HBO returns to the world of Game of Thrones with this gritty new prequel series
If you are due for a dose of Westeros, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms arrives to tide you over until House of the Dragon returns for season three. In George R.R. Martin’s prequel series to Game of Thrones, which takes place about 80 years after the conclusion of Dragon and approximately 90 years before GoT, we follow Ser Duncan the Tall (“Dunk,” played by former rugby player Peter Claffey) and his squire Aegon Targaryen (“Egg,” played by Dexter Sol Ansell), before they claim their roles as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and the future King Aegon V.
This time around, unlike the pomp and circumstance of the show that started it all, we see Westeros from the perspective of the common people. “I hope that it makes an excellent entry point for people who did not come to Game of Thrones the first time or the second time,” says series co-creator Ira Parker . “Partly because we’re fairly simple and straightforward in our approach — we have one POV character in Ser Duncan the Tall — and it allows people a little bit more clarity as to what we’re following.“ Dunk is also a lot gentler than your average GoT character. “He’s earnest, he’s honest and he has a lot of self-doubt and anxieties, which hopefully people will recognize from their own journeys in their own lives,” says Parker. “He’s just a kid with a silly dream who wants to go out and be a knight, but he doesn’t quite know how to achieve that.”
When it came to adapting Martin’s book series, Tales of Dunk and Egg, what Parker and Martin wanted to maintain from the text was the vulnerability of the two main characters. “When they first meet each other, I think these two characters are actually quite lonely,” says Parker. “I’m not sure they completely recognize it as that. Obviously Dunk has just lost his longtime mentor and the only person in the whole world who even knows he exists. And we find Egg in a different sort of loneliness. He’s been a bit abandoned and he’s a bit aimless. When the two of them come together, there’s something subconscious about the reason that they seek each other out.”
To Parker, the series is ultimately about finding your family. “This whole story is about the different nature of how families are made,” he says. “This relationship is, at its core, a knight and a squire, a mentor and mentee, a master and apprentice. But also, a father and son.” While Dunk’s relationship with his own mentor was complicated, he viewed Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb) as a father figure, and seeks, maybe even unintentionally, to replicate that relationship with Egg. “Dunk is very protective over Egg,” says Parker. “They’re also like brothers. They really have a complicated relationship, and I think it all stems from Dunk not having any family to begin with, being an orphan in Fleabottom. And Egg, in a very unspoiler-y way, also had complicated relationships with his family and is seeking out that connection that was never given to him.”
To forge the onscreen brotherhood between Dunk and Egg, Claffey and Ansell spent some quality time bonding in Belfast. “I met Dexter right at the end of my auditioning process. We did a chemistry read together,” says Claffey. “He was nine years old at the time, but the illusion of an immature kid dissipates very, very quickly. Dexter is such an impressive mature little man. It feels like you’re working with an actor that’s, you know, been in the industry for 50 years. We were really lucky to have about two months preparation before we got into shooting and we went to the arcades a lot.”
The two also did horse riding and combat training in preparation for their roles. “I think those two months, they could have been quite nerve-racking,” says Claffey. “You don’t know what the relationship’s going to be like.” Thankfully, the two quickly fell into step with each other. “We’re like brothers, not only our characters, but in real life,” says Ansell. “And it feels like I’ve been with these guys for my whole life. But I guess it’s weird because we just feel like buddies but at the end of the day they’re all adults.”
If anyone felt anxious about stepping into the franchise, it was Claffey. “Trust me, the pressure was very much there,” he says. “It was in my head the entirety of the time. To come into this world that I’d loved and respected, in such a pivotal role, was something that I’m still trying to adapt to.” Thankfully his nerves were something he could bring to the character. “Dunk obsesses over things and worries a lot and has some serious anxiety issues and I’ve got a lot of experience with that stuff,” says the Irish actor. “When I got the job and went to meet Owen [Harris, EP] and Ira, I was violently ill with anticipation and nervousness. I suppose both Dunk and I have that in common, for sure.”
The question the series seeks to answer is whether Dunk is a hero. “I thought to myself, it’s inviting us all to ask whether we can be a hero and what that would mean for us,” ponders Bertie Carvel, who plays Egg’s uncle Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen, the heir to the Iron Throne. “Dunk dreams of doing heroic deeds, and then you cut to him s***ting behind a tree and he’s reminded of his humanity, his mortality, his limitations and so on. Around him, he sees knights who seem more capable and grander. It is a heroic story because it’s grounded in something quite humane and mortal.” To Carvel, this is a lesson to us all. “I think it would be good if we would ask ourselves the question, ‘What would it mean to be more heroic?’ People do ordinary things that are deeply heroic, all the time, and the sum total of these things can add up to a world still existing in 2027.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms airs on HBO Canada