One of the biggest back-and-forths throughout the six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ delightful debut season has been whether or not Dunk was really knighted by Ser Arlan. Whether it really matters one way or the other remains to be seen—Dunk’s going to act like he thinks a knight should regardless—fans think there’s plenty of evidence in the show to suggest otherwise… but that’s not the intent of either Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or George R.R. Martin himself.
Throughout the first season, we get a lot of hints that Dunk is maybe not being honest about his knighthood, including his general hesitance to speak with confidence about it, climaxing in him letting Lyonel Baratheon step in to knight Raymun Fossoway before the Trial of Seven. But the last episode of the season included a flashback to what appeared to be not far before Ser Arlan’s death that opens the show, where Dunk asks his ailing master why he was never knighted. Arlan trails off in his response (to the point we and Dunk alike think that this is actually the moment he died), only to shudder back to lucidity and carry on without answering.
Answer or not, we know this moment comes not long before Arlan met his actual end, giving it takes place near the tree where Dunk ultimately buries him. But according to showrunner Ira Parker, it wasn’t meant to be the final piece of the puzzle to “confirm” that Dunk was ever truly a knight.
“It’s fascinating to me that that’s what you got out of that scene,” Parker recently teased to Collider, discussing the moment as definitive proof of Dunk’s knighting. “At that moment, Dunk had never been knighted by Ser Arlan. He says, ‘Why did you never knight me?’ And then, Ser Arlan dies, and we think it’s over. But then, he’s back and, as far as we know, the continuation of that scene is, ‘Boy, go get me my sword,’ and then he knights him. There is no conformation, one way or the other, coming out of that scene.”
According to Parker, despite whatever clues people have picked up on across the season, that ambiguity was a direct request from Martin himself. “That’s exactly how Mr. R.R. Martin requested it,” Parker added. “It remains [ambiguous] and people can decide for themselves.”
That makes sense, given that Martin likewise never explicitly gives an answer to the question in the Dunk & Egg novellas, despite littering a few suggestions of doubt here and there in The Hedge Knight. Whether or not Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will return to this in future seasons as a thread to keep pulling at going forward, remains to be seen—but for all the theorisation it’s sparked, ultimately the truth of it isn’t really what the show, Parker, or Martin is interested in.
“This whole journey is going to be about what makes a true knight, whether or not you’re given the title, or if you have to earn the title even after you’re given it,” Parker concluded. “Can you earn it, even if you’ve never been given it?”
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