Years from now, in the White Sword Tower of King’s Landing, a book gathering dust since the days of the Conqueror will recount the great deeds of Ser Duncan The Tall (Peter Claffey). As we learned in season four of Game Of Thrones, he racks up four full pages in the Kingsguard’s White Book—an allotment of glory few knights of the realm can ever hope to claim. (Sorry, Ser Jaime.) Ser Duncan’s rowdy exploits at Ashford Meadow won’t be chronicled in this tome, though people will sing laments about his Trial Of Seven, which claimed the life of Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), the Hand Of The King and heir to the Iron Throne. The lowly hedge knight called Dunk survived a trial by combat foisted on him by Prince Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett). Prince Baelor, from whom much was hoped, did not.
“The Morrow,” directed by Sarah Adina Smith and written by Ti Mikkel and series creator Ira Parker, mourns Baelor “Breakspear” in a minor key and a sideways glance. It begins with bluesy horns, as Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings) checks on Ser Dunk, who sulks under his elm pavilion like a wounded mastiff. Wine is sipped, sage is burnt, yet the day beckons—as does home, where life pales before the excitement of a good tourney. “Shame it’s all over,” Ser Lyonel laments, his maester fumbling at Dunk’s bandages. “Home [is] brutally dull.” That’s Storm’s End, the seat of House Baratheon, where Dunk could find comfort and security as a sworn knight, hawking, hunting, and making merry with a knight who’d love him like a brother. “I’ll sharpen that iron of yours so you don’t make such a grand fool of yourself next time,” Lyonel promises, leaping up for a piss. It’s a grand offer, and indeed, everything Dunk rode to Ashford for. And it arrives just as he decides he wants none of it.
In six exceptionally well-crafted episodes, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms has explored what identity means in a world where position dictates who thrives and who suffers. In a bold break from the books, it is revealed (in a much shorter flashback than last week‘s) that Ser Arlan Of Pennytree (Danny Webb) taught Dunk decency and how to wield a sword, but never formally knighted him. Dunk is a knight in name only, a fact none know and few suspect. Still, the chivalric virtues of the Seven shaped Dunk as he grew beyond Flea Bottom. He remains committed to those vows, whether he said them before the gods or not. It’s why Baelor sided with him over his own blood, why Lyonel rallied to his cause: Aerion forgot these vows, but Ser Duncan never did. “I need good men,” Prince Baelor said to him just before he died. He was speaking for the realm.
Ser Lyonel objects to Dunk’s lament for Baelor and notes, rightfully, that his choice to fight for the hedge knight—noble (and awesome) as it was—was a strategy. The Kingsguard in Aerion’s Six were oath-bound not to harm their prince, and Ser Steffon Fossoway (Edward Ashley) wouldn’t dare imperil his newly minted lordship by striking the Hand. That left only Baelor’s family, Princes Maekar (Sam Spruell) and Daeron (Henry Ashton), who loved him. “He risked nothing!” Lyonel booms. “And the gods don’t favor a fraud.”
Ser Duncan faked his knighthood until he made it, and people died. If the gods punish frauds, then why, as Prince Valarr (Oscar Morgan) puts it, would they only take Baelor? Why spare Dunk? It’s interesting that the next scene following this identity crisis is a visit with Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) and his blushing new bride, Rowan (Rowan Robinson), the camp follower whom Dunk saw slinking around Ser Manfred Dondarrion (Daniel Monks) earlier in the tourney. Convinced he’s knocked her up (quick work if true), Raymun marries Rowan into the Green Apple branch of House Fossoway. She’s remade herself under the cover of a useful lie, and Raymun, the poor sap, is too smitten to look closer. Rowan’s smooches are her strategy, just like Baelor’s gambit on the tourney grounds and Dunk’s sad ruse since Ser Arlan died.
These choices raise fascinating questions that aren’t easy to answer. What is a lie if it produces virtue? Where does necessity end and rot begin? Dunk struggles under the weight of this morality. The only thing holding him up is a stubborn sense of duty and that humble elm crutch of his. It’s sturdy enough to deliver him before Prince Maekar, who, in a scene steeped in tragic irony, simultaneously resents Dunk, regrets his brother’s death, and wants nothing but the best for his unruly son, Prince Aegon, known to Dunk as Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). “Will you take him?” Maekar asks, offering a place for him at the Targaryen castle Summerhall, where he’d master combat and take on Egg as his squire. With his trial decided, the highest doors in all the realm swing open. But this outcome has changed what he wants from life, even if he, too, cares about Egg’s future. “I think I’m done with princes,” he tells Maekar, half-heartedly.
Dunk would be wise to leave House Targaryen behind him, with all their madness and betrayals, fire and blood. It was fire that drove Maekar’s swing: He saw his son in danger and fought like a dragon to save him, stoving in his brother’s head and changing the course of kings. It’s like Daeron explains to Dunk during the wake for Sers Hardyng and Beesbury: His house sows madness early. Aerion was once, he says, a “glad child” before royalty’s iron machinery bent his mind toward cruelty. What might a Targaryen boy grow up to be free from banners and succession? As Dunk mulls this question, Egg ponders a few of his own, noting in his reflection that his fine silver hair is coming back in, this cherished new identity as “Egg” ready to be devoured by that ancient Targaryen darkness.
That’s why A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms is so successful thematically: It flirts with the Martinian abyss, yet its characters thrive just outside its pull. For today, anyway. Egg does not kill Aerion, but instead turns his blade on his own reflection, defiantly cleaning his bald head for the adventures yet to come. While his father forbids his decision, Prince Aegon V Targaryen sheds his royal colors for humbler duds and returns to the service of the hedge knight he admires so. With Egg at his side once more, Duncan rides Thunder a touch taller, less haunted, and more optimistic than he’s ever been. Ser Arlan was a good man; Ser Dunk might be a great one. As Dunk and Egg amble down a new path unburdened by the obligation of memory, the book remains thrillingly unwritten—and, as Ser Arlan says, a true knight always finishes his story. So, what will the morrow bring?
Stray observations
- • It’s awesome how every knight who participated in the trial is seen limping around looking like fresh death. Knighthood is not for the feeble.
- • Ser Lyonel to Dunk: “Have you ever been to Tarth?”
- • Prince Valarr: “Plenty of sons have died in their father’s armor. How many fathers have died in their son’s?” Would Baelor have survived Maekar’s blow in a larger helmet? Potential outcomes are fun to speculate on in this world, but I’d rather use this space to note that we finally got a decent look at Valarr’s white Targaryen streak through his dark hair, inherited from his Dornish grandmother.
- • A great use of symbolic parallelism: Daeron remembers Aerion’s fondness for fishing cuts to Egg’s dinner, a fish with a knife put through its center.
- • A troubling and poetic scene: Egg slips into Aerion’s chambers with a knife, an inversion of the terror Aerion once visited upon him. And there, in the darkness, is Maekar, who notably does not take the knife from his son or chastise him for what he planned to do. Maekar understands this heat between brothers and what it can grow into.
- • Let’s hear it for poor Gwin Ashford, who had the worst birthday celebration in the Reach since the Field Of Fire.
- • “Are you mad?” “Is that relevant?”
Jarrod Jones is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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