In “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” Character Development Returns to Westeros
“A new ‘Game of Thrones’ series!” you might be thinking. “Time to unroll my map of Westeros.” Well, unroll away—but “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” despite its name, won’t require a refresher on the distance from Sunspear to Dragonstone. The six-episode series, which débuted this month on HBO, has a small-scale focus, and its first season takes place on a small bit of map. Unlike “Game of Thrones” and its prequel “House of the Dragon,” it doesn’t aim for epic. Based on George R. R. Martin’s series of novellas “Tales of Dunk and Egg,” and a welcome return to character development, “Knight” centers on the adventures of Dunk (Peter Claffey), a strapping naïf otherwise known as Ser Duncan the Tall, and his spectacularly bald boy squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Each wants to prove himself, and for that to happen Dunk must triumph in a jousting tournament. That’s pretty much the plot.
Where “Thrones” was a soaring fantasia of ice, fire, dragons, and direwolves, and “House of the Dragon” was a saga spanning decades, “Knight” is a gentle buddy dramedy. It wants to give us a frisson of the old “Thrones” feeling but also wants to subvert it. The series signals this early in the first episode, when we watch our aspiring knight contemplate his future and get a good idea. Inspiration strikes, strains of the “Thrones” theme music begin to swell—Oh, boy!—and then abruptly stop; the scene shifts to Dunk crouching beside a tree, naked rump majestically spraying shit. “[Wet splatting], [relieving sighs],” the subtitles explain. Moments such as these help indicate whether the show is going to be your bag.
“Knight,” created by Ira Parker with George R. R. Martin, is set a century before the events of “Thrones.” As the series opens, Dunk, a squire, stands on a desolate one-tree hillside, lowering the body of his mentor, the late Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), into a grave. “I don’t know the right words,” Dunk says. “You were a true knight. You never beat me when I didn’t deserve it.” (Well, except that one time.) Later, lying under a sunny sky, he brainstorms aloud, talking to his three horses. Should he go to King’s Landing? Lannisport? Join the City Watch? He imagines this, brandishing Ser Arlan’s longsword: “Stop raping, ser!” Hmm, the sword fits his grip. And hmm!—the good idea cometh. “There is a tourney at Ashford Meadow . . .” he says, thoughts visibly moving across his face and firming into resolve.
So the journey begins. The first episode is largely Eggless, but he makes a memorable impression. Approaching a tavern with his horses, Dunk, in a grubby cloak and a rope belt, encounters a tiny bald kid, assumes he’s the stable boy, and tries out his new knight persona, demanding oats and a palfrey rubdown. He doesn’t wonder why this well-spoken, curious child resists confirming that he’s the stable boy. (Egg has some secrets.) “You’ll get a copper if you do well, and a clout in the ear if not,” Dunk says, a threat we can’t imagine him carrying out. The mysterious Egg scoffs at Dunk’s rope belt but offers to be his squire. Dunk declines; soon enough, Egg has found him again.
Dunk is a bit of a lunk. He hits his head on a doorframe, twice; in the second episode, he observes, during a moment of philosophizing, that people have always said he was stupid. (“And?” Egg asks, expecting a pep talk. But that’s the whole anecdote.) Still, Dunk believes in himself, like any good hero, and people are drawn to his guilelessness. He’s also an outsider. Ser Arlan had been a hedge knight—a freelancer of sorts, who roamed the realm doing chivalric things and making his home where he found it. In flashbacks and outdoor domestic scenes, Dunk seems at home and at peace in nature, outside of society. But like most of us, he must make his living within it. In Ashford, where a camp has been set up for the tournament, he tells the registrar of his desire to enter and joust; Ser Arlan knighted him before he died, and he wants to serve the realm and protect the weak. But is he really a knight? the registrar wonders. Busting Dunk’s chops while hocking into a tankard, the registrar says that if he’s somehow revealed not to be a real knight they’ll administer “the Ashford chair”: lower him naked onto a sharpened point and fuck him dry, har har! But seriously, he needs a real knight to vouch for him. Dunk looks befuddled, but then another idea occurs—Ser Manfred Dondarrion of Dorne will surely remember me, from when Ser Arlan knighted for his father!—and he sets off to find him. We might not share his confidence.
