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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is kind of Game of Thrones for folks who hated Game of Thrones.
There's no magic, no dragons, no lore to memorize.
Plus, it's funny.
The HBO series may be set in the same fantasy world as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, but it's a small and kind of grounded story, a kind of medieval buddy comedy about a sweet but dim knight and his wise, beyond his years young squire just trying to make their way in a tough world.
I'm Glenn Weldon and today we're talking about A Night of the Seven Kingdoms on Pop Culture.
Happy Hour from NPR.
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Joining me today is NPR producer J.C.
Howard.
Hey there, J.C.
Hello.
I'm here to run my insolent mouth.
There we go.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Also with us is Nikki Birch.
She's a video producer for NPR Music and Visuals and also a co-host of the podcast A Thousand Eyes and One.
Hey, Nikki.
Good day to you, sirs.
Good day.
So A Night of the Seven Kingdoms takes place entirely in one teeny tiny corner of the continent of Westeros, where Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are largely set.
A young and very tall man named Dunk has spent his life squiring for a wandering knight who's just died.
Dunk is played by Peter Claffey.
He decides to enter a jousting tournament to prove himself a worthy knight, but he is hopelessly naive about the ruthless politics of the cruel world around him.
Enter Egg, played by Dexter Sol Ansel.
He's a bald-headed kid who's eager to be Dunk's squire and seems to know a great deal about knights.
Nerd.
What's your name?
Dunk.
Sir Dunk.
That's no name for a knight.
Is it short for Duncan?
Yes.
Sir Duncan of... Sir Duncan the Tall.
Never heard of him.
Do you know every knight in the Seven Kingdoms, then?
The good ones.
Egg also knows a surprising lot about the ruling houses of Westeros, one of which, the Targaryens, unexpectedly shows up to the tournament, and they're the same rich jerks they are on every other HBO show.
Dunk knows he's no match for the skills of the rich and powerful knights he'll compete against, but he's got a lot of heart.
Plus he's got Egg by his side.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of novellas by George R.R.
Martin.
It takes place after House of the Dragon, but before Game of Thrones.
It is airing on HBO, JC, winter is here, but it's kind of summer on the series.
So what'd you think?
First of all, let me just say, I loved it.
Unequivocally, with no reservation.
And it starts with the novella.
Like, I really loved the first novella.
And generally speaking, you can always count on a Game of Thrones show to be a sweeping epic.
You'll spend time in great halls with lords and ladies and soar with dragons and fight ice zombies.
You know, like the stuff of legends.
But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms asks the exact right question, which is what about the rest of Westeros?
Yeah.
What about the rest of them?
What happens when there's not a historic civil war going on?
What do the non-royals do when they're not being terrorized by Joffrey or some other tyrant or being burned alive by dragons?
And the thing that this series does is it answers the question, which is that they live.
They live lives that are much more scaled down.
They're decidedly grittier lives.
And yet far more hilarious.
You know, like not a self-serious dowager queen or a scheming master of whispers to be found.
Which is not to say that I don't love those bits about Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
I love that stuff as well.
But it's really refreshing to figure out what our hero does when they don't have world-class training or mountains of gold.
What happens when your hero is a guy who can't afford a belt?
Right.
And some kid that he meets in a barn.
You don't look to be a knight.
What, all knights look the same, do they?
No, but they don't look like you either.
Your belt's made of rope.
So long as it holds my scabbard, it serves.
Without highborn combat skills or being able to command respect or strike fear with a dragon.
They have nothing but good intentions and a sense of adventure.
The thing that I love about it mainly is that Dunk is not out to change history.
He's there to just be a knight.
And that's kind of the show we need right now.
Yeah.
Earn his place.
Yeah.
This is a show about just getting through it.
I like that about it.
That's right.
Keeping our head above water.
All right, Nikki, what'd you think?
Yeah, I've really loved it.
I am a huge fan of the novella, The Hedge Knight, which this season is based on.
And the thing I love the most about reading that is that every time I read it, I'm still surprised.
It's like the first time I have all the same anxieties.
And so I was looking forward to seeing those things play out in the show, and I think they do such a good job.
Like I was weepy.
I legit cried during a couple scenes because I couldn't believe they were like, seeing these things finally happen on the screen was just such a big deal for me.
