Introduction:

At long last, we come to the much-promised, frequently-delayed essay series on the Dunk & Egg series, as a window on the (let me check the wording on the Kickstarter for a second) “history of House Targaryen and the Blackfyre Rebellion.” In this essay series, I will cover one novella at a time – which means initially the three stories collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but I will be more than happy to re-open the series on that happy day when “Village Hero” or “She-Wolves of Winterfell” or any other Dunk and Egg story are released.

So let’s see what we can mine from our memories, shall we?

Hedge Knight and the Origin of the Blackfyres

Of course, one difficulty about writing this essay series about Dunk & Egg through the lens of the Blackfyre Rebellions is that the Blackfyres do not appear in Hedge Knight, either “on screen” or merely mentioned. This, despite the fact that the Ashford Tourney boasts both Princes Baelor and Maekar, whose reputations were so made by Redgrass Field that they got a song named after their partnership, despite the fact that many of the combatants are of the right age and regional affiliations to be veterans of the First Rebellion, including Ser Arlan of Pennytree himself.

Indeed, it is quite possible that, when GRRM was writing this first novella in 1997 (at the same time that he was writing A Clash of Kings), he hadn’t even come up with the idea of the Blackfyres. The meta-fictional history of the Blackfyres in ASOIAF is a really interesting subject: on the one hand, we know that sometime between writing the pitch letter and writing AGOT (I think), GRRM wrote up a rather elaborate set of notes/outlines on his world and its history that included not just the histories but also the personalities and physical appearances of the Targaryen kings. As part of that, we know that the idea of Aegon IV as a bad king with a cloud over the succession from Jon I of ACOK, so there was some sort of skeleton there to build on. On the other hand, the first time when Daemon Blackfyre is finally named is Davos IV of ASOS – and it seems pretty likely that GRRM had just come up with the idea of the Blackfyres around the time he wrote that chapter when you see how he peppers the name into Jaime V and Catelyn V soon thereafter.[1]

Regardless, it’s quite possible that the writing of Hedge Knight itself prompted the creation of the Blackfyres. Serial formats really benefit from a persistent antagonist – because your only alte rnative is pure Monster of the Week – and a group threat like the Blackfyres and their loyalists scattered throughout the south are perfect as both background (as in Sworn Sword) or foreground (as in Mystery Knight), because defeating or killing off individual Blackfyre loyalists doesn’t end the main threat.

Finally, there’s a thematic reason why it makes sense that we don’t see the Blackfyres in Hedge Knight – assuming for the sake of argument that the two ideas existed simultaneously – because in a lot of important ways, it is a story about childhood disillusionment. Dunk starts out the chapter as a naïve man-child (in this novella, Egg is the worldly one, although the two will swap roles later on), dreaming an impossible dream of not just the modest upward mobility of a bastard from Flea Bottom becoming a hedge knight, but the full rags-to-riches dream of a tourney champion, in a tourney straight out of Ivanhoe. A key part of Dunk’s fantasy life is the idea of “Good King Daeron” at the head of a large House of ideal princes as the sign and seal of a golden age – and the cotton wool blinders of a childlike imagination would keep the particulars of the perfidious and threatening Blackfyres firmly in the wings. By the end of the story, Dunk receives a harsh education on the realities of this particular generation of Targaryens, between his observations of Valarr at the joust, his encounters with Aerion, Baelor’s death at the hands of Maekar, and so on that leaves him much more skeptical of the value of Targaryen royalty as the promise of any kind of good government, although ultimately he refuses to break and lose faith for the future (embodied in the person of Egg).

(A word to the reader: consider the above paragraph merely a prologue or summary of a much lengthier argument you’ll see later.)

Hedge Knights as Liminal Social Class

So why start here, with The Hedge Knight? I would argue that the primary reason why GRRM starts here is that Dunk’s role as the eponymous hedge knight is foundational to the series as a whole – which is why in each story, he returns to the life despite brief hiatuses as a caravan guard, household knight, or would-be tourney champion.

In both Westeros and in medieval Europe (where the term “knight-errant” was used instead) hedge knights occupy a liminal position in relation to the feudal class structure. On the one hand, they are counted as (albeit the “littlest” and most marginal) members of the knightly orders. This means that they are expected to conform to the honor code of chivalry and the aesthetic and cultural mores of the aristocracy – even though they lack access to the material wealth (which, I will always emphasize, was grounded in the coercive extraction of taxes and rents from landed estates manned by unfree labor) that makes it easier to abide by the former and makes the latter at all possible. In return, though, they cannot be denied the rights and privileges common to all of their station – which means they cannot be denied a place on the fringes of all the ceremonies and rituals, households and feasting tables, courts and command tents of “the great and the good,” and from this surprisingly intimate vantage, they serve as a perfect window on the lives of their betters.

