole Riddle situation from an unbiased point of view has proven its difficulties. In most stories the writer makes it out to be Tom Riddle Sr. as the antagonist, becasue he was the man, the father, and he left a young pregnant girl all alone (insert pityful voice here). He should have stayed. And so on and so forth. It's a limited mindset and obviously, as seen in this thread, non cannon. Which we all abhor.

Blame, a word we all attempt to dodge, should be placed where it belongs.
Not on the cis white male's head.
Not on the predetermined sick nature of the Gaunt family.
But on Merope. The Gaunt family could have not acted for her, and Tom Sr.'s looks could not have forced the woman to brew, or buy, a love potion and spike a drink.
No, even if she was crazy-insane even-, she obviously had enough brain cells and control to have sex with Tom Sr.
Merope created her own disparity.

To try and blame Tom Riddle Sr., for leaving after being raped and mentally put under duress as a Muggle experiencing magic for the first time and jolted into an entirely different world without a choice, is pretty hilarious and outrageous. Just saying.

 

I think part of him looking like a bad guy comes from the scene where he makes fun of the gaunt shack to the other girl that we saw in the pensieve. I can't remember it perfectly but I do remember thinking that he sounds like an arrogant ponce. I think seeing him as a bad guy is just carrying over that impression of him to later on, because Dumbledore doesn't really make him seem bad just that Merope and he were both victims in their own way and so was tom jr.

 

He's not a very sympathetic character, true. But that doesn't mean he deserved to have months of his life stolen from him by a rapist.

 

This is true, although I'd perhaps say dismissive more than arrogant:

It occurs to me that there may be an issue of association here. Tom Riddle is obviously quite high born - maybe not actually nobility, but big house, lots of money and land, and who else in the series qualifies? The Malfoys and the Blacks, both families filled with bad guys of one stripe or another (the exception at the time of HBP being published was Sirius, obviously, but he's something of a controversial figure himself, especially among Snape fans). Perhaps if people do have a dim view of Tom Riddle, it's more because they've lumped him in with the wrong crowd than anything he specifically does?

 

Well, we didn't get details about him, but I always saw him as jerk who didn't deserve what happened to him.

His dismissive and mocking behavior towards Gaunts, based on their poverty and hear-say is rude, but he didn't deserve to be kidnapped and raped ( well, nobody does, but I'm talking from narrative stand point). He had every right to run away from Merope, and while abandoning baby can seem like jerk move, it also makes him realistic. Because he probably didn't wish to have anything to do with Merope, and imagine if he showed up with child back home.

Now, I find it hard to judge Merope. Part of me is utterly disgusted by her actions, and has no problems condemning her. But other part pities her, and is scared, not because of her past of abuse, but because of fact that she really thought he could love her after she did. I'm amazed how messed up her mind must be to think that way.

 

Riddle Sr. Was entirely within his rights to have a dismissive attitude towards the Gaunts. Not only were they living as ''tramps'' as he describes it, they were an outright danger to their environment.

Do not forget that Riddle Sr. Was attacked by Morfin because Merope fancied Riddle. The attack was so severe that Morfin spent time in Azkaban, much like his father who was imprisoned for attacking Ministry staff.
Rather than Riddle Sr.'s attitude towards the Gaunts being harmful, I would say a cause for all the trouble would be the magical's community neglect towards the safety of Muggles.

They knew that the Gaunts had caused the Riddle's problems in the past, but did nothing to prevent this from happening in the future.
Merope was clearly unstable, and the Ministry officer that came by the Gaunts' house witnissed these problems first hand.
Had they taken a more active role in the safety of the town, none of the events would have come to pass.

 

I think it lies in how you interepret it yourself. Canon itself treats love potions like little harmless pranks, never mind their more dark connotations.

The potions are kinda skimmed over, with even Fred and George selling them like its no big deal.

Riddle Snr was also a piece of shit anyway, as he was described to be an unsavory individual. For that reason alone my interest in him went 'poof' as soon as he was out of the shot.

 

Literally the only two lines of dialogue he has are passing comment on people that other wizards think are weird. Piece of shit seems a little strong.

 

From what he said, Riddle Snr seems to both have a disdain for people in poverty and a certain kind of stupidity. Knowing that Morfin is a deranged lunatic, he begins to describe how they all live like tramps and how crazy they are - right next to their house where they could hear everything. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't point out how crazy a guy is when said crazy guy is clearly within earshot.

'Piece of shit' maybe an exaggeration, but I just didn't receive a favorable impression from any of them.

 

Canon doesn't treat love potions like they are no big deal. Characters do. The narrative itself treats them as an ignored but extremely problematic aspect of wizarding society, an easily-abused power with no real upside other than control of someone's will. Merope's enslavement of Riddle is the only real successful use of love potions in the plot of the books, and it is clearly a violation with horrible consequences.

And Riddle may have been an asshole, but even assholes don't deserve to be magically enslaved and raped.

 

No I understand you, I did mean the characters

And yes, despite Tom's faults, no one deserves what he's gone through.

 

Molly Weasley was successful too. But we don´t realy know the circumstances.

 

What? It may have been a while but I don't remember Molly using a love potion.

 

In one book ( Goblet of Fire, I think), Molly mentions to Hermione and Ginny that she attempted to brew love potion while she was at Hogwarts. We have no idea whom she planned to subject to it, or how successful she was. However, part of fandom thinks it means that she used love potion to force Arthur to marry her, and of course started spreading it as fact.

 

It is from Prisone of Azkaban actualy but I can´t remember the exact quote.