Movies & TV A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms A Delightful Buddy Comedy Unfolds in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Welcome to a kindler, gentler version of Westeros, where chivalry is not entirely dead! By Tyler Dean | Published on January 20, 2026 Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Finally, the third HBO series inspired by George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books is upon us! Each week, I’ll be discussing the most recent episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. There will be spoilers for episode below. While there may be spoilers for any and all of Martin’s Westeros books as we work our way through the series, they’ll be clearly marked in individual sections. A Kinder, Gentler Westeros Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Early on in A Game of Thrones (and in the first season of the eponymous show), Martin gives us a tournament celebrating the elevation of Ned Stark to the office of Hand of the King. Like most of what Martin writes about the Medieval-adjacent politics of Westeros, the tourney is a rotten thing—an obscene expenditure where pageantry plasters over a failing empire: still healing from a brutal civil war, riddled with debt, ruled by a drunken buffoon, and filled with ambitious nobles seeking to climb the political ladder by any means necessary. Among other things, it serves as a moment for Ned’s daughter, Sansa Stark, to experience the first cracks in her naive worldview—up to this point, she’s believed that knights are noble and chivalry exists. By contrast, Martin’s 1998 novella, The Hedge Knight, adapted here as the first season of HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, uses a tourney to restore some of the chivalric magic to the typically grim world of Westeros.  Set in the year 209, approximately ninety years before the events of HBO’s Game of Thrones (and exactly 79 years after the most recent season of their prequel series, House of the Dragon), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a window into a better time in Westeros. The kingdom is not at war, the Targaryen king is generally beloved, and the dragons—the equivalent of weapons of mass destruction in this fictional world—are extinct. For showrunner Ira Parker (who also serves as co-executive producer of House of the Dragon), this all allows for a generally lighter tone; we see smash cuts for the first time in a GoT series, and of course the swelling waltz of Ramin Djawadi’s iconic theme is immediately undercut by its protagonist wrestling with a bout of explosive diarrhea.  From a production design standpoint, it’s an interesting mix of the ground-level grittiness and filth of an ASoIaF series, as told from the perspective of the smallfolk, and the splendor of one of Westeros’ golden ages. There is exquisite detailing on Ser Arlan of Pennytree’s winged chalice shield which would feel out of place for a hedge knight in either the GoT or HotD eras, but here feels suited to a time of relative peace and prosperity.  Even Dan Romer’s score scales back a bit, bringing folk guitar strains forward and making the whole thing sound a bit like a Western. That’s fitting, given the picaresque nature of Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas which feel like they owe a lot to classic Westerns as well as the equally picaresque, Sergio Leone-inspired Lone Wolf and Cub manga from the ’70s.  Panem et Circenses Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO There’s a telling exchange halfway through the episode when sex worker Red (Rowan Robinson) gives our protagonist, Dunk (Peter Claffey), some advice about dealings with nobles, offered from “one whore to another.” In a world where both sex workers and knights put their bodies on the line for the pleasures and whims of the ruling class, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms starts to home in on Martin’s class-conscious depictions of labor and obligation. Because the events of the Dunk and Egg novellas largely take place in times of peace, there is a special emphasis placed on knights not as weapons of war but as professional entertainers. It’s a lovely bit of understanding from a TV universe that has not always been particularly thoughtful about the ways in which sex work is legitimate work or the class solidarity that the peasants and other exploited people might feel under feudalism.  Martin is famously a fan of American football, writing sly references to the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants into his books. In the more than quarter century since “The Hedge Knight” was published, there has been endless controversy over CTE and the ways in which professional athletes (especially football players and wrestlers) sacrifice their bodies for public entertainment at the behest of billionaire team owners. It feels like a bit of a full-circle moment that Martin’s empathy for people with disabilities gets folded back into his books in a way that he hadn’t explicitly written about.  It also dovetails nicely with some of Martin’s concerns over the ways in which knighthood is a capitalist sport. Dunk agonizes endlessly in both novella and show about how, if he loses a bout in the tourney, he will have to forfeit his armor, weapons, and horses to his opponent and ransom them back. Any knight can make another knight, but one without access to these expensive accouterments can’t really fulfill his duties. It’s a rigged game that favors the nobility and punishes and impoverishes all but the most talented of lowborn aspirants.  