And you know, speaking of it being stripped down, you know I'm always gonna talk about music.
The music person was Dan Roemer.
Everything in Game of Thrones is so grand and pompous.
There's all this fanfare.
And now we've got to kind of strip down.
It feels a little bit like you're at the Shire.
And I really love that switch.
Decidedly quieter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, much, much, much.
And it's like, well, this is probably what the common folk will do.
Like you're saying Dunk cannot even afford a sword belt.
And, you know, how many instruments might these people have?
It's just super simple and just so endearing.
And I really love how both of the characters were portrayed.
The actors did such a good job.
I actually saw them at Comic-Con.
I went to Comic-Con.
I went to a panel.
And George R.R.
Martin was there.
Ira Parker was there.
The show went out.
Amazing.
And Dexter Sol Ansel and Peter Clappy, all there.
And it was just wonderful to see how excited they were about the show and excited for other people to see it.
Yes.
Very good.
Very good.
You know, I didn't think I would like this, as much as I ended up liking it, because I like fantasy.
That's, you know, that's fantastic right.
Miss me with the kind of fantasy that is that reads like alt history, where you go to the trouble of building a world and then the world you build is just like our own.
It's as boring as ours.
What's the point of that?
And look, I think this is coming from the fact that I recapped both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon for NPR, for my sins.
And I heard, and I continue to hear, from so many people who seem to believe Build their personality around not liking something that's popular, right.
Particularly.
This is what was always struck in their craw the stuff about the shows.
That is fantastic the dragons, the magic.
I mean, I had work colleagues who shall remain nameless.
Stop me in the break room first thing in the morning and be like you know what, I don't care about.
Dragons.
Haters.
I just need to use the copier, dude.
And I kind of want to go back and find all those people who wrote to me and say, look, here you go.
Try this.
I personally miss the magic.
I miss the dragons.
I don't miss having to do homework.
But I love that.
This tone.
If it's going to be just some grubby knights beating the snot out of each other while they're hip deep in mud, give me this.
Give me character comedy.
Absolutely.
Give me lightness.
Give me something this small, this specific with very clear stakes.
They're not world shattering stakes, but they're very clear.
Give me, as you guys mentioned, point of view of commenters.
Give me short episodes, short seasons.
Yes, right.
30 minutes.
I was sad.
I wanted them to be longer.
No, no, no, no, no.
It wouldn't fit.
It wouldn't fit the tone.
But they did a good job.
Yeah.
Every episode, I was satisfied.
Well, see...
What Martin was doing with the novellas was trying to find little patches of lightness in the world, because certainly you come away from the books.
You come away from Thrones and House of the Dragon with a sense of this is an author who is trying to insist and show you just how cruel and unjust and malicious and brutal this world is, which is where the violence comes in, which is where the sexual violence comes in.
Just he's insisting that the medieval world was really that cruel.
And this is just a mirror to that which, of course, the only logical answer to that is dude, there are dragons.
Yeah.
You put dragons in here.
You put prophecies.
You put witches who are giving birth to shadow demons.
What's the real project here?
How realistic do we need to be?
Exactly.
What are we doing here?
And does the fact that every episode of Thrones and House of the Dragon stops dead to take a detour through the bowels of a pleasure den is that, because of your commitment to this BS notion of verisimilitude and authenticity,
Or do you maybe just like boobs, George?
You don't have to predicate it.
It was a major part of the economy.
Sure.
This is what I want to ask you about.
Now, while the show doesn't suffer from a lot of Martin's usual kind of writerly ticks I guess you'd call them it does double down on others.
The only women that this show cares about, that give speaking parts to, are sex workers and love interests.
And those love interests not a spoiler to say they never get to be much more than plot devices, because what happens to them is used to kind of trigger our hero into action.
Yeah.
Which makes sense.
I mean, the guy's literally a white knight.
So it's kind of in the job description.
Did that bounce you out of the show at all?
Did you just roll with it?
You know, George going to George.
How'd that aspect of the show grab you guys?
It didn't bother me, because I mean probably because I know the books and also the women who are mentioned in the books.
Like.
The only time you actually hear something from a woman in the novella is from Tanzil.
Tanzil, Tutal and The Innkeeper.
That's it.
That's it.
