‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Episode 4: Ser Duncan’s Champions

HBO/Ringer illustrationBy Riley McAteeFeb. 6, 11:30 am UTC • 8 min

We didn’t exactly get a classic “getting the gang together” montage, but in Episode 4 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Duncan does assemble a crew to fight in a trial of seven against Aerion Targaryen. Well … Egg does most of the assembling, but the result is the same—a seven-on-seven clash awaits us next week.

In this episode, we also learned who Maekar’s other missing son is—Daeron the Drunken, the man Dunk ran into in the inn in Episode 1. Daeron is one of the Targaryens afflicted with dragon dreams, prophetic looks into the future. He tells Dunk that he dreamed of him in the presence of a dead dragon. “A great beast, with wings so large they could cover this meadow,” he says. “It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive, and the dragon was dead.”

Numerous Targaryens have been driven mad by these dreams, including, to some extent, Viserys I from House of the Dragon. But as with any prophecy in a Song of Ice and Fire property, the exact meaning is often hard to tell, and how the characters react to the prophecies is as important as the prediction itself.

Ashford Meadow is now crawling with Targaryen princes who may be the “dragon” from Daeron’s dream. And Dunk has to fight one of them in a trial by combat that has quickly shifted to a full-blown melee. But let’s stop there for a moment. Why a trial of seven and not just a regular trial by combat?

Aerion vs. Dunk doesn’t feel like that bad of a matchup for the prince. While Duncan has a considerable height, weight, and reach advantage, the battle will begin on horseback with lances, and Aerion has been trained by the finest men-at-arms in the realm. Aerion doesn’t know exactly how skilled or unskilled his opponent is … but just look at him. A penniless hedge knight should be no match for an expertly drilled prince, even when that hedge knight is close to 7 feet tall

So why does Aerion ask for a trial of seven? I have to think the answer is in the technicalities. If a knight can’t gather six other champions to join him in the trial, it is thought that the gods must consider his cause to be unjust, and he is therefore ruled guilty by default. Again, just look at Dunk. Can this guy gather six other knights to join him? Aerion isn’t invoking a trial of seven to help his odds but to avoid a fight altogether. 

This suspicion is compounded by the fact that invoking a trial of seven is downright preposterous. As Baelor notes, trials of seven are rarely held—as in, we know of literally just one other in all of Westerosi history. More than 160 years before the events of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a group of Faith Militant soldiers challenged King Maegor the Cruel to a trial by seven. Every single person involved in the trial died on the field, save for Maegor, who hardly escaped unscathed. The king sustained such brutal injuries that he fell into a deep coma, which he woke from only after 13 days had passed (and, it’s rumored, through the use of blood magic—after his coma, Maegor’s personality became even more despicable).

So, the death rate of a trial of seven stands at 93 percent. Why would anyone outside the accuser and the accused agree to such an endeavor? 

We have good motivations for most of the knights in this battle, though not all. Aerion’s father, Maekar; brother Daeron (who, remember, has also accused Dunk of a crime); and three Kingsguard knights are more or less duty-bound to defend the young prince. And since he’s royalty, finding one more champion to join him isn’t too hard. He simply promises Steffon Fossoway a lordship, and Aerion’s group is complete.

Dunk has no such luxury. He barely knows anyone and has nothing to offer. He’s saved, just about, by Egg, who brings in Lyonel Baratheon, Robyn Rhysling, Humfrey Hardyng, and Humfrey Beesbury. But who are these four knights, and why are they joining Dunk?

Audiences are already well-acquainted with Lyonel. As discussed in a previous column of mine, the show has already significantly expanded the Laughing Storm’s character. In the show, Lyonel is practically on a first-name basis with Dunk. Lyonel is seen less in the novella, but at one point he explains to Dunk, “There has not been a trial of seven for more than a hundred years. … I was not about to miss a chance to fight the Kingsguard knights, and tweak Prince Maekar’s nose in the bargain.” He says more or less the same in the show.

If you felt the series really sped past who Robyn, Hardyng, and Beesbury are, the novella tells us even less. Take Ser Robyn—he’s the one-eyed, mad knight that Egg runs into in Episode 3. That scene exists only in the show. In The Hedge Knight, Robyn is introduced when he is jousting with Leo Tyrell. We get almost nothing more of Ser Robyn, just that “Egg told [Dunk] that Ser Robyn had lost his eye to a splinter from a broken lance not five years earlier.” When Robyn loses his helm against Ser Leo, the Tyrell knight is too chivalrous to aim at Ser Robyn’s head, lest he lose his other eye; Leo unhorses Robyn nevertheless.

