Early in “The Morrow,” the season 1 finale of the Recreation of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, battered knight Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) tells much more battered collection protagonist Dunk (Peter Claffey) “The gods don’t favor a fraud.” “Then why have they favored me?” Dunk responds.
Viewers who’ve adopted the present thus far will perceive what Lyonel is speaking about — Dunk is despondent over the dying of Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), the inheritor to the Iron Throne of Westeros, who was mortally wounded whereas defending Dunk in a trial by fight. Lyonel is livid at Dunk’s response, insisting that Baelor “risked nothing” within the battle, because the males on the opposite facet had been his members of the family and Kingsguard “sworn to guard him.” Regardless that Baelor died from the beating he suffered in that battle, Lyonel nonetheless feels the prince’s participation was a sham, and that the gods punished him for it. However the purpose Dunk calls himself a fraud is extra difficult — and it entails a secret that subtly runs all through all of George R.R. Martin’s tales about Dunk and his squire Egg, aka future Westeros king Aegon Targaryen V. The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms finale foregrounds that secret extra immediately, although it solely comes out in a couple of traces of dialogue. The reality is that Dunk was by no means truly knighted, and is mendacity about being a knight.
Photograph: Steffan Hill/HBO
That’s barely ironic, since a number of the early emotional energy of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (and Martin’s first Dunk and Egg novella, The Hedge Knight, which this season of the present adapts) comes from Dunk desperately making an attempt to show that he’s a knight to varied chilly, detached individuals in energy. Instantly after the dying of his mentor Ser Arlan Pennytree, Dunk decides to enter a jousting tourney close by, at a spot referred to as Ashford Meadow. If he wins a joust, he would possibly earn sufficient status, popularity, and wealth to maintain himself fed and clothed, and even earn his means into service with a good lord. However first, he has to show that he’s a knight, with the correct to compete at Ashford, and never only a bandit who stole Ser Arlan’s weapons and horses. Regardless that Ser Arlan served beneath most of the nobles attending the joust, and alongside most of the knights there, none of them bear in mind him, or care. Plenty of the burden of the primary half of the story comes from Dunk realizing that the person he’s been loyally serving and studying from since childhood has already been dismissed and forgotten — and that Dunk can count on the identical contemptuous therapy in his personal profession, if he can’t discover a means out of poverty, obscurity, and the itinerant life. There’s additionally a good bit of ache to Dunk’s newfound understanding about how heartless and haughty most of Westeros’ elite are, even those solely barely above him in station. And but, because it seems, they’re proper to dismiss him as a doable fraud that they’ll’t vouch for. As a result of regardless of his good-heartedness, the Aristocracy, and sense of honor, he’s a fraud.
Photograph: Steffan Hill/HBO
In each The Hedge Knight and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Martin not directly hints at Dunk’s non-knight standing with a small element within the story: Throughout a key second earlier than a battle, when he wants knights to battle alongside him, his new good friend Raymun Fossoway, a squire from a minor noble home, asks Dunk to knight him so he can be a part of the battle. Dunk hesitates and says that he shouldn’t, and one other knight steps ahead to do the deed as an alternative. That occasion simply seems to be like a second of nerves — until that Dunk is absolutely conscious of the previous Westeros adage “Any knight could make a knight.” He realizes in that second that since he was by no means knighted, Raymun’s knighting received’t be legitimate if Dunk performs it. Perhaps nobody however the gods will ever know, however Dunk does clearly consider they exist, and that they choose human failings. The Hedge Knight suggests Dunk’s unknighted standing in a very delicate means. When Dunk learns Egg isn’t truly the low-born stableboy Dunk took him for, however is secretly a prince, he shortly realizes he has to forgive Egg’s lies of omission in letting Dunk’s mistake go unchallenged. Martin writes, “He knew what it was prefer to need one thing so badly that you’d inform a monstrous lie simply to get close to it.” Different small traces scattered all through the story equally might seem like self-doubt, until you’re in search of the particular which means: “Dunk the lunk, thought he might be a knight,” Dunk thinks throughout a pivotal second within the trial by fight. A bit later in that very same battle: “I’ve failed them. I’m no champion. I’m not even a hedge knight. I’m nothing.” And at last, after profitable the bloody battle: “I’m a knight now in reality? he remembered questioning. Am I a champion?”
Photograph: Steffan Hill/HBO
Since A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms can’t share Dunk’s internal secrets and techniques as simply as a written story can, the present addresses the element extra squarely. Throughout a flashback within the finale, Dunk sits beneath a tree in a windy area with Ser Arlan, who’s telling a narrative he’s clearly advised Dunk dozens of occasions. Dunk interrupts to ask, “Why did you by no means knight me? Did you suppose I’d depart you? I wouldn’t have. Or was it one thing else?” Ser Arlan doesn’t reply — after a glazed-over pause the place it looks like he’s died, he returns to his story with out acknowledging that he even heard the query. Optimistic viewers would possibly hope he knighted Dunk shortly thereafter, in a scene between those we’ve seen on-screen. However the second clearly takes place within the area the place Arlan does die, beneath the tree Dunk buries the previous knight beneath at first of the present. It’s clear that little time passes between this second and Arlan’s dying, and Arlan’s unwillingness or lack of ability to handle the query isn’t promising.
Martin himself has reportedly confirmed that Ser Arlan by no means knighted Dunk, a minimum of in keeping with followers who documented him talking on the topic at a conference in 2004. He hasn’t written or posted something extra overt on the topic — however fairly presumably that was a reveal he was seeding all through the three Dunk and Egg novellas he’s written up to now, and saving as a much bigger story level in one of many many still-unwritten tales about them that he’s been teasing for greater than a decade now. Presumably we’ll see that story in a future season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, since showrunner Ira Parker has dedicated to working with Martin on bringing the unwritten tales to the display screen, if the present lasts lengthy sufficient to maneuver past Martin’s revealed tales. It might probably be a dramatic second, notably if Ser Duncan the Tall doesn’t admit to the lie till he’s about to be inducted into the Kingsguard for his former squire — one thing we all know will ultimately occur, in keeping with the concordance The World of Ice and Hearth. Oops, doable spoiler for one thing which may occur 12 seasons from now. All six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 1 are actually streaming on HBO Max.
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