This review contains full spoilers for this week’s episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Titled “Hard Salt Beef,” this week’s episode begins with Dunk’s quest to find a noble lord who can vouch for his dead master, the hilariously well-endowed Ser Arlan of Pennytree, so that he can participate in the Ashford tourney. The problem? No one remembers Ser Arlan.
Even after Dunk succeeds in finding someone who does – Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), a Targaryen who is actually a nice guy?! – it’s not until he sees the knights of the Great Houses clash at the tourney (which has big NASCAR and WWE vibes) that Dunk realizes he’s romanticized Ser Arlan, admitting to his squire Egg: “Do great knights live in the hedges and die by the side of a muddy road?”
The thrust of this episode is Dunk’s growing disenchantment with knighthood. The knights he’s encountered so far at Ashford have mostly been entitled and abusive jerks, not the chivalrous warriors of legend. At first the prospect of a member of the Small Folk like Dunk rising above his station seems possible, especially after meeting Ser Donnel of Duskendale; surely, if the son of a crabber can become a great knight, then why not Dunk? After Egg reveals that Ser Donnel isn’t some working class hero but a member of a prosperous and powerful merchant family, it’s the beginning of the end of Dunk’s pipe dream. “What chance do I have, truly?”
The knights’ casual dismissal of Ser Arlan isn’t just about them brushing off the deeds of a hedge knight, but a rejection of the values Dunk believes a knight should stand for. This gap between the ideal and the reality of knighthood appears to be putting Dunk on a collision course with the very men whose ranks he seeks to join. In the end, Dunk is so upset that none of the knights (except Baelor) remembered his mentor and father figure – he calls himself Ser Arlan’s “legacy” – that he vows to use the Ashford tourney to “show them what his hand has wrought.” If he can’t join ’em, he’ll beat ’em…or so he hopes.
The knights aren’t the only people Dunk encounters in this episode who are nasty to him, with everyone from a stable boy to Lady Gwin demeaning him (“You’re big and stupid!”). People have called Dunk dumb his whole life, as he recalls to Egg, but, well, he is a big dope. That’s part of Dunk’s charm; he’s simple yet sweet, and is especially good to horses. He has a kind heart, and credits Ser Arlan with raising him to know what’s right.
As he peels back the layers of his seemingly simple-minded hero, Peter Claffey continues to impress as the lovable doofus Dunk, while Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg smartly plays his cards close to the vest as a squire who behaves like he has something to hide. Their banter is among the highlights of this episode, particularly Egg’s response to Dunk’s observation that he’s always been called stupid. It was also sweet to see how Egg helped Dunk when he was struggling to articulate what sigil he wants the puppeteer Tanselle to paint on his shield.
Speaking of Egg, it’s curious how fast he hightailed it back to camp once he spotted the Targaryens riding into town, not to mention that he knows more about knights and the Great Houses of Westeros than a kid his age probably should…
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