Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Seven’
We open on the stars. A vast sky full of them, glittering and gleaming with clusters and constellations. Then the light slowly brightens, and we see that we aren’t stargazing after all. We’re looking at torchlight, as reflected on the slimy rock of a dungeon cell, where a common-born young man named Dunk has been dumped after an altercation with a prince of the realm in defense of a damsel in distress.
His clothes are tattered. He is hungry. His only friend at the moment is a waterlogged rat he befriends through the bars of his cell window.
Whether that deceptive celestial display was meant to represent Dunk’s internal point of view or was simply a trick of the camera, it is reminiscent of the Oscar Wilde quote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” This week’s episode of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” — which began streaming on HBO Max a few days early because of the Super Bowl — illustrates that however low his circumstances, Ser Duncan the Tall has loftier vision than almost all of his supposed betters.
There are exceptions, of course. Egg, Dunk’s squire — excuse me, Aegon Targaryen, prince of the realm and blood of the dragon — apologizes profusely for deceiving Ser Duncan about his status. He was supposed to squire for his drunken brother, Prince Daeron (Henry Ashton), who had neither the desire nor the requisite sobriety to compete. Aegon saw in Dunk an opportunity to fulfill his dream of tourney glory after all, and to help out a man in need.
Much of Dunk’s initial anger with Egg stems clearly from embarrassment. Ser Duncan is a man who has been mocked and made a fool of many times. Naturally, his reflexive reaction is that Egg’s entire squire routine has been more of the same, pulling the wool over the eyes of a stupid hedge knight. But when brought before Prince Baelor for judgment, Dunk lets the boy off the hook, telling the stern but kind heir to the Iron Throne that he knows Egg meant no harm.
The conversation that follows is a fascinating one. While always respectful of Baelor’s superior rank, Ser Duncan treats the prince as he would any other knight. Baelor, to his credit, returns the favor, never once pulling rank. Still, sympathetic though he is to Ser Duncan’s plight, it’s his hard duty to inform Dunk that he must stand trial for striking a royal. What’s more, Ser Duncan learns from Baelor that Prince Daeron has falsely accused him of having kidnapped Egg from the inn where they met. A traditional trial seems likely to end very poorly for Dunk.
A trial by combat, in which innocence is assigned to whoever survives a contest of arms, would literally give Ser Duncan a fighting chance. At Baelor’s behest, Duncan demands such a trial, as is his right as a knight. But Prince Aerion turns the tables on him. He invokes an ancient custom called a trial of seven, so that instead of single combat, Dunk must field a seven-man team to face off against seven “accusers” led by Aerion.
If Dunk can’t come up with enough men to back him by the dawn deadline, it’s as good as a guilty verdict. He’ll lose a hand and a foot for striking and kicking a Targaryen. Any knight who joins his cause risks bringing down the wrath of the dragon.
Even so, he finds himself surrounded by people who are willing to help. His friend Raymun Fossoway’s jerk of a cousin, Ser Steffon, vows to take his side and rally other knights to the cause. Egg promises to do the same out of hatred for his older brother, who sexually abused the boy and drowned his pet cat. Neither revelation comes as a surprise.
The friendly armorer, Steely Pate, donates a beautifully refurbished shield to Ser Duncan for peanuts. It is decorated with the gorgeous elm tree and shooting star sigil that Tanselle, the woman he risked his life to defend, painted for him before she very wisely fled for safety. The gift brings tears to Dunk’s eyes; it brought them to mine, too.
At dawn, Dunk arrives at the edge of the tourney grounds, now cleared to make room for the melee to come. There he finds the men who have agreed to fight alongside him: his pal Ser Lyonel Baratheon; the supposedly mad one-eyed warrior, Ser Robyn Rhysling (William Houston); and the talented tourney knights Ser Humfrey Beesbury (Danny Collins) and Ser Humfrey Hardyng (Ross Anderson), who broke his leg when Aerion impaled his horse during their joust.
But all of these knights have been gathered together by Egg, not Ser Steffon. The elder Fossoway betrays Ser Duncan, instead joining Aerion’s side and leaving Dunk two men short. His cousin Raymun volunteers to fight in his place if Dunk will knight him. The hedge knight freezes, unwilling or unable to swear his friend into service.
When Dunk is summoned to speak with Lord Ashford (Paul Hunter), a pitiful guy who literally picks up Aerion’s table scraps, Ser Lyonel raises Raymun to knighthood instead. He does it in glorious slow motion that both adds grandeur and builds tension. In similarly high style, Dunk has a vision of Ser Arlan watching him approvingly … then shrugging at him as if to say, “Beats me how you get out of this one, kid.”
Dunk now needs one last knight, or the trial is forfeit. That man proves hard to find.
“Has courage deserted the noble houses of Westeros?” he shouts. “I will not believe it is so. Are there no true knights among you?”
The desperate cry of Ser Duncan the Tall rings out through the misty grounds of Ashford Meadow. The lords and knights assembled there, who have greeted his entreaties with either silence or mockery, have given him little cause to hope for an affirmative answer beyond his belief in the values he and they have sworn to uphold. Bravery, justice, the defense of the innocent: This moral code means something to Dunk, though he is just a lowly hedge knight. Indeed it means everything to him. He has nothing else.
There is one true knight who heeds Ser Duncan’s call. Prince Baelor himself rides to Dunk’s aid, as the composer Ramin Djawadi’s familiar, rousing score from “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon” swells. The effect is like a mainline injection of pure heroic fantasy. A gallant prince against an evil one, dragon versus dragon, with the life of a humble hedge knight and the sanctity of the system of morality they all purport to share hanging in the balance? Cue those swirling strings!
Two half-hour episodes remain in the show’s short first season. (It was renewed before it even debuted.) With the combatants already on the field, it feels as if we’re headed for a penultimate episode in the grand “Game of Thrones” tradition, a wall-to-wall battle, followed by an final episode of wrap-up with an eye toward the future. It’s an exciting feeling: I have never quite forgiven “Shogun” or “House of the Dragon” Season 2 for teasing battles that never arrived. (Or won’t until the next season, anyway.) That won’t be an issue here.
But it’s more than the prospect of combat that moves me. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is a decency fantasy, a term coined by the comics critic Tom Spurgeon to refer heroic narratives that privilege kindness, cooperation, competence and the fundamental humanity of their heroes over individualistic derring-do or edgy anti-heroism.
Ser Duncan may or may not survive his trial of seven (though the show’s renewal feels like a tip-off). But in the same way that he most likely saved Tanselle’s life by putting himself between her and her attacker, his allies Prince Baelor, the newly minted Ser Raymun, the jocular glory hound Ser Lyonel and the others are all volunteering to try to do the same for him. It’s as if justice were contagious, spread whenever even an ordinary person like Dunk proves willing to defend the defenseless.
The post ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Is There No True Knight? appeared first on New York Times.
