Ian Paisley's attempts to elevate the son hastened his own departure, writes Fionnuala O'Conor
THE MASSIVE father figure and the young man stunted in his shadow is the theme of great music and drama. Ian Paisley's drama, an overstuffed script with elements of horror movie, farce and a hilariously unlikely late section, has included two younger men, his son and his deputy. Their fortunes are as different as their personalities, though both owe him.
His attempts to elevate the son hastened his own departure. His deputy may decide that his first action as leader and new First Minister will be to further marginalise the son. For Peter Robinson, it was a long wait to be his own man. But the "deputy" title suited him well enough until this past year, when the DUP leader devalued it permanently by tagging Martin McGuinness with it on every possible occasion, chuckling the while.
Calling the former IRA leader "the deputy" and even, initially, "my deputy", was a crude diminution of their equal powers. It also avoided him having to say the republican's name. Their much-hyped rapport might have been real, and all too evident.
Even if the DUP leader's late emergence as a compromiser had been born of conversion, it was never his nature to share the spotlight.
Watching his last throw at bequeathing at least a simulated dynasty, it might have slipped some minds that the fond old man is not always respectful even towards the son.
Charm has always been as easy a reflex as ranting, but the instinctual weapon of boorishness has served a lifetime and is not easily put aside.
At the first Assembly election count in north Antrim a gruesome scene memorably saw them inches apart in front of the cameras, a presenter daring to joke from a TV studio that the junior Paisley might have racked up more first preferences than his father. "He'll never see the day," scoffed the parent.
Leaving the son in a secure niche might display family affection, but like all dynastic impulses it has arguably most to do with the founding father's vanity and craving to leave a mark. The Paisley resignation for the television cameras showed little vanity, traces of the old verbal flair, a hefty residue of pigheadedness and a wisp of pathos.
The aged man brought low by the plotters in his camp who had evicted his son - "I'm not a fool, I have ears" - still struggled to stitch the son into place for succession to his Westminster seat. But the eloquence of yesterday rambled into something like blasphemy: "He will live on to serve the people of my constituency but he has to bear his own burden, carry his own cross."
Which was hardly appropriate to the last foolish appointment of young Ian, still immature at 42, to replace Jeffrey Donaldson on the Policing Board as Donaldson moved into the First Minister's office.
Where anyone with sense would have reflected that he should keep a low profile to bury the saga of developer Seymour Sweeney, Junior took the job, and compounded his mistake by announcing that he would support Sweeney in a planning appeal against DUP Minister Arlene Foster.
In nicer people, the disparity between the talents of older and younger Paisleys might have attracted sympathy. If the son had been a different person, he would have tried to woo his father's deputy, in his own interests.
One of his most embarrassing features has been his seeming unawareness that his advancement began with his name and depended on his father.
Now Robinson, "young Peter", as the father used to dub him, is in his 60th year. Older than Tony Blair and still not leader of the party he organised into a vote-winning machine to match the draw of the man he once revered, he and Junior have never been close. In the brief period when the DUP joined negotiations in 1996 Robinson was recognised by both governments as the "best forensic mind" on the unionist side.
When the giant at his shoulder began to stumble, Robinson was credited widely with having kept the party in the process, if not in the tent. Nobody knew better that only the bigger man, past his best though he was, could carry the party into power-sharing.
Finance Minister Robinson has been enjoying himself in his own department. He can not be his own First Minister: the half-job needs personal skills he has never displayed in public. McGuinness is unlikely to allow him the "deputy" slur he took from an old man, even though he knew how republicans and even anti-Sinn Féin nationalists disliked it.
The chuckling First Ministers got the new Stormont through its first year with minimum aggravation. The oddest of couples, their similar affability helped them through.
The likely new First Minister will be tempted to be icy to McGuinness, who has lavished his present partner with affection.