On the other hand, their material circumstances make them much closer to the smallfolk than any other of their rank would ever get. As with the genteel poor of European history, the only difference between a hedge knight and a common cottager is the three letters in front of their name and everything they mean – hence why the noblesse d’épée fought the hardest of any of the Second Estate against the abolition of those same feudal privileges. Thus, when hedge knights interact with the smallfolk, they uniquely do so outside of the feudal relationship. Throughout Hedge Knight, when Dunk talks to artisans like Steely Pate or entertainers like Tanselle Too-Tall, he does so from a position of equality. After all, he’s not wealthier than they are, he has no position of authority over them or even a greater estate, he is barely owed social deference. Indeed, it could be argued that hedge knights are properly placed side-by-side with the most marginal in smallfolk society, because they definitionally lack the feudal tenancies that were the passport to economic survival for 90% plus of the population.

Thus, Hedge Knight, is a tale of attempted social mobility. We are introduced to Dunk, a seven-foot-tall squire for the elderly Ser Arlan of Pennytree, as he tries to make the impossible leap from Flea Bottom urchin into the nobility by becoming a hedge knight when his master dies unexpectedly. This medieval spin on a Horatio Alger story is complicated when we see how hard the life of a hedge knight can be:

The only life he knew was the life of a hedge knight, riding from keep to keep, taking service with this lord and that lord, fighting in their battles and eating in their halls until the war was done, and then moving on. There were tourneys from time to time as well, though less often, and he knew that some hedge knights turned robber during lean winters, though the old man never had.

The combination of irregular employment and being paid in little more than food and lodging leaves Ser Arlan (and thus Dunk) with only “three silver stags, nineteen copper pennies, and a chipped garnet; like most hedge knights, the greatest part of his worldly wealth had been tied up in his horses and weapons.” When you learn that the most basic armor required to enter a tourney costs “eight hundred stags,” you begin to realize how precarious it is to live hanging on to the very lowest rung of the nobility, one bad joust away from bankruptcy and one hard winter away from turning into bandits and outlaws.

Given all of these limitations, it’s surprising how difficult it is for Dunk to claim the status of a hedge knight. In sharp contrast to Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, in order to be a knight, or indeed participate in the tourney – in which Dunk will have to wager and risk his entire worldly possessions at every bout – he must first be recognized as a knight by those already in the club. And the club’s members repeatedly refuse to recognize the credentials he borrowed from Ser Arlan of Pennytree:

“My lord father took eight hundred knights and near four thousand foot into the mountains. I cannot be expected to remember every one of them, nor what shields they carried.” “…The old man took a wound in your father’s service, how can you have forgotten him?”

Implicit in Ser Manfred Dondarrion’s rejection of any connection between his House and Ser Arlan of Pennytree is a rejection also of any reciprocal obligations of a liege lord to his vassals. Lords are meant to protect and shelter the men who fight for them, but here we see that hedge knights are just as disposable as any member of the modern precariat, who can be hired by the campaign, thrown away when they are injured in the line of duty, unworthy of even having their names remembered. Only because Baelor Breakspear has a prodigious memory, (“I remember Ser Arlan of Pennytree…He never won a tourney that I know, but he never shamed himself either”) and a genuine concern for all of his future subjects, is Dunk’s claim recognized.

The reason why there are so many social barriers to Dunk’s elevation is that knighthood is, as GRRM demonstrates, a system of privilege in the original sense of the term as “private law.” When Prince Aerion Targaryen decides that the puppeteer Tanselle Too-Tall should be crippled and her business be destroyed for the crime of slaying a dragon in a puppet show, Dunk impetuously decides to do something about it, punching and kicking the Prince. In Westeros, it may be perfectly legal for Prince Aerion to cripple a woman and destroy her business with impunity, but to raise a hand to a prince is to lose that hand:

“What you did, ser…well, I might have done the same in your place, but I am a prince of the realm, not a hedge knight. It is never wise to strike a king’s grandson in anger, no matter the cause.” “Ser Duncan, let me ask you this – how good a knight are you, truly? How skilled at arms?…You have another choice, though…whether it is a better choice or a worse one, I cannot say, but I remind you that any knight accused of a crime has the right to demand trial by combat. So I ask you once again, Ser Duncan the Tall – how good a knight are you? Truly?”

