“Oak and iron, guard me well,
Or else I’m dead, and doomed to Hell.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
After last week’s soap opera-like game-changing revelation, it was, perforce, a more serious tone in this week’s Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Dunk is languishing in a gloomy dungeon (though judging by the pouring rain outside, the Targaryens may have done him a favour there), while Egg’s Big Secret is out, and he’s had to go back to the less than welcoming arms of his family. Is this the end for our heroic buddies?
Well, obviously not, since we’ve got two more eps and another season to go. But it’s certainly the darkest place our characters have found themselves in so far, and accordingly, there’s fewer laughs this week than there have been before. Dunk in particular is struggling with the continuing shattering of his illusions; about right and wrong, about the chivalry of knights, but most particularly about the deception of his seemingly loyal squire.
With lots to be resolved, this is a talkier ep than previous ones, but that’s good – the story needs to focus on the characters at this point. Dexter Sol Ansell continues to be great as the shamefaced Egg tries to apologise to his erstwhile master; Peter Claffey, for his part, plays Dunk’s none too well disguised failure to get angry with him heartwarmingly. But obviously there’s going to be consequences for Dunk – you don’t just beat up a Prince of the Realm and get away with it scot free.
It’s a mark of how well the Targaryen characters have been established in a fairly short time that their reactions are entirely consistent. Aerion, of course, wants vengeance in the standard manner – the hand and foot that struck him should be removed from their owner. His father, the surly Prince Maekar, is inclined to agree. It’s left to the highest-ranking Prince, Baelor Breakspear, to argue for the inevitable course that anyone could have seen coming – a trial by combat.
It makes a nice change to see one of the Targaryens portrayed as something other than a sadist and/or lunatic, but then since the whole premise of the show is that Egg is one himself, he could hardly be the only one. Bertie Carvel’s Baelor truly is a decent man, who unlike his relatives, knows the worth of a knight’s oath to protect the innocent. Maybe he’ll even restore Dunk’s crumbling faith in chivalry and justice.
But of course it’s never as simple as that in Westeros. Aerion’s acceptance of a trial by combat is conditional on it being an almost-forgotten rite called the Trial of Seven, whereby the accused’s team of seven knights must face his accuser’s team of the same number. Because Seven Gods, of course.
What this means in practice is that this ep is one of those “getting a team of heroes together” stories familiar from everything from Arthurian myth to The Magnificent Seven. Along the way, there’s the tried and trusted formula of loyalty and betrayal, which is where the characters established up till now come cleverly into play.
As we’ve already seen Dunk failing to gain much favour with the highborn Lords at the tournament, his team necessarily is, as usual in these stories, ultimately comprised of misfits and outcasts. It’s no surprise that the flamboyant Ser Lyonel Baratheon would fight with him, nor that his friend Raymun Fossoway wants to join the team. Small problem there – he isn’t a knight. But that’s all right, he can get his cousin, the surly Ser Steffon, to join… oh wait, he can’t. Because Steffon’s broken his promise and joined the other side on the promise of a Lordship, further chipping away at Dunk’s notions of knightly honour.
Small surprise too that mad old Ser Robin Rhysling, the one-eyed knight encountered by Egg in ep2, is on board; mild surprise that Ser Humfrey Hardyng, his leg broken in the joust with Aerion is coming along too. But then, he’s got a score to settle himself.
Along the way, we’re introduced to Egg’s drunken brother Daeron, racked with guilt over painting Dunk as the abductor of his little brother, and for the first time in this show, we see the mention of the magic that so infrequently features in the franchise. Daeron, it seems, has dreams of the future that come true. And one of them involves Dunk killing a (surely symbolic) dragon. I wonder which Targaryen that could be?
I must admit, the concept of magic has always been a stumbling block for me reading fantasy. It’s too easy to use it as a deus ex machina, resolving plot problems that would otherwise require ingenuity on the part of the characters (and writers). One of the things I liked about the original Game of Thrones was that, while magic was inevitably in the mix, it was downplayed for the most part and played little part in the plot (Jon Snow’s controversial resurrection aside). Still, if Daeron’s prophetic dreams are the extent of the magic here, I’m fine with that. Especially because it’s a trope that any prophecy in a story like this will be misinterpreted.
And of course the biggest surprise, making for another of those Eastenders-like soap opera endings, is that the final member of Dunk’s Magnificent Seven is none other than Prince Baelor himself. That’s gotta help, particularly since the three Kingsguard on Aerion’s team presumably will be in serious trouble if they kill their boss. On the downside, it’s going to create a bit of family strife given that his brother Maekar is on the opposing team.
So it’s all to play for next week. Of course we know that Dunk and Egg will make it through – somehow – because there’s at least two more stories featuring them. The suspense is in how, and how many of the rest of the Magnificent Seven will make it along with them. It feels like a bit of a warning sign that stubborn and inexperienced Raymun Fossoway, now knighted, is joining the team, in the usual role of eager rookie. It doesn’t usually end well for them.
Of course, getting the team together is only the first half of the story; the next half usually shows us how their plans inevitably don’t quite work out (but usually come good anyway, albeit with some casualties). I’m guessing the fight we’re going to see next time will take up most of the episode, and that it will be bloody and brutal. After all, the opposition is centred around a man who thinks nothing of goring a horse to death just to win a game. Be prepared for blood!
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