Once upon a time, there was a fantasy TV show called Game of Thrones that became popular to an inescapable, almost annoying degree. That said, many fans absolutely hated the ending. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it starts with the fact that author George R.R. Martin has yet to complete his Song of Ice and Fire book series; after the show ran out of source material to adapt, it started to fall apart.
A prequel series, House of the Dragon, has built up a fan base of its own, but the writers are already straying from the source material, Martin’s book Fire & Blood, and some fans fear that we could be in for a repeat of the Game of Thrones ending backlash. Time for round three: a new Game of Thrones prequel show called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin’s novella “The Hedge Knight,” is around the corner, and based on the trailer, this show is finally doing the smart thing and sticking to the text.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has George R.R. Martin’s seal of approval
And if it didn’t, he would tell us
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set some 100 years before Game of Thrones, and is much smaller in scale. There are no dragons, no huge cast of characters spread over a giant map. It’s about a poor, newly minted knight named Ser Duncan the Tall, aka Dunk (Peter Claffey), who’s hoping he performs well enough at an upcoming tourney for some lord or other to hire him into his service, where he’ll get to eat every day and sleep in an actual bed.
“The Hedge Knight” is the first of Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas, and the show looks like it honors them by keeping things funnier and gentler than Game of Thrones, although there will still be plenty of drama. Showrunner Ira Parker worked closely with George R.R. Martin on the show. “They say when you’re writing that you should not try to please everybody, that you shouldn’t write for the audience, that you should pick one person and you should write for them. And this season, season 1, I did that for George,” Parker said at New York Comic Con in October, per Temple of Geek. “The fact that he’s happy makes me very happy as well, too.”
Martin has effusively praised the new show on his blog, and fans know he’s not always that generous. In fact, in a since-deleted blog post from 2024, Martin openly criticized House of the Dragon for what he saw as “toxic” changes made to his book. He’s an executive producer on that series and was still willing to slag it off online; that’s how much he didn’t like what they were doing.
Personally, I think he was dead on. It’s a great sign that he’s fully on board with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
A Game of Thrones show that gets the details right
It’s the little things
Looking at the trailer, it’s clear that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will get the broad strokes of the story right, which was never really in doubt. But I’m really encouraged to see that the show is going the extra mile and paying attention to the details.
First, there’s the obvious: a lot of the lines from the trailer are lifted directly from “The Hedge Knight.” Sometimes we hear Dunk speak lines he only thinks in the book, like, “If I could call myself a champion, some great house might take me into its service.” Dunk’s squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) gently shades Dunk just like he does in the novella: “Every knight needs a squire, and you look like you need one more than most.” There’s Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvel) asking Dunk a serious question before a major action scene: “How good a knight are you?” The vile Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett) calls out a challenger during a tourney: “Come out, come out, little knight!” And then there’s Duncan’s big outburst before the climactic Trial of Seven: “ARE THERE NO TRUE KNIGHTS AMONG YOU?”
But we expect the show to adapt the dialogue, right? There are other little things this show gets right that the other Game of Thrones series don’t. For instance, as you can see in the image above, Baelor Targaryen is a Targaryen whose hair is not an impossible shade of silver-blonde. We got used to Targaryens having that shade of hair color on Game of Thrones, where Daenerys Targaryen sported it for the entire series, but in the books, plenty of Targaryens have normal-colored hair. In Fire & Blood, it’s specified that the character of Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) has dark hair despite her heritage, but House of the Dragon just went ahead and gave her silver-blonde hair anyway. But this new show recognizes Targaryen follicular diversity!
In the opening part of the trailer, we also see that Dunk and the other knights participating in the Trial of Seven are wearing great helms that cover their entire faces, something that was common in medieval times but which the other Game of Thrones series have by and large ignored, probably because they want us to see the actors’ faces. That’s understandable, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is finally including this element, and it looks like they’re making it work for them.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will be the best thing to come out of the Game of Thrones universe in years
Mark my words
Obviously, not everything in this trailer is taken verbatim from “The Hedge Knight.” There are new lines here and there (including this all-timer: “Targaryens are incestuous aliens”), the camp follower characters who tell us what a hedge knight is (“It’s like a knight, but sadder”) are new, and the dragon puppet we see spouting fire at the dude with the shield is way more elaborate than the one in the book.
But I’m not expecting word-for-word precision. What I want is a Game of Thrones show that actually recognizes what a gift it has in source material written by an author as good as George R.R. Martin, and it looks like I’m going to get what I want.
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One battle at a time
The first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will run for six episodes, with the first premiering on HBO Max on Sunday, January 18. A second season — which will adapt the next novella in the series, “The Sworn Sword” — will start shooting very soon, meaning we’ll probably get to watch it within a year of this first season ending, a break from the endless waits that have become common in the world of prestige TV. If A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is as faithful to the delightful source material as it appears, I think everyone is in for a great time. It might even save the Game of Thrones franchise.
Of course, with Netflx buying HBO’s parent company Warner Bros., that franchise faces a whole new threat, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
