Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms About this episode The HBO series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms may be set in the same fantasy world as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, but it’s a small, grounded story – a kind of medieval buddy comedy. It follows a sweet but dim knight (Peter Claffey) and his wise-beyond-his-years young squire (Dexter Sol Ansell) trying to make their way in a tough world. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of novellas by George R. R. Martin.
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0:19 Speaker 01 A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is kind of Game of Thrones for folks who hated Game of Thrones. There's no magic, no dragons, no lore to memorize. Plus, it's funny. The HBO series may be sad in the same fantasy world as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, but it's a small and kind of grounded story, a kind of medieval buddy comedy about a sweet but dim knight and his wise beyond his years young squire just trying to make their way in a tough world. I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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2:07 Speaker 01 Joining me today is NPR producer J.C. Howard. Hey there, J.C.
2:10 Speaker 03 Hello, I'm here to run my insolent mouth.
2:12 Speaker 01 There we go. I wouldn't have it any other way. Also with this is Nikki Birch. She's a video producer for NPR Music and Visuals and also a co-host of the podcast A Thousand Eyes. And Juan, hey Nikki.
2:23 Speaker 04 Good day to you, sir.
2:24 Speaker 01 Good day. So A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place entirely in one teeny tiny corner of the continent of Westeros, where Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are largely set. A young and very tall man named Dunk has spent his life squiring for a wandering knight who's just died. Dunk is played by Peter Claffey. He decides to enter a jousting tournament to prove himself a worthy knight, but he is hopelessly naive about the ruthless politics of the cruel world around him. Enter Egg, played by Dexter Sol Ansell. He's a bald-headed kid who's eager to be Dunk's squire and seems to know a great deal about knights.
2:59 Speaker 04 Nerd.
3:00 Speaker 05 What's your name?
3:01 Speaker 06 Dunk.
3:02 Speaker 05 Sir Dunk. There's no name for a knight. Is it short for Duncan?
3:07 Speaker 06 Yes, Sir Duncan of... Sir Duncan the Tall.
3:11 Speaker 05 Never heard of him.
3:13 Speaker 06 So you know every knight in the Seven Kingdoms, then?
3:15 Speaker 05 The good ones.
3:17 Speaker 01 Egg also knows a surprising lot about the ruling houses of Westeros, one of which, the Targaryens, unexpectedly shows up to the tournament, and they're the same rich jerks they are on every other HBO show. Dunk knows he's no match for the skills of the rich and powerful knights he'll compete against, but he's got a lot of heart, plus he's got Egg by his side. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of novellas by George R.R. Martin. It takes place after House of the Dragon, but before Game of Thrones. It is airing on HBO. J.C., winter is here, but it's kind of summer on the series, so what'd you think?
3:51 Speaker 03 First of all, let me just say, I loved it unequivocally, with no reservation. And it starts with the novella. Like, I really loved the first novella. And generally speaking, you can always count on a Game of Thrones show to be a sweeping epic. You'll spend time in great halls with lords and ladies and soar with dragons and fight ice zombies, you know, like the stuff of legend. But A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms asks the exact right question, which is, what about the rest? The Westeros, you know?
4:18 Speaker 04 What about the rest of them?
4:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, what happens when there's not a historic civil war going on? You know, what do the non-royals do when they're not being terrorized by Joffrey? Or some other tyrant or being burned alive by dragons? And the thing that this series does is it answers the question, which is that they live. You know, they they live lives that are much more scaled down, they're decidedly grittier. And yet far more hilarious, you know, like
4:44 Speaker 01 Right.
4:44 Speaker 03 Not a self-serious dowager queen or a scheming master of whispers to be found. Which is not to say that I don't love those bits about Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. I love that stuff as well. But it's really refreshing to figure out what our hero does when they don't have world-class training or mountains of gold. What happens when your hero is a guy who can't afford a belt? And some kid that he meets in a barn?
5:12 Speaker 05 You don't look to be a knight.
5:14 Speaker 06 What, all knights look the same, do they?
