A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms earns Game of Thrones' unearned ending

The prequel demonstrates the power of ‘a good story’

Tyrion’s point about the power of stories comes out of nowhere in Game of Thrones, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker shows it’s actually a valid argument by weaving the theme throughout the six episodes of the show’s first season. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms actually pays off the idea of the importance of stories, not with a last-minute tag for the show's themes, but by making it a key idea throughout the entire opening story.

[Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.]

Because George R.R. Martin may never actually finish the Song of Ice and Fire series, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss ran out of material from his books well before season 8. But while Tyrion’s monologue felt overwrought and led to an unsatisfying outcome for the series’ biggest conflict, it showed that Benioff and Weiss understood the author. Fifteen years before A Game of Thrones was published in 1996, Martin and Lisa Tuttle teamed up on the science fiction novella Windhaven, where a group of singers unite to lead a cultural revolution by sharing the story of a wrongful execution.

Martin weaves the same theme heavily throughout his 1998 novella The Hedge Knight, which Parker faithfully adapted (well, mostly faithfully) into the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. In many ways, the best path Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) has to getting ahead in a very harsh world is the story of his mentor Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb). For Dunk, apprenticing to Pennytree was an improvement over the wretchedness of the King’s Landing slum of Flea Bottom. But after the hedge knight dies, Dunk is left with just a few horses and a sword. He sees two paths before him — turn to banditry and eventually be captured and hanged, or spin a convincing tale about being Pennytree’s successor that will allow him to seek glory and fortune at a tournament.

Dunk spends multiple episodes telling his story to anyone who will listen, in the hopes he’ll find someone who remembers Pennytree. Maybe nothing in the world is more powerful than a good story, but Pennytree’s story unfortunately isn’t that interesting. The knight fought in many battles for many lords, but his low birth and relatively modest abilities meant he didn’t make much impact on anyone but Dunk and Prince Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), who wows his fellow nobles with his keen memory.

There are bigger and more important stories being told in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Dunk is arrested for protecting the puppeteer Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford) from the sadistic Prince Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett), who is enraged by her show about a knight slaying a dragon. His brutal assault on her is evidence of his petty cruelty, but Aerion is right to notice that there’s a seditious undertone in any performance depicting the symbol of the rulers of Westeros as a monster that a hero might be able to kill. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place during an era when House Targaryen has been weakened by civil war and the death of its dragons. Nothing can stop a good story, but it’s understandable that Aerion would want to try to quash this one.

The obsession with stories is also woven into the show’s humor. Martin loves peppering his books with music, and that comes through in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ third episode. While quietly whittling in a tree, Dunk’s squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) performs a song that explains the history of the Blackfyre Rebellion while playfully hinting at a series of dirty words. Later that episode, Egg and Dunk share a drink in Lyonel’s tent and watch the lord perform a bawdy tune about “Alice with Three Fingers,” a girl whose missing digits made her especially good at “pleasuring men in their bums.” It leads Dunk and Egg to wax philosophical, questioning whether there was ever a real Alice, and considering the lesson in her tale of turning misfortune into an advantage. “Perhaps her name doesn’t matter,” Dunk muses. “It’s her story that abides.”

The finale of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms focuses on the stories that people will tell about the Trial of the Seven, where Dunk was found innocent, but Baelor was killed. Baelor’s younger brother Maekar (Sam Spruell), who struck the killing blow with his mace, tells Dunk that people will whisper he is to blame for every misfortune Westeros experiences for the rest of his life, because his brother would have been a great king. He predicts Dunk will also hear the same whispers, questioning why a hedge knight lived and a prince died. Yet Dunk believes it’s possible that he may eventually prove his worth.

He is certainly given plenty of options. Maekar offers to bring him to Summerhall to train with his master of arms. Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings), who fought with Dunk in the Trial of the Seven, embraces him as a brother and asks him to come back with him to Storm’s End to prepare for the next civil war. Yet Dunk wants to continue the story he knows best, trading the opportunity to live in opulence and find favor with the most powerful lords to wander the Seven Kingdoms sleeping under trees.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms operates on a far smaller scale than Game of Thrones. It takes place almost entirely in one location over the course of just a few days, rather than following a generational conflict spread across the entire world. Yet it also proves that the life of a single common-born man can change the fate of a kingdom, creating real anticipation for what the rest of Dunk’s story will bring.

Game of Thrones was about sex, power, madness, and family. While a good story could motivate a ruler’s followers, a noble's success was more likely to be determined by the army they had at their back, and whether they were betrayed by someone they trusted. The fact that the show ended with a monologue about the value of stories was so unsatisfying because the theme wasn’t developed, and just felt like an arbitrary way of choosing a king that hadn’t earned his title through any other means. But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a show about stories. They terrify princes, inspire knights, keep history alive, and can even make legends out of girls who shove their arms up men’s butts.