You know like adding Lord Ashford's daughter who, for whom the tourney is being thrown in the first place.
That was a twist.
Didn't see that coming.
Okay, cool.
It's the birthday girl.
Here she is.
Three lines, but okay.
Right.
Just to say though, I loved the addition of her because like she had total main character energy.
Like this was about her.
And yet, like I watched the second episode and just the look on Dunk's face after she talks to him in that second episode, he's like I don't know who you are.
That's so perfect to me, the humor in this show.
You're making stupid.
Yeah, no.
And I think what's interesting about the women, when they do get the lines that they get to say, is that maybe because they're sex workers, maybe because it's an innkeeper, they get to speak the truth.
Yeah.
You know, the thing that stands out to me about the innkeeper, she's like I don't know that anything that's been happening with the royals and the nobles has ever changed the price of eggs.
Yeah.
That's what matters to me.
Not to build the same as other men.
And I never knew a joust to change the price of eggs.
Topical.
Figure out the pulse.
Yeah, absolutely.
Can relate.
It is a relief to have a character like Dunk, who is exactly the kind of character who would get fed into the meat grinder on those other shows.
100%.
He is experiencing, I wouldn't call them victories, little tiny, like, not failures.
Which means there's a lightness here.
There is a lack of that incessant grim brutality, though there is violence.
Now, the critical response to this has been mostly positive.
The negative responses I've seen is they don't know who the show is for because of that lightness.
It seems YA to them.
How would you react to that?
Interesting.
I got to say that there are two reasons that the show works so well.
And it's not rocket science.
The two reasons are Dunk and Egg.
You've built the novellas around them, and you've built this show around them.
Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansel, they settle into these roles so well.
It feels like they were born to play them.
Dunk is obviously this oafish and naive... Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall.
Dunk the Lunk, right?
But he so badly wants to be honorable.
And I think the best thing about his performance is that...
When he takes a knightly tone with Egg, when he tells him to close his insolent mouth, it's very clear that he's just saying things that he's heard knights say.
He's saying things that Sir Arlen said to him.
His words... fit his vocabulary like a suit that's too big.
It's so charming and sympathetic.
Then you have Egg.
Who is, I mean, just what a character, first of all, and what a kid, what a performer.
He's got a tall order to fill because he has to be precocious and whip smart and impulsive.
Exactly, that vulnerability.
Dunk and egg for president and vice president.
Like, this show, anyone who's questioning, like, who is this show for?
It's for me.
I'm into it.
I love it.
It's for me, too.
It's for us.
You know, I think the best thing that I noticed about Dunk is he only has one example of a night that he spent time with right.
He was a squire for Sir Arlen, who nobody knows.
But...
He learned to be honorable.
He learned to embody all the O's because that's what he saw throughout the season.
He's coming up against, well, wait a second.
You guys are all knights.
I thought you were supposed to be respectful and honorable and protective and all these things.
And he keeps getting disappointed by seeing what the reality is.
And there was something really cute that I noticed that happened in the scene as he's trying to find his direction, like literally he would be standing there and like leave a conversation or situation and then turn one way and be like, oh no, I have to go the other way.
And it happens several times throughout the show.
And I love George R.R.
Martin for this type of stuff, because even in the novellas, he's foreshadowing so much.
And I think that there's a big nod to the book nerds in the words that he's putting in other people's mouths.
You know, there's like little book Easter eggs.
Yeah.
I mean, this is basically a two-hounder, right?
This is Dunkin' Egg.
And if the Dunkin' Egg relationship doesn't work, The show doesn't work.
And I think it really works.
And I think what people might be picking up on with the YA stuff is that one of those two hands is a kid, so they're just jumping to the conclusion it's YA.
It's not.
What it is, though, let's mention, let's get to this.
It's incredibly faithful to the book.
Yes.
Pretty much all the dialogue is pretty much verbatim.
The only thing that's really added is stuff that works, which is all the stuff with Lionel Baratheon played by Daniel Ings.
Yeah, yeah.
Holy moly.
Oh, my God.
Love, most likely to make you break curfew.
Yes.
Absolutely.
So the books are very slim.
So the test to the show is what does it decide to build out?
Because it has to build out something.
And it builds out character stuff.
Baratheon is charming.
