This blog post is another in a series talking about the HBO show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. (I needed to occupy my time while waiting for the next season of House of the Dragon, another HBO show set in George RR Martin’s fantasy realm of Westeros.
This post is going to be talking about plot points in the finale episode, so consider this your spoiler warning.
Where Dunk (aka Ser Duncan the Tall) ends up in the finale of season one A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is not wildly different from how he started off in the first episode.
In episode one “The Hedge Knight”, squire Dunk has lost his master but has inherited a sword and three horses. He chooses to pursue a career as a hedge knight.
(Some folks might chafe at me calling Dunk a squire right there, since surely Ser Arlan knighted the big himbo before succumbing to illness. We’ll have to agree to disagree, but I digress.)
At the end of the final episode, Ser Duncan is down to two horses but at least he’s gained his own squire.
Egg: Am I being equated to a horse?
Sweetfoot: *leagues away, munching on Fossaway apples* (I’m not offended).
But relevant to this post, Dunk in episode six again chooses to pursue the life of a hedge knight. Or at least, he rejects two offers for a stable existence as a knight sworn to a great house.
The novella only has one such offer and one such rejection: after the Trial by Battle, the tree-reposing convalescing Dunk is visited by Maekar Targaryen, who offers Dunk a place at the Targaryen palace of Summerhall in exchange for Ser Duncan accepting young Aegon Targaryen as his squire. Dunk refuses but suggests on the spot that Egg should instead follow him on the road, serving as a squire to a hedge knight.
Maekar does not seem happy with this suggestion in the novella, and does not obviously accept or refuse, but later on Egg shows up as Dunk prepares to head out, asserting that his father Maekar has agreed to Dunk’s suggestion. And off they go, bald squire and bold hedge knight.
(The show casts some doubt, much doubt, on Egg’s story.)
The novella, despite being from Dunk’s point of view, does not give much explicit insight into Dunk’s reasoning to refuse Maekar. Getting steady employment by the Targaryens would certainly seem to satisfy Dunk’s goal in coming to the Ashford tourney and acquiting himself well: to catch the eye of an employer. But Maekar’s suggestion does not land with Dunk, and he counter-proposals immediately.
The show stretches the novella’s Maekar/Dunk conversation to fill the episode. At first, Dunk is entirely uninterested in committing to Maekar’s suggestion, and is unwilling to be Egg’s mentor at all. The reason he gives is having had enough of Targaryen princes – period.
It is implicit that Dunk hanging out in Maekar’s court might be an uncomfortable situation, since Dunk had recently been a participant in a deadly battle versus Maekar and two of his sons, and the death of Maekar’s brother Baelor was going to be a dark cloud over both Dunk and his Targaryen boss.
Whisperers: Pretty sus how Maekar is rewarding the nobody who pulled his brother Baelor into a deathmatch. Pretty sus, I say.
Later, Dunk has a conversation with Maekar’s eldest son Daeron, who plants the seed in Dunk’s mind that sets the condition on how Dunk would take Egg as a squire – that little Prince Aegon should travel with Dunk as a squire in service to a hedge knight, entirely to get the lad away from the toxic environment of Summerhall that had turned glad child Aerion into a sadistic monster.
Daeron: You know, my brother wasn’t always a little monster.
Dunk: Egg is no monster. He’s just a boy.
Daeron: I didn’t mean Egg. But no doubt we’ll make a man of him, too.
— A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, episode 6 “The Morrow”
It seems fairly clear why Dunk would want Egg to travel with him, experiencing life as a commoner. He valued his experiences with Ser Arlan, and likely felt it would be a benefit for Egg as well, while Egg remaining at Summerhall would be suboptimal.
From a narrative perspective, there is a nice symmetry in Ser Arlan saving Dunk from Flea Bottom, and Dunk saving Egg from the Targaryen court. The life of a hedge knight being a virtuous life.
“A hedge knight is the truest kind of knight, Dunk,” the old man had told him, a long long time ago.
“Other knights serve the lords who keep them, or from whom they hold their lands, but we serve where we will, for men whose causes we believe in. Every knight swears to protect the weak and innocent, but we keep the vow best, I think.” Queer how strong that memory seemed.
