Is the tall man in ragged clothes really a real knight? When the young Sir Duncan the Great (Peter Claffey) wants to take part in a tournament, he is refused. In any case, no one knows his mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree, who Duncan refers to and who is said to have knighted him shortly before his death.
The new one „Game of Thrones“-Spin-off series “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” goes into the lowlands of the plains and explores the life of a simple, almost proletarian-seeming knight in the fantasy world of George RR Martin’s “Ice and Fire” cosmos. Instead of focusing on the upper ten thousand of House Targaryen, their fortresses and feudal schemes, the six-part series tells of knight tournaments, drinking bouts and the dream of social advancement.
The Targaryens also appear in this story, which is set 100 years before “Game of Thrones”. Because a boy named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), who ingratiates himself to Duncan as a squire, is in reality the future King Aegon V, the great-great-grandfather of the dragon-taming Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) who is so central to “Game of Thrones”.
„A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms“from January 18th on HBO
But the young Aegon alias Egg, who also shaves off his white hair and remains bald, doesn’t want to have anything to do with his ruling clan and takes the side of the lost simple knight. This simple knight Duncan grows up as a boy in a chaotic post-war order.
The dragons are all dead at this time and by chance he meets a simple hedge knight who wanders the land and whom he follows as a squire. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” contrasts the previous series “Game of Thrones” and „House of the Dragon“. It’s about class differences, habitus and the fight for recognition in a brutally hierarchized world.
The good knight and loyal squire
The literary source of George R. R. Martin “The Hedge Knight of Westeros” dates from 1998, two more novellas about the knight and his blue-blooded squire followed, and more are actually being planned. The cult author, who is again working as an executive producer on “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”, is obviously not able to write at all because of all the film orders.
There should still be a lot to discover for fans of the Heckenritter. Above all, the history of Westeros, which is expanded in flashbacks but unfortunately only touched on minimally, is exciting and solidly continues the complex world-building of this saga. Much more space is given to ordinary people and their everyday culture. There is also extensive spitting, vomiting and defecation that is rarely seen in the film.
Overall, however, the just six half-hour episodes of the first season – a second is to follow – don’t really grab you. The relationship between the good knight and the loyal squire is simply carved; the fight against power-hungry, complacent Targaryens is moralizing and predictable. Nevertheless: The dramaturgical escalation culminates in the brutal knight’s tournament, which is staged with a lot of action, dirt and splatter in a visually powerful way that has rarely been seen before.