5:16 Speaker 05 No, but they don't look like you either.
5:21 Speaker 05 Your belt's made of rope.
5:23 Speaker 06 So long as it holds my scabbard, it serves.
5:25 Speaker 03 Without high-born combat skills or being able to command respect or strike fear with a dragon, they have nothing but good intentions and a sense of adventure. The thing that I love about it mainly is that Dunk is not out to change history. He's there to just be a knight. And that's kind of the show we need right now. Yeah.
5:45 Speaker 04 Earn his place.
5:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is a show about just getting through it. I like that about it.
5:49 Speaker 03 That's right.
5:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:50 Speaker 03 Keeping our head above water.
5:51 Speaker 01 All right, Nikki, what'd you think?
5:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've really loved it. I am a huge fan of the novella The Hedge Knight, which this season is based on. And the thing I love the most about reading that is that every time I read it, I'm still surprised. It's like the first time I have all the same anxieties. And so I was looking forward to seeing those things play out in the show. And I think they do such a good job. Like, I was weepy. I legit cried during a couple of scenes because I couldn't believe they were like, seeing these things finally happen on the screen was just such a big deal for me. And, you know, speaking of it being stripped down, you know, I'm I was gonna talk about music.
6:27 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
6:28 Speaker 04 And the music person was Dan Romer. Everything in Game of Thrones is so grand and pompous. There's all this fanfare. And now we've got to kind of strip it down. It feels a little bit like you're at the Shire. And I really love that switch.
6:40 Speaker 03 Decidedly quieter. Yeah.
6:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, much, much, much. And it's like, well, this is probably what the common folk will do. Like you're saying, Dunk cannot even afford a sword belt. And, you know, how many instruments might these people have? It's just super simple.
6:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:53 Speaker 04 And just so endearing. And I really love how both of the characters were portrayed. The actors did such a good job. I actually saw them at Comic Con. I went to Comic Con, I went to a panel. And George R R Martin was there. Ira Parker was there.
7:07 Speaker 03 The show winner. Amazing.
7:08 Speaker 04 And Dexter Sol Ansell and Peter Clapley, all there. And it was just wonderful to see how excited they were about the show and excited for other people to see it.
7:18 Speaker 03 Yes, very good, very good.
7:19 Speaker 01 You know, I didn't think I would like this as much as I ended up liking it because I like fantasy that's, you know, that's fantastic, right? Miss me with the kind of fantasy that is, that reads like alt history, where you go to the trouble of building a world and then the world you build is just like our own. It's as boring as ours. What's the point of that? And look, I think this is coming from the fact that I recapped both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon for NPR for my sins. And I heard, and I continue to hear, from so many people who seem to build their personality around not liking something that's popular. Right? Particularly, this is what was always struck in their craw, the stuff about the shows that is fantastic, the dragons, the magic. I mean, I had work colleagues who will shall remain nameless, stop me in the break room first thing in the morning and be like, you know what I don't care about? Dragons. And I'll be like.
8:03 Speaker 04 Hater.
8:04 Speaker 01 I just need to use the copier, dude. And I kind of want to go back and find all those people who wrote to me and say, yeah, yeah, here it is. Here you go.
8:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:11 Speaker 01 Try this. I personally miss the magic. I miss the dragons. I don't miss having to do homework. But I love this tone. If it's gonna be just some grubby knights beating the snot out of each other while they're hip deep in mud, gimme this, gimme character comedy.
8:26 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
8:27 Speaker 01 Give me a likeness. Give me something this small, this specific, with very clear stakes. They're not world shattering stakes, but they're very clear. Gimme, as you guys. As mentioned, point of view accommoders, give me short episodes, short seasons.
8:41 Speaker 03 Yes, right, 30 minutes.
8:42 Speaker 04 I was sad. I wanted them to be longer.
8:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:45 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no. It wouldn't fit. It wouldn't fit the tone.
8:48 Speaker 04 But they did a good job.
8:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:49 Speaker 04 Every episode, I like, I was satisfied.
