On Jan. 18, 2026, the first episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres on HBO. While it’s the third television series based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire universe, it appears to be a very different sort of show than its predecessors. (RELATED: Game of Thrones Prequel May Redeem the Series If Not Strangled By Wokeness)
The series is based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg short stories and is set about halfway between the events of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones. Dunk and Egg follows the adventures of a hedge knight named Dunk, short for Duncan, and his squire Egg. Hedge knights are wandering, landless knights who aren’t sworn to any particular lord and wander in search of service.
Right off the bat, you can see the difference between this and Game of Thrones. The main series sprawled across a continent and takes dozens of characters’ points of view in an elaborate, unfolding story that’s so complex that the author has spent the last 15 years trying to figure out how to finish it. Or maybe procrastinating and not trying, it’s hard to say. Fire and Blood and its television adaptation, House of the Dragon, while more narrowly focused on the Targaryen dynasty, still sweep over decades in the lead-up to a brutal Westerosi civil war for the Iron Throne. Most of House of the Dragon’s characters are analogues, or at least funhouse mirror versions, of those from Game of Thrones.
Dunk is a very different sort of person. That being that he’s a nobody. He’s not a king or a prince or a dragon rider, or even a lord. He’s an orphan from the capital who was taken as a squire by an older hedge knight, Arlan of Pennytree. Dunk learned from Arlan that knights are supposed to be honorable and protect the weak and the innocent, and after Arlan dies, he seeks to do just that. By happenstance, he meets a boy with a suspiciously bald head that goes by the name Egg, whom he eventually agrees to take on as his squire.
Dunk is a classic hero going on a classic hero’s journey.
Sure, Dunk isn’t perfect. He’s brawny, but not especially skilled. Dunk is also, to put it politely, not the brightest. But he’s also courageous and morally upright. In other words, Dunk is a classic hero going on a classic hero’s journey. As the story progresses, he’ll gain the skills and confidence he currently lacks and consequently grow as a person. For a universe that’s so well known for subverting tropes and expectations, it’s a shockingly conventional story.
A lot of conservatives have a markedly negative view of Game of Thrones. Not just for its widely panned final season — you’ll find few defenders of that travesty anywhere. No, many on the right take issue with the whole moral vision of the world. Martin’s universe, they say, is dark, nihilistic, and cynical, especially when compared with the heroism, bravery, and moral clarity of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. (RELATED: ‘Game of Thrones’ and the Death of Common Culture)
While I see the point those people raise, I quibble if that’s really the message. Ned Stark is an honorable man and the archetypal hero figure, and he’s shockingly slain because his moral naivety gets him outwitted and betrayed. Unfortunately, there are many such cases of that happening in real life. Being a good person, sad to say, doesn’t give you plot armor in our world either. However, despite dying in the first season and the first book, respectively, Ned Stark’s legacy looms over the whole series and still inspires those who knew and cared about him.
You might think the series favors a character like Tywin Lannister, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Tywin is a ruthlessly efficient, amoral, and cruel lord. Sure, he has more short-term success than Ned. But he’s ultimately undone by the fact that, because he’s the way that he is, all three of his children are deeply troubled people to one degree or another. Their indiscretions destabilize the power structure Tywin spent his life building and, quite literally, kill him.
Taking into account the totality of their stories, the idea that Tywin “wins” out over Ned seems ludicrous. The moral message of Game of Thrones is not, in my view, that being good doesn’t matter. It’s that being good doesn’t always mean you’ll win every time, but that being good is its own reward. That’s perhaps less idealistic than Lord of the Rings, but in my view it’s more mature and more realistic, and good art ought to reflect reality.
Regardless, if you felt Game of Thrones was too bloody, too hopeless, and too cruel for your tastes but were intrigued by the medieval universe it takes place in, you might like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Despite sharing the same universe as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, it’s a very different sort of story. After both of those series disappointed, the third time just might be the charm.
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