<\/p>\n
Early in \u201cThe Morrow,\u201d the season 1 finale of the Game of Thrones<\/em> prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em>, battered knight Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) tells even more battered series protagonist Dunk (Peter Claffey) \u201cThe gods don\u2019t favor a fraud.\u201d \u201cThen why have they favored me?\u201d Dunk responds.<\/p>\n Viewers who\u2019ve followed the show to this point will understand what Lyonel is talking about \u2014 Dunk is despondent over the death of Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), the heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros, who was mortally wounded while defending Dunk in a trial by combat. Lyonel is furious at Dunk\u2019s response, insisting that Baelor \u201crisked nothing\u201d in the fight, since the men on the other side were his family members and Kingsguard \u201csworn to protect him.\u201d Even though Baelor died from the beating he suffered in that fight, Lyonel still feels the prince\u2019s participation was a sham, and that the gods punished him for it.<\/p>\n But the reason Dunk calls himself a fraud is more complicated \u2014 and it involves a secret that subtly runs throughout all of George R.R. Martin\u2019s stories about Dunk and his squire Egg, aka future Westeros king Aegon Targaryen V. The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em> finale foregrounds that secret more directly, though it only comes out in a few lines of dialogue. The truth is that Dunk was never actually knighted, and is lying about being a knight.<\/p>\n Photo: Steffan Hill\/HBO<\/p>\n That\u2019s slightly ironic, since a lot of the early emotional power of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em> (and Martin\u2019s first Dunk and Egg novella, The Hedge Knight<\/em>, which this season of the show adapts) comes from Dunk desperately trying to prove that he\u2019s a knight to various cold, indifferent people in power. Immediately after the death of his mentor Ser Arlan Pennytree, Dunk decides to enter a jousting tourney nearby, at a place called Ashford Meadow. If he wins a joust, he might earn enough prestige, reputation, and wealth to keep himself fed and clothed, or even earn his way into service with a reputable lord. But first, he has to prove that he\u2019s a knight, with the right to compete at Ashford, and not just a bandit who stole Ser Arlan\u2019s weapons and horses.<\/p>\n Even though Ser Arlan served under many of the nobles attending the joust, and alongside many of the knights there, none of them remember him, or care. A lot of the weight of the first half of the story comes from Dunk realizing that the man he\u2019s been loyally serving and learning from since childhood has already been dismissed and forgotten \u2014 and that Dunk can expect the same contemptuous treatment in his own career, if he can\u2019t find a way out of poverty, obscurity, and the itinerant life. There\u2019s also a fair bit of pain to Dunk\u2019s newfound understanding about how heartless and haughty most of Westeros\u2019 elite are, even the ones only slightly above him in station.<\/p>\n And yet, as it turns out, they\u2019re right to dismiss him as a possible fraud that they can\u2019t vouch for. Because in spite of his good-heartedness, nobility, and sense of honor, he is<\/em> a fraud.<\/p>\n Photo: Steffan Hill\/HBO<\/p>\n In both The Hedge Knight<\/em> and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em>, Martin indirectly hints at Dunk\u2019s non-knight status with a small detail in the story: During a key moment before a battle, when he needs knights to fight alongside him, his new friend Raymun Fossoway, a squire from a minor noble house, asks Dunk to knight him so he can join the fight. Dunk hesitates and says that he shouldn\u2019t, and another knight steps forward to do the deed instead. That event just looks like a moment of nerves \u2014 unless you know that Dunk is fully aware of the old Westeros adage \u201cAny knight can make a knight.\u201d He realizes in that moment that since he was never knighted, Raymun\u2019s knighting won\u2019t be valid if Dunk performs it. Maybe no one but the gods will ever know, but Dunk does clearly believe they exist, and that they judge human failings. <\/p>\n The Hedge Knight<\/em> suggests Dunk\u2019s unknighted status in a particularly subtle way. When Dunk learns Egg isn\u2019t actually the low-born stableboy Dunk took him for, but is secretly a prince, he quickly realizes he has to forgive Egg\u2019s lies of omission in letting Dunk\u2019s mistake go unchallenged. Martin writes, \u201cHe knew what it was like to want something so badly that you would tell a monstrous lie just to get near it.\u201d<\/p>\n Other small lines scattered throughout the story similarly could look like self-doubt, unless you\u2019re looking for the specific meaning: \u201cDunk the lunk, thought he could be a knight<\/em>,\u201d Dunk thinks during a pivotal moment in the trial by combat. A little later in that same fight: \u201cI\u2019ve failed them. I am no champion. I\u2019m not even a hedge knight. I am nothing<\/em>.\u201d And finally, after winning the bloody battle: \u201cI am a knight now in truth?<\/em> he remembered wondering. Am I a champion?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Steffan Hill\/HBO<\/p>\n Since A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms <\/em>can\u2019t share Dunk\u2019s inner secrets as easily as a written story can, the show <\/em>addresses the detail more squarely. During a flashback in the finale, Dunk sits under a tree in a windy field with Ser Arlan, who\u2019s telling a story he\u2019s clearly told Dunk dozens of times. Dunk interrupts to ask, \u201cWhy did you never knight me? Did you think I\u2019d leave you? I wouldn\u2019t have. Or was it something else?\u201d<\/p>\n Ser Arlan doesn\u2019t answer \u2014 after a glazed-over pause where it seems like he\u2019s died, he returns to his story without acknowledging that he even heard the question. Optimistic viewers might hope he knighted Dunk shortly thereafter, in a scene between the ones we\u2019ve seen on-screen. But the moment clearly takes place in the field where Arlan does die, beneath the tree Dunk buries the old knight under at the beginning of the show. It\u2019s clear that little time passes between this moment and Arlan\u2019s death, and Arlan\u2019s unwillingness or inability to address the question isn\u2019t promising. <\/p>\n Martin himself has reportedly confirmed that Ser Arlan never knighted Dunk, at least according to fans who documented him speaking on the subject at a convention in 2004. He hasn\u2019t written or posted anything more overt on the subject \u2014 but quite possibly that was a reveal he was seeding throughout the three Dunk and Egg novellas he\u2019s written so far, and saving as a bigger story point in one of the many still-unwritten stories about them that he\u2019s been teasing for more than a decade now.<\/p>\n Possibly we\u2019ll see that story in a future season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms<\/em>, since showrunner Ira Parker has committed to working with Martin on bringing the unwritten stories to the screen, if the show lasts long enough to move beyond Martin\u2019s published stories. It could potentially be a dramatic moment, particularly if Ser Duncan the Tall doesn\u2019t admit to the lie until he\u2019s about to be inducted into the Kingsguard for his former squire \u2014 something we know will eventually happen, according to the concordance The World of Ice and Fire<\/em>. Oops, possible spoiler for something that might happen 12 seasons from now.<\/p>\n All six episodes of <\/em>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 1 are now streaming on HBO Max.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early in \u201cThe Morrow,\u201d the season 1 finale of the Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, battered knight Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) tells even more battered series protagonist Dunk (Peter Claffey) \u201cThe gods don\u2019t favor a fraud.\u201d \u201cThen why have they favored me?\u201d Dunk responds. Viewers who\u2019ve followed the show<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4817,75,74,4818],"class_list":{"0":"post-4971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"tag-evidence","9":"tag-kingdoms","10":"tag-knight","11":"tag-knighted"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}