8:52 Speaker 01 Well, see, what Martin was doing with the novellas was trying to find little patches of lightness in the world. Because certainly you come away from the books, you come away from Thrones and House of the Dragon. With a sense of this is an author who is trying to insist and show you just how cruel and unjust and malicious and brutal this world is. Which is where the violence comes in, which is where the sexual violence comes in. Just, he's insisting that the medieval world was really that cruel, and this is just a mirror to that.
9:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:15 Speaker 01 Which, of course, the only logical answer to that is, dude, there are dragons.
9:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:20 Speaker 01 You put dragons in here, you put prophecies, you put witches who are giving birth to shadow demons. What's the real project here?
9:26 Speaker 03 How realistic do we need to be?
9:27 Speaker 01 Exactly. What are we doing here? And does the fact that every episode of Thrones and House of the Dragon stops dead to take a detour through the bowels of a pleasure dead? Is that because of your commitment to this BS notion of verisimilitude and authenticity? Or do you maybe just like boobs, George? You don't have to predicate it.
9:44 Speaker 04 It was a major part of the economy.
9:46 Speaker 01 Sure. This is what I want to ask you about. Now, while the show doesn't suffer from a lot of Martin's usual kind of writerly tics, I guess you'd call them, it does double down on others. The only women that this show cares about, that gives speaking parts to, are sex workers and love interests. And those love interests, not a spoiler to say, they never get to be much more than plot devices. Because what happens to them is used to kind of trigger our hero into action. Which makes sense. I mean, the guy's literally a white knight, so it's kind of in the job description. Did that bounce you out of the show at all? Did you just roll with it? You know, George, go to George. How'd that aspect of the show grab you guys?
10:21 Speaker 04 It didn't bother me because, I mean, probably because I know the books and also the women who are mentioned in the books, like, the only time you actually hear something from a woman in the novella is from Tansal, Tansal Too Tall, and The Innkeeper. That's it.
10:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:37 Speaker 04 That's it. You know, like, adding Lord Ashford's daughter, who, for whom the tourney is being thrown in the first place. That was a twist. Didn't see that coming. Okay, cool. It's the birth. Birthday girl. Here she is.
10:48 Speaker 01 Three lines, but okay.
10:50 Speaker 03 Just to say, though, I loved the addition of her because like she had total main character energy like this was about her. And yet, like, I watched the the second episode and just the look on Dunk's face after she talks to him in that second episode. He's like, I don't know who you are. That's so perfect to me, that humor in the show.
11:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, and I think what's interesting about the women, when they do get the lines that they get to say, is that maybe because they're sex workers, maybe because it's the innkeeper, uh, they get to speak the truth.
11:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 04 You know, the thing that stands out to me about the innkeeper, she's like, I don't know that anything that's been happening with the royals and the nobles has ever changed the price of eggs.
11:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:33 Speaker 04 That's what matters to me.
11:34 Speaker 03 Yep.
11:34 Speaker 07 Not to build the same as other men, and I never knew a Jales to change the price of eggs.
11:39 Speaker 01 Topical.
11:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, right.
11:40 Speaker 01 Figure of the pulse. Yeah, absolutely.
11:42 Speaker 03 Can relate.
11:42 Speaker 01 It is a relief to have a character like Dunk, who is exactly the kind of character who would get fed into the meat grinder on those other shows.
11:50 Speaker 04 One hundred percent.
11:51 Speaker 01 He is experiencing, I wouldn't call them victories, little tiny, like, not failures. Which means there's a lightness here. There is a lack of that incessant grim brutality. Though there is violence. Now, the critical response to this has been mostly positive. The negative responses I've seen is they don't know who the show is for because of that lightness. It seems YA to them. How would you react to that?
12:13 Speaker 04 Interesting.
12:13 Speaker 03 I gotta say that there are two reasons that the show works so well, and it's not rocket science. The two reasons are Dunk and Egg. You've built the novellas around them and you've built the show around them. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell. They settle into these roles so well. It's, it feels like they were born to play them.
12:34 Speaker 01 Right.
