‘A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms’: Everything To Know About The ‘Game Of Thrones’ Prequel That Isn’t Offending George R.R. Martin (Dec. 2024 Update)

Even the most enthused Westeros fan can admit that House of the Dragon‘s second season wasn’t spectacular. The episodes felt like a series of strategy conversations punctuated by Daemon’s haunted fever dreams at Harrenhaal, and showrunner Ryan Condal held back show stopping battles until the third season in order to stretch the series to four seasons in length. Plenty of viewers also had storytelling issues from the “Blood and Cheese” episode, and that included George R.R. Martin, who ranted about and then deleted his dismay at how important book developments took short cuts and lacked proper context. Since he’s the Westeros creator and author, the fact that he spoke out before series completion speaks volumes.

Fortunately, however, Martin is feeling much better about Dark Winds over at AMC and a different Westeros series that will debut on HBO before House of the Dragon returns. That would be A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, formerly known as The Hedge Knight. We shouldn’t expect dragons in this show, but let’s talk about what we can expect instead.

Release Date

More like a release window. According to HBO exec JB Perrette (via Variety), the planned debut period is “summer” 2025. However Variety “has learned it’s more likely going to be a fourth-quarter title.” 2025 is apparently set in stone, though, since House of the Dragon won’t return until 2026.

Plot

On the timeline of Westeros, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms picks up around 90-100 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones. That means that this new series takes place nearly a few hundred years after HotD and when dragons are practically extinct (until Daenerys performed the blood ritual at Drogo’s funeral), and the Targaryens are barely hanging on.

A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms is actually the name of GRRM’s trilogy of novellas that begin with The Hedge Knight, which will be the basis of the first season but admittedly isn’t a very compelling title for a show. The main character is Ser Duncan the Tall, who begins the story as a knight who is in service to no particular lord, but he does want to “knight it up” (my words) and earn a living, so he heads toward a tournament (the Tourney of Ashford Meadow). Along the way, he is trailed by a persistent boy (who later becomes his squire) called Egg, and that leads to these stories affectionately being known by GRRM readers at the “Dunk and Egg” tales.

GRRM has revealed himself to be absolutely giddy after a set visit and raved about the experience on his Not-A-Blog website. He noted that this smaller budgeted series impressed him because “[n]inety per cent of the story is set in a field, surrounded by tents, we would not need the huge sets the other shows had featured, but it couldn’t look fake or cheap either, and the costumes and the heraldry and the fights all had to be splendid, and… I was so so happy when I got there, and saw what Ira and his team had built.”

From HBO’s description of this GRRM-pleasing show:

A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros … a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.

Ira Park serves as showrunner for this more grounded (at least in Westeros terms) series, and the show will also be executive produced by GRRM. While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, HotD‘s Ryan Condal spoke to the contrast of how the Dunk and Egg tales “always stuck with me as such a wonderful counterpoint to George’s world, which was really about the upper crust of the 1 percent.” He added, “Well, Dunk and Egg is about the small folk who suffer at the hands of the game of thrones as it’s played by the nobles.”

Cast

No dragons? You got that correct. And that’s just fine because the second House of the Dragon season was a fever dream without a payoff, which might have caused some winged-beast burnout.

The human cast includes Peter Claffey (who is 6’5″ IRL) as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg. The adorable Ansell has very blonde, Targaryen-like hair, but did shave his head to authentically portray a character who also hides his own blonde hair.

We will see other Targaryens, including Finn Bennett as Aerion, Sam Spruell as Maker, and Bertie Carvel as Baylor. Daniel Ings will portray Ser Lyonel Barotheon, and Tanzyn Crawford is onboard as a puppeteer named Tanselle.

Trailer

The Max YouTube channel has provided the tiniest montage of footage.