When Dunk chides the sex workers for mocking him, Red tells him “be good to your body, knight. Last one you’re like to have.” That’s an exchange added for the show and it feels like another sign that the ASoIaF shows have come a long way in their politics and are, only now, catching up to where Martin was back in the late ’90s.  The Horned Lord Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The first episode deviates the most significantly from “The Hedge Knight” by having Dunk and Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) visit the pavilion of Ser Lyonel Baratheon, “the Laughing Storm” (Sex Education and The Crown’s Daniel Ings). While Ser Lyonel is an important character in the novella, the show is clearly expanding his role and giving him a lot more to do. It’s a welcome relief as Ings is delightful. Clearly channeling Peter Dinklage’s performance of Tyrion Lannister, he imbues Ser Lyonel with an uneasy, off-kilter mirth, as well as a queer energy that perfectly fits the scarce descriptions we have of him from Martin’s novella (just look at all the highly bisexual ways he sits in his pavilion chair).  Game of Thrones always struggled to portray the Baratheon house spirit. Part of this lies with the source material; the jovial and dangerous King Robert (Mark Addy) is already too far gone as a hapless drunk to show his previous fighting spirit by the time we meet him in the books, and Stannis (Stephen Dillane) is meant to be a grim reactionary figure, consciously molding himself into the opposite of his family’s reputation. The show also made Renly (Gethin Anthony) into a much more timid, nervous, and retiring figure in the show than he is in the books. But, with Ser Lyonel, we finally have a representation that fits in with the tales of young Robert and book-Renly. I personally can’t wait to see what they do with him.  Odds & Ends Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The episode is titled “The Hedge Knight” which, obviously, refers both to Dunk himself and the title of the first novella in the series. I’m sure there is some market-tested reason for this, but I do find it a little odd that the entire series is not called “The Hedge Knight.” Yes, it is specific to the first novella but Game of Thrones took its name from the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series and, man, is “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” a cumbersome title. I expect that there will be episodes named for the second and third novellas—The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight—in seasons two and three. To explain a bit more fully, a “hedge knight” is Martin’s term for the Westerosi equivalent of a ronin: an itinerant knight with no sworn fealty to any particular lord, so named because they sleep not under a castle roof but among the hedges. Martin probably takes the term from the historical concept of a “hedge witch” who practices without a coven, and he uses the terms “hedge witch” and “hedge wizard” in his books to refer to equally itinerant (and often disreputable) spellcasters and herbalists who operate outside of any official feudal capacity. The first twenty minutes take all dialogue almost word for word from The Hedge Knight. Even some of Dunk’s added lines are taken verbatim from his internal monologue. It’s a testament to how well GoT has accustomed folks to Martin’s particular brand of faux-Medieval speech patterns and worldbuilding that casual viewers hardly notice how stylized the dialogue can be.  In this lighter and more lyrical age of Westeros, we get some of Martin’s playful punnery about heraldic devices back. In lines cribbed directly from The Hedge Knight, the Fossoway cousins refer to one another in terms of the apples on their banners (Raymun is unripe, Steffon is rotten, etc). Martin seeds these sorts of fun, slightly cringe-y exchanges constantly throughout his books and while they were largely cut from both previous shows, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms feels like it has the right tone to bring them back.  The Dunk and Egg novellas are fairly cagey about whether or not Ser Arlan actually knighted Dunk. There are certainly clues in the original text—when Plummer (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Lord Ashford’s steward asks him if he was knighted, Dunk wonders if his ears are turning red. The show leans all the way in, making it all but text that Arlan never performed the ceremony. On the one hand, this clearly adds fuel to Dunk’s anxiety about being discovered as a fraud. On the other hand, because it’s well established, both in the books and shows, that any knight can bestow knighthood, the process is already murky and hard to prove. I’m not sure that the focus on Dunk’s definitive dishonesty about his status necessarily adds a lot to his character. Ser Arlan’s sword doesn’t have a penny embedded in the hilt in the books. In fact, the only understanding of “Pennytree” we get is a largely abandoned village that Jaime Lannister passes through in A Dance with Dragons, where he sees a dead tree with pennies nailed into the trunk. In general, both the mainline ASoIaF books and the original HBO series pay winking homage to Ser Duncan the Tall (with references to him going all the way back to the second episode of Game of Thrones). If you’re planning a GoT rewatch or reread at any point, there will be an extra layer of delight after this series is done.  