12:34 Speaker 03 Dunk is obviously this oafish and naive.
12:36 Speaker 04 Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall.
12:38 Speaker 03 Dunk the lunk, right? But he so badly wants to be honorable. And I think the best thing about his performance is that When he takes a knightly tone with Egg, when he tells him to like, close his insolent mouth, it's very clear that he's just saying things that he's heard knights say.
12:56 Speaker 04 Right.
12:56 Speaker 03 He's saying things that Sir Arlen said to him. His words fit his vocabulary like a suit that's too big, you know? Like, and it's, it's so charming and sympathetic. Then you have Egg, who is, I mean, just what a character, first of all, and what a kid, what a performer. He's got a tall order to fill because he has to be precocious and whip smart and impulsive.
13:19 Speaker 04 Exactly, that vulnerability.
13:21 Speaker 03 Dunk and Egg for president and vice president. And like, the show, anyone who's questioning, like, who is this show for? It's for me. I'm just, I'm into it. I love it.
13:29 Speaker 04 It's for me, too.
13:30 Speaker 03 It's for us.
13:31 Speaker 04 You know, I think the best thing that I noticed about Dunk is he only has one example of a knight that he's spent time with, right? He was a squire for Sir Arlen, who nobody knows. But he learned to be honorable. He learned all, like, to embody all the O's because that's what he saw throughout the season. He's coming up against, well, wait a second, you guys are all knights. I thought you were supposed to be respectful and honorable and protective and all these things. And he gets, he keeps getting disappointed by seeing what the reality is. And there was something really cute that I noticed that happened in the scene, like, as he's trying to find his direction. Like, literally, he would be standing there and like, leave a conversation or situation, and then turn one way and be like, oh, no, I have to go the other way.
14:15 Speaker 04 And it happened several times throughout the show. And I love George R.R. Martin for this type of stuff because even in the novellas, he's foreshadowing so much. And I think that there's a big nod to the book nerds and the words that he's putting in other people's mouths, you know? There's like little bookies to eggs.
14:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, this is basically a two-hander, right? This is Dunk and Egg. And if the Dunk and Egg relationship doesn't work, the show doesn't work. And I think it really works. And I think what people might be picking up on with the YA stuff is that one of those two hands is a kid, so they're just jumping to the conclusion it's YA. It's not. What it is, though, let's mention, let's get to this, it's incredibly faithful to the book.
14:50 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:50 Speaker 01 Pretty much all the dialogue is, is pretty much verbatim. The only thing that's really added is stuff that works, which is all the stuff with Lionel Baratheon, played by Daniel Ings.
14:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
14:59 Speaker 04 Oh, my God, love. Most likely to make you break curfew.
15:03 Speaker 01 Absolutely. So the books are very slim. So the test to the show is what does it decide to build out? Because it has to build on something. And it builds out character stuff. Baratheon is charming.
15:12 Speaker 03 So nice.
15:12 Speaker 01 He's drunk. He's brave, not too brave. And that's a great sign because that suggests to me that the creators aren't trying to depart from the books and create these ancillary, unnecessary B, C, and D plots. What they're doing instead is digging into the books and finding stuff that deepens the characterizations like they did with Braith.
15:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, Laughing Storm. I think there's that moment where Dunk is in his tent and they're hanging out. And Lionel's like, uh, hello? Do you belong? And Dunk is like, oh, no, I came for the food.
15:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, I came for dinner.
15:48 Speaker 06 You've come for my head, then?
15:51 Speaker 06 What? Boss? No. No. Then why the [bleep] are you in my tent?
16:01 Speaker 06 So it's all supper?
16:02 Speaker 04 I love that moment because Baratheons historically, whether you're thinking about Stannis, Robert, and Renly, they like the truth. They like people to be upfront with them. As long as you shoot straight with them, they're cool with you. And I love that you got to see that. Because of Baratheons, that's the party fraternity.
16:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think one of the cool things about this as a prequel slash sequel, I guess it's kind of both, is that by and large, there aren't those connections to the characters. I mean, obviously, there are Targaryens, there are Baratheons, but there's no connections to actual characters that you see in the other shows, which makes the show more nimble because it's not burdened with exposition. This isn't Star Wars or Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings. You don't need to remember all these things from another story and keep an eye out for references for later on or whatever.
16:53 Speaker 01 The homework.
16:53 Speaker 03 Except for some nerd bits in upcoming episodes. So there is plenty for folks who want to go lore diving, but you don't need a 30-minute YouTube video to explain. And what you need to know before you go into this show. This show is what the show is.
17:11 Speaker 01 It can be a single screen experience, but you don't need a wiki open on your phone.
17:14 Speaker 03 That's right, right.
17:14 Speaker 04 As you're talking about how faithful like the script is in the show to the text, I found myself like repeating verbatim. I'm like narrating the story along with them because I know those words so well. And I loved that. I think they masterfully like switched some of the lines like the story is a lot of like inside of Dunk's head and they took a lot of his words and they sometimes gave them to other characters. And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys did such a great job. I never thought to do that. And I think like some of the things that Egg said, that Dunk actually says in the book, it fits Egg because it's got that same level of like innocence and naivete and like hopefulness.
17:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. My favorite shift is a lot of the stuff Dunk says to himself in the book, he says to his horses in the show.
17:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:00 Speaker 01 It's characterization. That's what I mean.
18:02 Speaker 06 Sad.
18:07 Speaker 06 Certainly not rising to the level of a cunt, sad.
18:11 Speaker 06 Besides, Seran always said that a hedge knight was the truest kind of knight.
18:17 Speaker 04 Do horses get nominated for Emmys? Cause
18:21 Speaker 03 Yeah. Sweetfoot needs one.
18:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. And one of the themes of the show is that all this stuff about honor and selflessness, it's kind of BS, but if everybody buys into it, it's not, right? It's like, it's an ideal. And if everybody else is just paying lip service to it and one character is actually committed to it fully, then that's the character we love. I mean, that's the guy, that's the guy we want to hang around.
18:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:43 Speaker 04 And you see that with Egg, you know, here's somebody who is like such a knight nerd. And he can tell you like, you know, who's from this place and whether or not they want attorney. But he's sitting at the fire and like looking at Dunk and there's this moment where he's like, oh my God, this guy's got nothing. But he's speaking to me like he's got the whole world and that he can provide it. And I love that.
19:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:07 Speaker 04 He gets to look up to somebody who's a nobody.
19:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:11 Speaker 03 Speak.
19:11 Speaker 01 Nice. As we tape this, the second season is in production. Probably going to be a third. I have a feeling this is going to do very well. I'm going to gather from context clues that you guys are all in for seasons two and three. We get them.
19:24 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
19:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, you can safely say that.
19:27 Speaker 04 Absolutely. The sworn sword and the mystery knight given to me.
19:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:31 Speaker 01 Well, I think we are all in on this. We want to know what you think about A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Find us at facebook.com slash PCHH. And a reminder, we are pulling back the curtain and letting Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus supporters sit in virtually on a live episode taping. They'll get to see how the show is made and experience this episode before everyone else. And we'll be talking about something Oscars related, which is one of my favorite topics, anyway. It's all happening over Zoom on Friday, February 13th at 3 PM Eastern, noon Pacific. If you are not a Plus supporter yet, go to plus.npr.org/happy. Again, that is plus.npr.org/happy. If you are already a Plus supporter, thank you very much. And scroll back in your feed to January 22nd to learn how to register for the taping.
20:16 Speaker 01 And that brings us to the end of our show. J C Howard, Nikki Birch, thank you so much for being here.
20:20 Speaker 04 Thanks for having us.
20:21 Speaker 03 Thank you for having us. And Glenn, thank you for not giving me a clout ear.
20:26 Speaker 01 Appreciate it. I mean, you know.
20:28 Speaker 03 Big of you.
20:28 Speaker 01 Maybe next season. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore and Mike Katsef, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy, and HoloKamin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.
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