A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

This message comes from Intuit TurboTax. With TurboTax Expert Full Service, match with a dedicated expert who will do your taxes for you from start to finish, getting you every dollar you deserve. It's that easy. Visit TurboTax.com to match with an expert today.

of the Seven Kingdoms is kinda Game of Thrones for folks who hated Game of Thrones. No dragons, no lore to memorize. It's funny. The HBO series may be set 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 uh...

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 Glenn Weldon and today we're talking about a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. This message comes from BetterHelp. President Fernando Madeira shares BetterHelp's commitment to expanding access to therapy. Our State of Stigma report helped us understand that believing in mental health is easy, but asking for help is not.

Now with the report on our hands we can work to make mental health care more accessible. To get matched with a therapist, visit betterhelp.com slash npr for ten percent off your first month. Support for NPR and the following message come from Warby Parker, the one stop shop for all your vision needs. They offer expertly crafted prescription eyewear, plus contacts, eye exams, and more. For everything you need to see, visit your nearest Warby Parker store or head to warbyparker.com.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Capella University. Sometimes it takes a different approach to pursue your goals. Capella is an online university accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. That means you can earn your degree from wherever you are and be confident your education is relevant, recognized, and respected. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more about earning a relevant degree at Capella.edu.

This message comes from Lisa. From night one, you'll feel the difference. Premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body support. Go to Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra$50 off with promo code NPR. Joining me today is NPR producer JC Howard. Hey there, JC. Hello, I'm here to run my insolent mouth. There we go. I wouldn't have it any other way. Also with us 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 One Heinicke. Good day to you, sirs. Good day. So a night 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 Claffy.

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. Ansul, he's a bald headed kid who's eager to be Dunk's squire and seems to know a great deal about knights. Nerd. What's your name? Dunk. Sir Dunk. There's no name for a knight. Is it short for Duncan? Yes. Uh Sir Duncan of Sir Duncan the Tall. Never heard of him.

She's no every knight in the seven kingdoms then. The good ones. 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 JC, winter is here, but it's kinda summer on the series, so what'd you think?

First of all, let me just say I loved it. Unequivocally with no reservation. And it starts with the novella. Like I really love 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 in great halls with lords and ladies and Soar with dragons and fight ice zombies, you know, like the stuff of legends. But a knight of the seven kingdoms asks the exact right question, which is what about the rest of Western?

You know? What about the rest of them? 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 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. What, our nights look the same, do they? No, but they don't look like you either. Your belt's made of ropes.

So long as it holds my scabbard it serves. 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. Or in his place. Yeah. This is a show about just getting through it. I like that about it. That's right. Yeah. Keeping our head above water. All right, Nikki, what'd you think? Yeah, I've really loved it. I I'm a huge fan of the novella The Hedge Knight, which th 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 the 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 always gonna talk about music. Oh my god. 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 it kind of stripped down. It feels a little bit like you're at the Shire.

And I really love that switch. Decidedly quieter. Yeah. Yeah. Much, much, much. And it's like, well, this is probably what the common folk will do it. 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 and just so endearing. And I really love how both of the characters were portrayed. 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. The showiner and Dexter Sol Ansel and Peter Clappy. All there is. And it was just wonderful to see how excited they were about the show and excited for other people to see it. Very good. Very good. 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 N PR 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.

Particularly, this is what it 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. I just need to use the copier, dude. And I kinda want to go back and find all those people who wrote to me and say

Yeah, here it is. Here you go. Yeah. Try this. I personally miss the magic, I miss the dragons. I don't miss having to do homework. Um but I love this.

Tone I 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. Give me character comedy. Absolutely. Give me uh lightness. Get 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 mentioned, point of view of commoners. Gimme short episodes, short seasons. Yes, right.

Thirty minutes. I was sad. I wanted them to be longer. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. It wouldn't fit. It wouldn't fit the tone. But they did a good job. Yeah. Every episode I like I was satisfied. 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 Dragons.

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. Which of course the only logical answer to that is dude, there are dragons. Yeah. You put dragons in here.

You put prophecies, you put witches who are giving birth to shadow demons. What's the real project here? How realistic do we need to be? Exactly. What are we doing here? And does the fact that every episode of Thrones and House of the Dragons 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. It was a major part of the economy. 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 Riderly ticks, I guess you'd call them. 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 going to George. How'd that aspect of the show grab you guys? It didn't bother me because I mean, probably'cause 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 Tansil, Tansil Too Tall, and the Innkeeper.

That's it. Yeah. 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 birthday girl. Here she is. Three lines, but okay. Right. Right. Just to say though, I loved the addition of the first.

