Vasudeva is actually a Villain
In the later texts obviously Krishna's godhood has practically granted him martyrdom. So much that now when we think of him, we imagine first a man tortured, bound in shackles awaiting salvation, and then a glass doll that Krishna wraps up in warm blankets and protects as if he were the father and not the son.
However, this image has been carefully constructed over many years, and leaves a gap in the narrative, turning Kamsa into the monster that he is, but without explaining how he got to be this way.
The older texts, primarily Harivamsha and Bhasa's Balacharita, being two of the oldest accounts (although subject to subsequent revisions) of Krishna's birth and childhood, are usually considered to contain a more accurate picture of the same, as compared to the later puranas.
Aanakadundubhi Vasudeva is the son of Aryaka Shoora, the very man who did not hesitate for even a second when he handed over his firstborn Pritha to a friend and then basically erased her seniority in his family tree. Vasudeva grows up in Ugrasena's house, and marries the seven daughters of Ugrasena's younger brother. Vasudeva, the golden child, is therefore groomed from his youth to become the next leader of the Yadava oligarchy.
Kamsa, on this other hand, is the unwanted result of a traumatic assault on his mother, who grows up in Ugrasena's house resented by his mother and rejected by his legal-father. He is taunted and bullied mercilessly by his peers and his parents' staff, and Vasudeva. It does not excuse the vindictive person that Kamsa becomes later, emboldened by Jarasandha's support in the background, but it sure explains his anger at the Yadavas.
When they grow up, Vasudeva is immediately initiated into the Yadava parliament and even given a valuable ministry- either taxation or corrections. Kamsa, on the other, hand, is laughed out of the court when he expresses a desire to run for office. Kamsa is after all a monster of the Yadavas' making.
Kamsa, we see later, forever harbours resentment for having essentially been replaced with another kid so easily by the man who was supposed to be his father. He takes it out on Vasudeva, when he bitterly accuses the latter of having betrayed the person [Ugrasena] who brought them both up.
His anger, in part, also seems to stem from the fact that while Kamsa was always supposed to disappoint his father, Vasudeva is the one who truly betrayed the Yadavas' trust. It is implied here, by Kamsa, that Vasudeva was also planning to launch a coup in order to seize power, and that he would've succeeded only if Kamsa hadn't gotten there first.
Balacharita has some alarming dialogue. Vasudeva admits to restraining and whipping Nanda as part of his royal duties. When Nanda comes onstage, holding his stillborn daughter, he is in fact still hobbled by the shackles Vasudeva himself had locked around his ankles at some time before the events of the play and then hadn't bothered to open. Of course, Kamsa is blamed for this, but Vasudeva's villainistic monologue immediately following this does not exactly convince me of his innocence.
Vasudeva is seen remembering what he has done to Nanda. However, he does not seem at all guilty. Rather, he is preoccupied with plans related to how he might convince Nanda, who is at the moment lost in the throes of his own grief, to discard his baby girl and shelter Krishna in her place.
Nanda and the other gopas, obviously, lest we forget that Vrindavan was in fact a slave colony of the Yadavas, continuously address Vasudeva, Damodar and Sankarshana as 'Bhatta' [Master], even to the uncomfortable point of the oldest person in the play, an old gopa, falling at the feet of the teen Krishna addressing him as such. And, to say nothing of the choice to have only the women and the lower-caste people speak Prakrit while having the upper-caste men speak pure Sanskrit.
In the drama, Vasudeva not only manipulates Nanda into abandoning his daughter [thought to be stillborn, but as it turns out she is alive, and starts crying right after Nanda leaves] under a tree and take home Krishna, but also makes Nanda bow to a baby Krishna lest the latter forgets his place.
Moreover, we do not see Vasudeva offer to unlock Nanda's shackles [or even lament his inability to do so], even now as he entrusts not one but two children to the man who is already deathly scared of Kamsa. It is in fact by the magic of the baby, that the restraints fall off, otherwise Vasudeva is content enough to let his 'vayasya' [friend] drag those chains around for the next as many years as it takes for the boys to kill Kamsa.
He also later forces Nanda to uproot his life, leave his house, and move away from the main gopa neighbourhood so that Vasudeva's children are not recognized by Nanda's community.
All the years when Krishna grows up in Vrindavan, Vasudeva is in fact not in prison [or imprisoned only for a very short time], but rather under Kamsa's observation. He is, the entire time, in contact with Krishna and Balarama, and guiding their upbringing from the city, preparing them to be the weapons with which he is to snatch the power away from Kamsa.
This is seen with the sheer clinical efficiency that Krishna shows in his killing of the various 'demons', or that one time that he let a pack of wild wolves loose into Gokul so as to convince the gopas to move to Vrindavan [instead of talking to them, using words], completely disregarding the fact that a bunch of his friends and their parents got killed as a direct result.
Then, when we return to Mathura with Krishna and Balarama, after Krishna slays Kamsa, we see the swiftness with which he seizes control, both in Balacharita and Harivamsha. Krishna and Balarama are almost relegated to the sidelines as their father takes control of the situation and attempts to drive Yadava policy from then on.
In Harivamsha, additionally, we see the old Ugrasena and Padmavati, uncomfortably bowed at Krishna's feet, clawing at him, begging him to let them perform the last rites of Kamsa, Kamsa's brothers and children implying heavily that Vasudeva is the one who forbids them from doing so.
The question of his several wives [at least twenty, counting all lists] also lingers in the narrative, and how he chooses to completely ignore first Devaki and then Rohini after Kamsa's death, choosing to spend his days with his younger wives, producing several children headed by Subhadra, Kumari, Gada and Sarana who then Krishna and Balarama are responsible for raising and keeping alive. Additionally, I do not also appreciate how he seems kind to Devaki during the early years, and yet he is dismissive of her grief as we learn he also has promised all his children as slaves to Kamsa [he keeps killing them that's a different issue].
After this, as the boys grow up, they eclipse their father, Krishna in politics and Balarama in the family, and slowly Vasudeva fades out of the story, now appearing only as a footnote in his children's escapades. However, his influence lingers on, showing itself in the flashes of cruelty that both brothers demonstrate, be it Krishna dancing gleefully after the murder of his nephew Ghatotkacha, or Balarama's inability to concede to a woman's no.
Krishna is however, deeply besotted to his father, perhaps due to his upbringing, between living in a community constantly mistreated and a father that demands too much, somewhere along the way he must have learnt to simply do whatever it takes to make his father happy. The self-imposed victim complex of Vasudeva's wouldn't have helped as well. This would have lead to the beginning of Krishna's interest in the Pandavas as well. Krishna is definitely softer than his father, and yet they are so very much alike.
Vasudeva's main problem, in my opinion, is his sense of entitlement to his community, to the people who answer to him, and even his children, as he truly believes the world must bend to his will and his his alone. I do not know how he must have taken Krishna's rise later, but he on the surface at least seems content with having indirect power through his sons.