Hedge knights are something of a loophole in this legal system that enshrines inequality of rights and status at its core. As we’ve seen before, the right to trial by combat is the very foundation and root of noble privilege and their last defense in the worst of circumstances. To strip hedge knights of that legal shield is unthinkable twice over: first, because it raises the horrifying possibility that a knight might be treated as badly as any other prisoner in the dock (and once you do that, you might as well declare feudalism dead and buried); second, because it would establish a precedent that a legal authority could deprive other noblemen of their “gods-given rights and liberties.”(WOIAF) But Dunk is spared the immediate prospect of judicial mutilation only because he has been recognized as a knight – had he performed the same actions for the same reasons the day before, Dunk would have forfeited hand and foot without any right to due process whatsoever.

But for all that this privilege calls into question whether chivalric tropes are but a thin justifying veneer over unacceptable inequality, GRRM uses this very scenario to argue that there is a kernel of truth behind the myth. Following GRRM’s customary preference for existential romanticism, here he argues that true knighthood exists, but only on the margins of society. As an orphan from Flea Bottom – so not only one of the smallfolk but also the lowest of the low – Dunk remains close enough to his roots to remember that the smallfolk are fully human and thus, worthy of being included among the “weak and innocent” who knights are bound by oath to protect:

“A hedge knight is the truest kind of knight, Dunk,” the old man had told him, a long long time ago. “Other knights serve the lords who keep them, or from whom they hold their lands, but we serve where we will, for men whose causes we believe in. Every knight swears to protect the weak and innocent, but we keep the vow best, I think.” Smallfolk were drifting toward the field as well, and hundreds of them already stood along the fence…a woman called out, “Good fortune to you.” An old man stepped up to take his hand and said, “May the gods give you strength, ser.” Then a begging brother in a tattered brown robe said a blessing on his sword, and a maid kissed his cheek. They are for me. “Why?” he asked Pate. “What am I to them?” “A knight who remembered his vows.”

As this passage sets out quite clearly, precisely because of their precariousness, their closeness to the smallfolk, and their alienation from the power and ambitions of the nobility, the hedge knights come closest to the purity of the chivalric ideal. And among all hedge knights, Dunk comes the closest, because he’s not even a hedge knight.

At this point, it’s not exactly a textual revelation that Dunk’s story that Ser Arlan of Pennytree “knighted me before he passed” is a lie – hence why he can’t look Baelor in the face when the Prince confirms his claim to knighthood, why he hesitates to knight Raymun Fossoway, and feels “as relieved as he was guilty” afterwards. But in Martin’s hands, Dunk’s central sin is transmuted into a strange sort of grace. Dunk did serve Ser Arlan as faithfully as any squire ought, and there is no doubt that the “old man” was a better teacher of the ideals of knighthood (or at least “the pure” that a lifetime of hedge knighting had sifted from the dross) than he was of the fine points of jousting technique. And if Dunk’s story of the dubbing ceremony witnessed only by a robin isn’t the literal truth, it is in a sense the truth of the heart. (To quote one of Martin’s contemporaries in fantasy, it is “what ought to have been true.”) And as we might expect from a writer with GRRM’s background, it is the sheer impossibility of Dunk’s yearning that acts as the alchemical catalyst that transforms him into not just a knight, but a veritable paladin. Just as Brienne is the truest knight of her time because she is not a knight by virtue of her gender, (her ancestor) Dunk here is a true knight because he stands outside the knightly class and has no other way to clamber over the barriers placed in his way.

We see this theme take center-stage at the climactic Trial by Seven – in which the unknown hedge knight must find six other knights to take his side, lest he lose by default. Down by a man and on the verge of being condemned without ever having a chance to defend himself, Ser Dunk confronts the assembled nobility and chivalry at Ashford:

Dunk rode slowly along the fence. The viewing stand was crowded with knights. “M’lords,” he called to them, “do none of you remember Ser Arlan of Pennytree? I was his squire. We served many of you. Ate at your tables and slept in your halls.” He saw Manfred Dondarrion seated in the highest tier. “Ser Arlan took a wound in your lord father’s service.” The knight said something to the lady beside him, paying no heed. Dunk was forced to move on. “Lord Lannister, Ser Arlan unhorsed you once in tourney.” The Grey Lion examined his gloved hands, studiedly refusing to raise his eyes. “He was a good man, and he taught me how to be a knight. Not only sword and lance, but honor. A knight defends the innocent, he said. That’s all I did. I need one more knight to fight beside me. One, that’s all. Lord Caron? Lord Swann?” Lord Swann laughed softly as Lord Caron whispered in his ear. Dunk reined up before Ser Otho Bracken, lowering his voice. “Ser Otho, all know you for a great champion. Join us, I beg you. In the names of the old gods and the new. My cause is just.” “That may be,” said the Brute of Bracken, who had at least the grace to reply, “but it is your cause, not mine. I know you not, boy.” Heartsick, Dunk wheeled Thunder and racked back and forth before the tiers of pale, cold men. Despair made him shout. “ARE THERE NO TRUE KNIGHTS AMONG YOU?” Only silence answered…then came a voice. “I will take Ser Duncan’s side…This man protected the weak, as every true knight must,” replied Prince Baelor. “Let the gods determine if he was right or wrong.”

It is in this passage where the thematic parallels with ASOIAF really kick in: while GRRM is often celebrated or condemned for his brutal deconstructions of fantasy tropes, the reality is more complicated. Martin’s realist side) here acts as the prosecution, condemning the socio-cultural structures of fantasy medievalism. In this case, the institution of knighthood (as represented by this roll of great lords and tourney champions) is weighed in the balance and found wanting – not for nothing does GRRM paraphrase Prince Hal’s heartless denial of Sir John Falstaff. As it turns out, among all of the knights who came to Ashford Tourney, only one lives up to the chivalric code that makes the rule of this warrior caste more legitimate than institutionalized armed robbery. And to go all the way back to our discussion of the Blackfyres, it is a damning indictment of the character of that faction and class labelled as the “good guys” of the central conflict.

However, GRRM’s Romantic side is still there to act as counsel for the defense. It might not make for good statistics, but Martin believes that one individual choosing to do the right thing no matter the consequences can save the world, or in this case the idea of knighthood. Where the author differs from other fantasy authors is not in denying that the inner virtue of the individual can be a source of transcendent salvation, but rather arguing that said virtue is found not in Chosen Ones or hidden heirs but only among the “cripples, bastards, and broken things” – or in this case the hedge knights. Their very isolation from the social rewards of virtuous actions, the argument implicitly goes, lends their moral choice the legitimacy of the ascetic.

Section 3: The House of Daeron, for Good and Ill

But what of that other knight who remembered his vows? What does it say about House Targaryen in the reign of “Good King Daeron” that the lone royal scion who seems remotely worthy of his great privileges is Prince Baelor?

I’m going to go out on something of a limb and say that it is here, in Hedge Knight, not in ASOIAF (and certainly not in Fire & Blood) where GRRM comes closest to putting some meat on the bone of his argument about Aragorn’s tax policy. More than any other Targaryen than Jaehaerys the Wise (and arguably more so, given some of Jaehaerys’ actions in Fire & Blood Volume 1), we know both the content as well as the style of the warrior-lawgiver known as Baelor Breakspear:

Dunk got to his feet, wondering if he should keep his head down or if he was allowed to look a prince in the face. I am speaking with Baelor Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, Hand of the King, and heir apparent to the Iron Throne of Aegon the Conqueror. What could a hedge knight dare say to such a person? “Y-you gave him back his horse and armor and took no ransom, I remember,” he stammered. “The old—Ser Arlan, he told me you were the soul of chivalry, and that one day the Seven Kingdoms would be safe in your hands.” ”Not for many a year still, I pray,” Prince Baelor said. “No,” said Dunk, horrified. He almost said, I didn’t mean that the king should die, but stopped himself in time. “I am sorry, m’lord. Your Grace, I mean.”

GRRM clearly sets up Baelor as not merely a perfect prince – a tourney champion who combines impeccable honor with cunning strategy, a fair and compassionate judge who knows how to work multiple loopholes to see that justice is done – but also the promise of his House’s future, a man who “had it in him to be a great king, the greatest since Aegon the Dragon.”