Because like she had total main character energy. Like this was about her. And yet, like I watched 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. The humor in the show. You're making stupid. 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 an innkeeper, uh they get to speak the truth. 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.

Yeah. That's what matters to me. Yep. Not to build the same as other men. And I'll have anywhere else to change the price of X. Topical. Yeah, right. Figure of the pulse. Yeah, absolutely. Can relate. 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. One hundred percent. 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. It seems YA to them. Interesting. 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. Yeah. You've built the novellas around them and you've built this show around them. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ancel. They settle into these roles so well. It it's it feels like they were born to play them. Right. Dunk is obviously this oafish and naive Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall. 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. 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 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.

Exactly. That vulnerability. Dunk and egg for president and vice president. Like this show, it anyone who's questioning, like, who is this show for? It's for me. I'm just I'm into it. I love it. It's for me too. It's for us. You know, I think the best thing that I notice about dunk is

He only has one example of a knight that he 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 oaths because that's what he saw throughout the season. He's coming up against well, wait a second, you guys are all nights. 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. 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 in the words that he's putting in other people's mouths, you know? There's like little book Easter eggs. Yeah. I mean, this is basically a two-hounder, right? This is Dunkin' Egg. And if the Dunkin' 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. Yes. Pretty much all the dialogue 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 uh Daniel Ings. Yeah, yeah. Holy Oh my god, love. Most likely to make you break curfew. Absolutely. So the books are very slim, so the test to the show is what does it decide to build out?'Cause it has to build out something. And it builds out character stuff. Baratheon is charming. So nice. He's uh 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 Bradford. Yeah, laughing storm. I think there's that moment where Dunk Like is in his tent and they're hanging out and you know, Lionel's like, Uh, hello. Yeah Do you belong? And Duncan's like, Oh no, I came I came for the food. Yeah, I came for dinner. You've come for my head then.

Wat? Wat? No! No! then why? Are you in my tent? So it's all supper. I love that moment because Baratheans historically, like whether you're thinking about like Stannis, Robert, and Renley. They like the truth. They like people to be upfront with them. As long as you shoot straight with them, they're they're cool with you. And I love that you got to see that because the Baratheans, that's the party fraternity. Yeah. That's true.

Yeah, I 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, you know, there are Targaryans, there are Barathians. But there's no connections to actual characters that you see in the other shows, which which makes the show more nimble because it's not burdened with exposition. It th 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. Except for some like 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 what you need to know before you go into this show. Like the show is what the show is. It can be a single screen experience that you don't need a wiki open on your phone. That's right. Right. As you're talking about how faithful like the script is and 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 switch 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, that 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. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite shift is uh a lot of the stuff.

Dunk says to himself in the book, he says to his horses in the show. Which is just it's characterization, that's what I mean. We're not sad. Certainly not rising to the level of a common sad. Besides, Sir Alan always said that... Hedge knight was the truest kind of knight. Do horses get nominated for Emmys because all this stuff about honor and selflessness

it's kinda 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. uh then that's the character we love. I mean that's the guy that's the guy we would hang around. Yeah. And you see that with egg, you know, here's somebody who is like such a night 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 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. Yeah. He gets to look up to somebody who's a nobody. Yeah. Oof. Oof. Yeah. Speak.

As we tape this, the second season is in production. Um there's probably gonna be a third. I I have a feeling this is gonna do very well. I'm going to gather from context clues that you guys are all in for seasons two and three we get'em. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. The sworn stored and the mystery night given to me. Yeah. Well, I think we are all in on this. We want to know what you think about a knight 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. Let's 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 our favorite topics anyway. It's all happening over Zoom on Friday, February thirteenth at three PM Eastern, Noon Pacific. If you are not a PLUS supporter yet,

Go to plus.npr.org slash happy. Again, that is plus.npr.org slash happy. If you are already a plus supporter, thank you very much. And scroll back and to January twenty second to learn how to register for the taping. And that brings us to the end of our show. JC Howard, Nikki Birch, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. And and Glenn, thank you for not giving me a clout in the year. Appreciate it.

You know. Maybe next season. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore, and Mike Katziff, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Holokeman provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time. Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts.

Perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus.npr.org. On the broad side, we take you into the heart of the south. With stories that'll surprise you. Bigfoot apparently loves glow sticks. He likes to parley. Exactly, exactly. He's a raver. And topics that dig into the muddy margins of history. Wait a second, this this is actually real.

From WUNC and the NPR Network, listen to the Broadside, a podcast from the crossroads of the South.