More on ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

More on ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’

That’s all there is for Robyn in the book until he shows up for the trial of seven. He’s there with little explanation, except for Raymun Fossoway telling Dunk that “Egg is responsible for Ser Robyn, whom he knew from other tourneys.” On the next page, we see the knights, including Robyn, preparing for the trial: “Ser Lyonel sat sharpening his sword on a whetstone while the Humfreys talked quietly, Ser Robyn prayed, and Raymun Fossoway paced back and forth, wondering where his cousin had got to.” That’s literally everything we know about him before the joust—he never gets even a single line of dialogue. The scene with Egg and the show referring to him as “mad” is actually a significant expansion on his character.

The Humfreys aren’t much better. Of Humfrey Hardyng, Egg in the novella tells Dunk, “He won a great melee at Maidenpool last year, ser, and overthrew Ser Donnel of Duskendale and the Lords Arryn and Royce in the lists.” Hardyng is one of the initial champions of the tourney, defeating Lord Medgar Tully and Ser Joseth Mallister in the tourney’s first day. Then he faces his opposite, Humfrey Beesbury, and the two end up breaking 12 lances in what the smallfolk call “the Battle of Humfrey.” In the novella, Hardyng defeats 14 knights in total in the first day

In the show, Hardyng is the knight whose horse Aerion impales on the final tilt of the first day, killing the horse and breaking Ser Humfrey’s leg. His motivation, therefore, in challenging Aerion is obvious: revenge. When Dunk tells the champions collected before him that he’s in their debt, Hardyng replies, “The debt is Aerion’s, and we mean to collect it.”

Humfrey Beesbury doesn’t get as much backstory—he just shows up on the morning of the trial. The only explanation we get comes from Raymun, who in the novella says, “I hoped Hardyng would want another chance at Aerion, and he did. As it happens, the other Humfrey is his brother by marriage.” We don’t even know whose sister is married to whom, just that this in-law connection is enough to bring Beesbury into the fold.

And … that’s it. That’s everything we know about those three knights going into the trial. It’s not the show’s fault; they’re just paper-thin characters.

The sixth champion (joining Dunk, Lyonel, Robyn, Hardyng, and Beesbury) is Raymun. In both text and on-screen, Dunk hesitates to knight the young squire, and Lyonel steps in to do it. And Raymun is much the same in both mediums—he’s Dunk’s friend, and he is deeply appalled by his cousin Steffon, who betrays Dunk and switches to Aerion’s side on the morning of the trial. However, one detail we don’t get in the show is Raymun symbolically changing his sigil just before combat:

“My pardons, ser. I needed to make a small change to my sigil, lest I be mistaken for my dishonorable cousin.” He showed them all his shield. The polished golden field remained the same, and the Fossoway apple, but this apple was green instead of red. “I fear I am still not ripe … but better green than wormy, eh?”

Then there is Dunk’s final knight—Baelor Targaryen. Like Raymun, he’s much the same in both the book and the show. Maekar asks whether his brother is mad for joining the side of the accused. Baelor responds that Duncan simply defended the weak, as all knights must.

Something that goes relatively unremarked upon in the show is that Baelor is not wearing his own armor. If you think his plate looks a little tight, that’s by design—he’s wearing his son Valarr’s suit. That’s because Baelor “did not think to enter the lists at Ashford,” he explains in the novella, and did not bring his own armor with him as a result. 

I also suspect that Baelor actually could’ve shut down this trial by combat, despite him saying that Aerion was “within his rights” to call for it. For Maegor’s trial of seven, the books specify that Maegor “accepted” the challenge, implying that he may have been able to ignore it. Maegor has that leeway, I believe, because he’s king—Dunk, suffice to say, is not. But I believe that Baelor, as hand of the current king, Daeron II, qualifies as a higher authority who could’ve rejected this ludicrous idea. 

So, why doesn’t he? As discussed last week, Targaryen power isn’t what it once was. Baelor can’t overrule his nephew and seemingly open the door for peasant knights to slap around princes. He can’t embarrass members of his royal family. So, he has to let the show go on—but in joining Dunk’s side, he signals his disapproval of Aerion and disagreement with how this all unfolded.

And that rounds out the crew. While the motivations of some of the knights joining Dunk are vague at best, that was true in the novella as well. There just isn’t enough time—on page or screen—to flesh these characters out. Nevertheless, we can suspend a bit of disbelief to make the story work as we head toward the big showdown next week.

Riley McAtee

Riley McAtee is a senior editor at The Ringer who focuses on America’s two biggest sports: the NFL and ‘Survivor.’