This article contains SPOILERS for the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premiere
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has begun, and there’s one pressing question for fans: Is Ser Duncan the Tall an actual knight?
The beginning of the new Game of Thrones prequel introduced viewers to Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), who had served under Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). The series follows “Dunk” as he tries to make his way through Westeros and takes on the young Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) as his squire.
It’s a good start, yet fans may be wondering if Duncan’s claim to knighthood is for real, since we never see it on screen and there were no witnesses. On the Official Game of Thrones post-show podcast, host Greta Johnson pressed showrunner Ira Parker on how we only have Duncan’s word that he was knighted by Arlan before the man died, and if he truly is a knight.
“You know, I think hopefully the bigger question we ask from that is ‘what does it really matter?'" Parker said. "If he was or he wasn’t...the official ceremony of saying, you know, ‘I pass on this knighthood to someone else,' a knight making another knight or a king making another knight, is that what makes a good knight? I think Dunk has had a very interesting set of experiences in his life. And obviously that has been corralled by Ser Arlan of Pennytree for a decade now.”
Parker seems to be arguing that even if Duncan was never technically knighted by Arlan, he should still be considered a knight by his experiences. It’s an intriguing idea about how Ser Duncan the Tall will have to prove himself against doubters.
Why Dunk truly can be considered a knight
Parker went on to add that just declaring yourself a knight isn’t enough. “It's not like it's any easy thing to do. It's not like anyone can just stand up and say 'I am a knight, here we go.' You need things. You need horses, you need armor, you need to be able to fight…These guys are professional fighters. You know, this is a guy who plays some basketball with his friends after school, all of a sudden dropping in to a tryout for the Lakers. And it’s a...'Oh yeah, right. That’s why people don’t do that very often, because they’re all going to get speared by Lyonel Baratheon.'”
It’s a good point, as Dunk clearly has some fighting skills you don’t earn without experience. Book readers have argued over whether he was knighted because of clues from Duncan’s own words that he may not have been. Yet his legend over the years has grown, to the point that many accept him as a knight, no matter if it was official or not.
Parker holds to the same idea that in the end, a knighthood is a title, but it's a knight's actions that prove their true mettle. “Hopefully what people take away from this first season, that Ser Arlan, he just tried to be a benefit to the people around him," he said. "I think that’s ultimately, hopefully, what it comes down to, whether or not you have the name and the arms and the armor...you don’t even have to be a good person, you don’t even have to be a moral person. But if you try and help out in the immediate vicinity, you don’t have to go off and change the entire course of history in the realm. You just have to help the guy next to you that's struggling at the moment. And I think Dunk...as we will see, sort of takes that as his guiding light, and you know, maybe gets him in a little bit of trouble.”
Thus, the viewer can expect A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms to prove that whether or not he was ever formally knighted, Ser Duncan the Tall will live up to that title as the show goes on.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms streams new episodes Sundays on HBO Max.