This is a minor gripe, but Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), the Dornishwoman that Dunk goes misty-eyed for at the puppet show, is portrayed in the show as the emcee of the affair, narrating the story of Ser Serwyn of the Mirror Shield (an ancient Westerosi legend that might have a parallel in an upcoming season of House of the Dragon) while a gigantic and impressive dragon puppet breathes fire on stage. In the novella, her show is a much smaller affair, and she is a puppeteer rather than an actor. It feels like a change made exclusively to show off a much larger and more impressive dragon puppet. Obviously, with six hours to adapt 30,000 or so words, there is plenty of time to flesh out Tanselle as a character beyond the version we meet in the original story, but I do worry that the show is missing out on giving her a very specific and interesting technical skill. I always liked that part of Dunk’s infatuation with Tanselle is that they are both skilled, physical performers who rely on expert coordination in their respective trades.  Ser Manfred Dondarrion (Daniel Monks), the rakish lord who can’t be bothered to vouch for Dunk, is an ancestor of Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer), the Lightning Lord who leads the Brotherhood Without Banners in the original Game of Thrones series (and who gives up his life in the books to bring Catelyn Stark back from the dead). Additionally, there is a bit of fun worldbuilding in the exchange where Daisy says that Manfred claims he’s “hung like a Dornishman,” to which he responds that what he said was that he’s “hung Dornishmen.” The Dondarrions are what Martin deems “Marcher Lords”—that is, noble families from the border between the Reach and Dorne who are ever-bellicose when it comes to their neighbors to the South. Given that Daeron II, the current King of Westeros (who we almost assuredly won’t see in this series) only brought Dorne into the rest of the Westerosi Empire twenty-two years before the start of the show, people like Ser Manfred still remember Dorne as an enemy nation with whom Westeros was perpetually at war. The “Vulture King” that Dunk mentions to Ser Manfred is at least the fourth person to use that title. It is typically used by a self-styled king who rebels against the Targaryen crown from a stronghold in the mountains along the Dornish marches. Not only are vultures prevalent in the Red Mountains of Dorne but House Blackmont, one of the Dornish vassal houses, takes the scavenger bird as their sigil. The raids that killed the Vulture King referenced in AKot7K took place about three years before the start of the show.  One of the friends at my watch party (who has not read the novellas) noted that the show has real A Knight’s Tale vibes. And, yes. It really does. Given that A Knight’s Tale came out in 2001—a scant three years after The Hedge Knight was published—it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that writer/director Brian Helgeland had been at least partially inspired by Martin’s original text, along with its more obvious connection to the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. In Conclusion Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO I loved it. It’s a strong start to adapting what is probably the most fiercely adored entry in Martin’s Westeros books. Both Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell, who plays Egg (and was only nine at the time of filming) are fantastic, with an easy chemistry that perfectly replicates the sweet, buddy comedy vibes of the books. It also bodes well that the show is doing such a good job of striking a tone that balances humor and sincerity (two elements often missing from the original HBO show and House of the Dragon). The preview for the rest of the season looks like it will delve a bit deeper into Dunk’s backstory than the novellas do, and I have high hopes that the writers will take Martin’s text and run with it. Game of Thrones could never quite keep up with the amount of detail in Martin’s famously long and intricate novels, and House of the Dragon is always at its best when it is finding new angles to explore and more to say than Martin did in his bird’s-eye, historian’s view of the story in Fire and Blood. Speaking of Martin’s involvement, it’s good to see that he approves of this adaptation (if only because it’s of one of his best novellas), even if it is somewhat dismaying that he seems to be on the outs with Ryan Condal, the HotD showrunner (who I personally think is doing a fantastic job). But, whatever behind-the-scenes drama exists (and, of course, where Martin is involved, there will always be some amount of drama, given that it’s been fifteen years since the last ASoIaF novel), it’s wonderful to see another tale of Westeros being adapted with deep love for the original text and the enthusiasm to expand and deepen the on-screen world. There might come a day when I start to suffer from Game of Thrones fatigue (after all, there are so, so many spinoffs in the works), but it hasn’t arrived yet. House of the Dragon has been a resounding success and, if this first episode is to be taken as a sign of the rest of the season, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is going to be equally great.  But what do you think? If you haven’t read the Dunk and Egg novellas, are you excited for future episodes based on what you’ve seen so far? If you are a fan of The Hedge Knight and the other stories, do you think Parker and his team are doing justice to the source material? Can you believe that we haven’t even met the full roster of Targaryen princes yet? Let me know in the comments![end-mark] The post A Delightful Buddy Comedy Unfolds in <i>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms</i> appeared first on Reactor.