A Book Reader’s Hopes for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1

This article contains spoilers for The Hedge Knight and therefore the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

George R.R. Martin is best known for huge fantasy tomes, so huge that he’s now unable to finish them. And yet, page-for-page, word-for-word, some of his best work isn’t the increasingly weighty novels in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, now delivery mechanisms for complex backstory rather than story, and endless descriptions of food, but rather his short stories, or novellas, set in that same fantasy world. HBO’s television adaptation of his first ‘Dunk & Egg’ story is just weeks away, titled for the screen as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and reading the story, The Hedge Knight, for the first time in a decade was a reminder of just how great Martin and Westeros can be.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms can succeed by embracing what makes it stand apart from the other shows adapted from Martin’s work. Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are huge epic tales while these stories very much are not. Marketing material has been driving home the point that the new show will be grounded, featuring regular folk, far from fantasy locations and set in a time without dragons. This is great but it’s also just one of the differences.

I hope A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fully embraces the point of that first story: honour and nobility. We’re used to backstabbing in this world, treachery, and it’s going to be great to focus on a true hero again, not seen since Ned Stark still had a head on his shoulders. Duncan is completely decent, far from the typical protagonist of these shows. Even the Targaryens are presented differently here. They are much more varied, much more like regular people, even more so than in House of the Dragon. Some are brutal, arrogant, ‘blood of the dragon’ silver-haired-and-purple-eyed members of the family, sure, but then some are regular-looking and honourable and understanding, others drunkards. If A Song of Ice and Fire is Martin turning fantasy storytelling into something fully realised and grounded, then The Hedge Knight is the story that fully humanises his remaining fantastical elements.

This is a sweeter, nicer, and simpler story than what we’ve seen before in Westeros. And that’s its strength. A smaller story told well is all it needs to be. I know the Dunk and Egg stories will expand, not only with the two others published but the several that currently only exist in Martin’s notebooks. I imagine they’ll always stay there but if the show is successful maybe we’d get multiple seasons, spanning decades, leading to the fateful events at Summerhall. But that can all be worked out later, and I hope these early stories can be kept basic, adapted as pretty much standalone adventures.

Reading the story, I was struck by how colourful everything was described as. I really want to see this onscreen, although the trailers make it clear this is a pipe dream. Yes, it’s a muddy tourney in a churned-up field but there’s so much colour in the book. Tents and heraldry, painted shields everywhere. I fear the show will be grey in comparison, bare wood and steel. Because this is a lighter story, frequently funny, I want to see that reflected in the visuals rather than just the tone. The different Game of Thrones shows need to look and feel different, but visually A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms does look too close to its kin.

The least the filmmakers can do is shoot the series in new ways. Embrace a fresh style. One of my favourite passages of Martin’s is Dunk’s thought process as he’s charging during his joust in the Trial of Seven, and the following fight. The claustrophobic helmet and armour, the mud blinding him, everything seeming to go in slow motion. I would love some POV shots, some slow motion, to really make it a subjective sequence that we haven’t quite seen before in these shows. I think subjectivity is the key to these stories. They are not huge historical tapestries depicting events from multiple perspectives like Game of Thrones. This is Dunk’s story: I want to see it through his eyes.

Away from maesters and historical records, the past is what people claim it to be. The novella has characters tell different versions of the same events, past tourneys detailed differently depending on the storyteller, like the joust because Baelor and Arlan. I’d love the show to embrace this, present it in two different flashbacks. The Hedge Knight reveals the origin story for the Dondarrion sigil, purple lightning on a sea of stars. Instead of telling us about it, I want the series to show us this moment, a flashback, real or not, to the mythic moment. Expand the storytelling options beyond the straightforward way Game of Thrones told its story.

I’m curious to see how the show handles the twist surround Egg’s true identity. Yes, the stableboy-turned-squire is actually Aegon Targaryen and yes, it’s painfully obvious. Once there’s the first mention of a missing Targaryen child in the book it’s obvious it’s Egg and I imagine it’ll be just as obvious in the show. The difference is the novella is so short, easily digested in one or two sittings, while in the show I imagine it’ll take weeks until the reveal, probably coming at the end of the third episode.

This does make me question whether it’s worth being a mystery in the show at all. Should it be revealed to the viewer immediately, or at the end of the first episode, but Duncan (sweet, innocent, naïve, kinda dumb Duncan, thick as a castle wall) doesn’t learn the truth until the same moment he does in the book? I’m torn but think I come down on the side of keeping it a mystery, obvious or not, just to make it feel like we’re on this adventure fully with Dunk, lame ‘twist’ be damned. I’m sure many viewers will know Egg’s identity from the start anyway if they know even the basics of the story.

Just how slight The Hedge Knight is as a story is what has maybe delayed adaptation until now. It could be a movie, TV or on the big screen, but a series? I am surprised that it’s six episodes, but I imagine they’ll be shorter than an hour each. Honestly, I think I’d rather shave a couple of episodes from this series and add them to House of the Dragon, which has so much ground to cover in just two more eight-episode seasons. But with six I hope the show has a grasp on what to expand and what to leave simple. I don’t need more focus on Daeron’s dreams with a whole subplot about how he sees events of Game of Thrones or anything like that. Keep the narrative cone of vision constricted on Dunk and Egg while maybe fleshing out side characters like the Fossoway cousins a little more, especially since the choices they make at the end of the story come out of nowhere in the book. Martin’s novella could have used more character insight and less discussion of heraldry.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms can afford to be a direct adaptation of Martin’s story. That should please fans of the author and take the pressure off House of the Dragon, which will have to change things in order to tell its remaining story in just sixteen episodes. It’ll be great to spend time in that world without having to worry about huge stakes, where the heroes win by being heroic and are a joy to root for. And even better: it’s already renewed for season 2, the next short story ready for adaptation, hopefully made before Egg’s actor has to shave his face as well as his head.