So nice.
He's drunk.
He's brave.
Not too brave.
And that's a great sign.
Because that suggests to me that the creators aren't trying to depart from the books and create these ancillary, unnecessary B, C and D plots.
What they're doing instead is digging into the books and finding stuff that deepens the characterizations, like they did with Brath.
Yeah.
Laughing Storm.
I think there's that moment where Dunk is in his tent and they're hanging out.
And Lionel's like, hello.
Do you belong?
And Dunk is like, oh, no, I can't.
I came for the food.
Yeah, I came for dinner.
You've come for my head then.
What?
Boss?
No.
No.
Then why the f*** are you in my tent?
It's all suppers.
I love that moment because Baratheons, historically like whether you're thinking about, like Stannis, Robert and Renly, They like the truth.
They like people to be up front with them.
As long as you shoot straight with them, they're cool with you.
And I love that you got to see that because the Baratheons, that's a party fraternity.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think one of the cool things about this as a prequel slash, sequel I guess it's kind of both is that by and large, there aren't those connections to the characters.
I mean, obviously there are Targaryens, there are Baratheons, but there's no connections to actual characters that you see in the other shows, which makes the show more nimble.
Because it's not burdened with exposition.
This isn't Star Wars or Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings.
You don't need to remember all these things from another story and keep an eye out for references for later on or whatever.
Except for some nerd bits in upcoming episodes.
So there is plenty for folks who want to go lore diving, but you don't need a 30-minute YouTube video to explain what you need to know before you go into this show.
The show is what the show is.
It could be a single-screen experience.
You don't need a wiki open on your phone.
That's right.
As you're talking about how faithful the script is and the show to the text, I found myself repeating verbatim.
I'm narrating the story along with them because I know those words so well.
And I loved that.
I think they masterfully – like switch some of the lines.
Like the story is a lot of like inside of Dunk's head and they took a lot of his words and they sometimes gave them to other characters.
And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys did such a great job.
I never thought to do that.
And I think, like some of the things that Egg said, that Dunk actually says in the book, it fits Egg because it's got that same level of like innocence and naivete and like hopefulness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My favorite shift is a lot of the stuff Dunk says to himself in the book.
He says to his horses in the show.
Yeah.
It's characterization.
That's what I mean.
We're not sad.
Certainly not rising to the level of a cum is sad.
Besides, Sir Alan always said that a hedge knight was the truest kind of knight.
Do horses get nominated for Emmys because...
Sweetfoot needs one.
Yeah.
And one of the themes of the show is that all this stuff about honor and selflessness, it's kind of BS.
But if everybody buys into it, it's not.
Right.
It's like it's an ideal.
And if everybody else is just paying lip service to it and one character is actually committed to it fully, then that's the character we love.
I mean, that's the guy that's the guy we want to hang around.
Yeah.
And you see that with Egg.
You know, here's somebody who is like such a night nerd and he can tell you, like you know, who's from this place and whether or not they want attorney.
But he's sitting at the fire and like looking at Dunk, and there's this moment where he's like, oh my God, this guy's got nothing.
But he's speaking to me like he's got the whole world and that he can provide it.
And I love that.
He gets to look up to somebody who's a nobody.
Yeah.
Speak.
Nice.
As we tape this, the second season is in production.
There's probably going to be a third.
I have a feeling this is going to do very well.
I'm going to gather from context clues that you guys are all in for seasons two and three to get them.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can safely say that.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The sworn sword and the mystery knight given to me.
Yeah.
Well, I think we are all in on this.
We want to know what you think about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH.
And a reminder, we are pulling back the curtain and letting pop culture happen.
Plus supporters sit in virtually on a live episode taping.
They'll get to see how the show is made and experience this episode before everyone else, and we'll be talking about something Oscars-related, which is one of our favorite topics anyway.
It's all happening over Zoom on Friday, February 13th at 3 p.m.
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If you are already a Plus supporter, thank you very much.
And scroll back in your feed to January 22nd to learn how to register for the taping.
And that brings us to the end of our show.
JC Howard, Nikki Birch, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you for having us.
And Glenn, thank you for not giving me a clout in the air.
Appreciate it.
I mean, you know.
Big of you.
Maybe next season.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Halokamon provides our theme music.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.
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