— The Hedge Knight
The show offered Dunk another choice to put his days of sleeping under hedges behind him. After the Trial of Seven, with both in varying stages of injury, Ser Lyonel Baratheon offers Dunk a chance for a better life. The Laughing Storm encourages Dunk to accompany him to Storm’s End for employment and training and non-stop merriment.
Dunk opts not to.
This was no surprise for book-readers, since this offer and much of Ser Lyonel’s appearances in the show (excluding his participation in the Trial) are show inventions. But it seems a reasonable question to ask why Ser Duncan, after hitting things off so well with Ser Lyonel all season, would turn down this offer. Why?
One reason could be that working for the mercurial Ser Lyonel would likely be a nightmare. He promised to love Dunk like a brother while also suggesting that he could hate Dunk like a brother. These emotional framings seem to be a poor framework for lord and vassal relationships, which should be based on respect and mutual obligation.
But, the more obvious reason would be Ser Lyonel’s disrespectful attitude towards Baelor Targaryen thoroughly soured the deal, even if Dunk might have been briefly considering accepting.
The beginning of this article commented on how Dunk’s situation at the start of the season largely mirrored his situation at the end …
Egg: With me being equated to a horse…
But there’s another common factor not yet mentioned. At both the start and end of the season, Dunk had recently suffered the loss of someone important to him, someone he had sworn service to.
Initially, he’d been serving Ser Arlan, who dies and is buried by Dunk.
In the penultimate episode of the season, moments after the conclusion of the Trial by Battle, Dunk bends the knee to the unsteady-footed Prince Baelor and offers his sword in service.
Dunk: Your Grace. I am your man. Please. Your man.
Baelor: I need good men, Ser Duncan. The realm. *Baelor stumbles back*
— A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Episode 5 “In the Name of the Mother”
Did Baelor accept Dunk’s offer of service? One might argue that Baelor wasn’t in his right mind (sorry, too soon) to make such decisions but Dunk likely believed his offer was going to be accepted, or that it didn’t matter.
Dunk’s intent was to serve Baelor. And now, like Ser Arlan, Prince Baelor was dead.
The early episodes of the season had Dunk roaming about the tourney grounds, bringing up Ser Arlan’s name with the knights and lords in attendance, looking for someone who knew Ser Arlan and would vouch for Dunk – but no one would. Dunk took the lack of recognition for Ser Arlan, who had served and bled for these lords, quite personally. But Prince Baelor had remembered the old knight, and Dunk recalled that Ser Arlan considered Baelor the soul of chivalry.
It did not do to hear Ser Lyonel Baratheon dismissing Baelor, a man that Ser Arlan had held in such esteem. Ser Lyonel might as well have been bad-mouthing Ser Arlan of Pennytree.
Now on the road with Egg, would it be possible that Dunk would take a trip to the Stormlands and visit his old battle-companion, Ser Lyonel Baratheon at Storm’s End?
If Dunk’s goal is to give Egg the experience of being a squire and take part in the experiences of the smallfolk, Storm’s End is not a likely destination. Ser Lyonel would know that squire Egg is really Prince Aegon Targaryen, and he wouldn’t necessarily be naturally inclined to follow Dunk’s desire for Egg not to be treated like a prince.
In fact, it might be dangerous to bring Egg to Ser Lyonel. At their parting, Lyonel was not really stating pro-Targaryen sentiments.
Lyonel: The only good dragon is a dead dragon.
— A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Episode 6 “The Morrow”
With Lyonel not displeased with Baelor’s death and talking about a war coming, bringing Egg to visit Storm’s End has all the earmarks of a potential princely hostage situation.
Better for Dunk (and young Egg in tow) to serve lords where he will, whose causes are just, rather than choose lords who will tie him down with lands and obligations.
As well, Dunk is not likely to serve a lord who could mean Egg harm.
At least, not until Egg is a man grown…
(Comments are always welcome. Super welcome! But if you want to talk spoilery Game of Thrones talk with me (also welcome) I’d invite you to visit my Safe Spoilers page on my backup blog. That way my non-book-reading friends won’t be shocked with foreknowledge.)
Images are from HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (obviously). I make no claim to any of the images, but some claims to the text (at least, the text that isn’t being transcribed from the show and the novella.) So there.
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