I admit that I was a lot iffier about this than I expected to be. A
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms should have been my most anticipated show
of the year. Instead, it was hovering behind Fallout, Star Trek:
Starfleet Academy, and even House of the Dragon. Which is
strange because I am a huge George R.R. Martin apologist. I don’t care
that the series is unfinished or that I disliked season eight heavily.
No, I am a ride or die for Westeros and love the Dunk and Egg series of
novellas. I anticipate them more than The Winds of Winter.
No, I was afraid of the very common feeling of fans who have a
beloved property being adapted – I was afraid of them ****ing it up.
Yes, that was exactly how I felt with less asterisks to cover up the
swearing. The shadow of Game of Thrones season eight hung heavily in the air and I wasn’t entirely fond of the alterations done for House of the Dragon season two. Very few people treat Martin’s work with the fidelity it deserves. Would this? It turns out, yes, yes they did.
So what is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms about? Well, a
hedge knight named Dunk (Peter Claffey) is the squire of a sixty year
old warrior named Arlan of Pennytree. This being Westeros, Arlan dies of
a chill and Dunk decides to take up his mantle as a poor mercenary that
is going to risk it at all at a nearby tournament. There he meets a
young boy named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), takes him as a squire, and soon
finds himself offending the powerful before deciding on what sort of
knight he should be.
In a very real way, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms shows
that Westeros can be done on the downscale with most of the story taking
place from Dunk’s perspective and not really moving from the Ashford
setting. Compared to all the super-expensive dragons and massive sets,
it manages to tell a story that encaptures everything that makes the
setting wonderful. In the end, it was always about the characters and
their complicated choices.
The story feels a little stretched across six episodes and the
additional content is something that tends to drag down the rest of the
material. Would this have been a better two and a half hour movie over
the three hour season? Tough call because I am very glad to have a new
series but there really wasn’t enough story for this. The fact it came
out as fantastic as it did, though, means this is a small complaint.
Part of what I think makes the story work so good is it is a reminder
that George R.R. Martin’s reputation for nihilism and grimdark is
somewhat exaggerated. The only reason people think this is because we’re
in the Empire Strikes Back portion of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Dunk is a great believer in heroism, honor, and chivalry but that’s
because he’s outside the system. The contrast between those who know
it’s all talk and the person who believes in it is the source of ninety
percent of the conflicts.
The smaller scale of the story doesn’t hurt the show nearly as much
as you might think. However, the allusions to things like the Blackfyre
Rebellion, Dornish Marches, and other activities make the world feel
much bigger than is shown. It makes me greedy for more seasons of this
show and kind of wish that we’d done a season of the first three stories
even though so much would have been lost in the process.
Peter Claffey’s earnest performance really is what sells this story
but the supporting cast is all memorable and I came to love both the
Laughing Storm (Daniel Ings) and Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas). The
Targaryens are also given far less screen time than House of the Dragon
but all of them give us a sense of both why their house has endured but
also why it’s in slow decline to irrelevance. The show implies a lot
more resentment against the “incestuous aliens” than I think is
appropriate but it does give a feel that their end is coming.
The depiction of Westeros is a much more stable place than in the main universe and more colorful. Robert's tournament felt too small and Viserys' tournament felt too big but this definitely gets the carnival-like atmosphere that I've always wanted for them. Even so, we've got so much hidden resentment and hatred going on that you can see where the seeds of Robert's Rebellion will spring from (and that was undoubtedly intentional).
Little touches like the fact that the houses really commit to their iconography (the constant apple puns of the Fossaways, the bee-themed coffin of the Beesbury's, and Dunk getting large amounts of tree mockery once he takes it as his coat of arms) are the kind of thing Martin loved but the shows downplayed outside of the Targaryens. Martin is a master of wordplay that really just disappears from the adaptations more often than not.
Of the additions to the show from outside the books, I'd say that I think Maekar's portrayal is far more nuanced and he goes from a somewhat one-dimensionally gruff man to a loving father tormented by his own failures as well as blindness to how bad his children are. I don't care much for the flashback to Flea Bottom or attempts to elevate Ser Arlan into a superman, though, even in Dunk's memories. Red the Harlot is great, though, and I wish her great luck with her ending in the show.
In conclusion, I like the action and the setting as well as the smaller focus. Will we get to the She-Wolves of Winter
before Martin writes it? Maybe, maybe not, but this goes a long way to
reminding me of just how much I love the setting. I love many fantasy
settings but Westeros will always have a place in my heart and these
lower stakes stories are the things I’d love to see more of.