This kind of heroic figure, this kind of rhetoric, has a very specific generational valence. Born in 1948, George R.R Martin is a boomer by rights, and no political figure looms as large in the minds of his generation as the hope of a generation lost as John F. Kennedy. It is no accident, then, that GRRM crafts Baelor’s death in the Trial of Seven to evoke JFK’s assassination:

The prince moved his head slowly from side to side. “Ser Raymun…my helm, if you’d be so kind. Visor…visor’s cracked, and my fingers…fingers feel like wood.” “At once, Your Grace.” Raymun took the prince’s helm in both hands and grunted. “Goodman Pate, a hand.” Steely Pate dragged over a mounting stool. “It’s crushed down at the back, Your Grace, toward the left side. Smashed into the gorget. Good steel, this, to stop such a blow.” “Brother’s mace, most like,” Baelor said thickly. “He’s strong.” He winced. “That…feels queer, I…” “Here it comes.” Pate lifted the battered helm away. “Gods be good. Oh gods oh gods oh gods preserve…” Dunk saw something red and wet fall out of the helm. Someone was screaming, high and terrible. Against the bleak grey sky swayed a tall tall prince in black armor with only half a skull. He could see red blood and pale bone beneath and something else, something blue-grey and pulpy. A queer troubled look passed across Baelor Breakspear’s face, like a cloud passing before a sun. He raised his hand and touched the back of his head with two fingers, oh so lightly. And then he fell.

The central tragedy of Hedge Knight is not merely that Baelor dies, but that there is no one else within House Targaryen who can follow Baelor Breakspear; he is a JFK without an RFK. Here is GRRM’s sharpest critique of the “Good Man” theory of monarchy set forward by conventional fantasy: not that a good man cannot be a good ruler, or that it is impossible to be honorable without being stupid or statesmanlike without being amoral, but that a good man remains mortal. By fortune of war or sudden illness, assassination or accident, the life of the wisest prince can be cut short in an instant. As often as they are maligned, the structures of partisan politics ensure that there are many who share the leader’s commitment to an agenda and a platform, who can even in the wake of tragedy insist that “let us continue.” But monarchy has no such safeguard – everything relies on the person of the king, and succession by blood is no guarantee that the son sees eye-to-eye with the father, let alone can live up to their example. And so often in history, we have seen that the death of kings can produce wild gyrations in policy, with objectives of state turning on a dime and experienced councilors replaced en masse with new favorites.

The clear hope of all the crowd at the tourney is that Prince Valarr would fulfill this role. Indeed, I would argue that the political purpose of Ashford Tourney – why the Targaryens are there en masse, why Prince Valarr was one of the original five champions despite being a slightly odd choice[2] – was to show off the young prince, to demonstrate before the assembled political class of the nation “if Valarr had indeed inherited a measure of his father’s prowess.” The problem is that even Dunk the Lunk can tell“he is a fair knight but nothing more than that,” despite the best efforts of the tourney organizers present to make sure “he had drawn the weakest opponent,” or knights like Lord Gawen Swann to turn Valarr’s glancing blows into telling blows. And when we meet him after his father’s death, he’s no stronger a reed mentally than he was physically –a rather conventional intellect with the misfortune to be born at a time when House Targaryen will need very unconventional intellects if it is to survive.

Nor is there much hope to be found among Maekar’s brood – ironically, not because they inherited too little Targaryen-ness, but too much. As we see throughout Hedge Knight, Daeron lacks the strength of will or character to master the prophetic dreams that torment him, and so has turned to self-medication. In his own way, Aerion too has inherited another long-running Targaryen dream –“he thinks he is a dragon in human form.” Nor does Maekar (at least to the extent that we’ve seen him so far) possess the same capacity for introspection and growth that turned RFK from Joseph McCarthy’s assistant counsel to the champion of the left.

And we haven’t even met Aerys I or Bloodraven or Rhegal yet.

Conclusion:

Thus, even before the Blackfyres show up either thematically in Sworn Sword or in person in Mystery Knight, we see that the foundations of the House of Daeron are weak and rotted through, and will not stand the next crisis that comes its way. (As a good genre writer, GRRM makes sure that the next crisis comes along that very same year.)

And it is altogether right and proper that this should be the case, because otherwise Egg couldn’t become the unlikely hope of house because he was raised by a simple hedge knight.

[1] Given that even some very late parts of ASOS were cut from the original ACOK manuscript, it’s unclear whether these sections of ASOS were written in late November 1998 through 1999, or earlier. It remains possible that they were originally written sometime between 1997 and October 1998, although there’s evidence for a later date.

[2] Lord Ashford’s daughter’s original champions are her two brothers, her father’s liege lord (already an honor both because of his feudal status and because of his reputation as a tourney knight), and Ser Humphrey Hardying, a famous tourney knight but otherwise of relatively low status, who seems to be there to make up the numbers and ensure that at least some of the champions stick around for at least a couple bouts (which is probably a good luck thing). And then there’s Valarr, who is young and untried in comparison to the other Targareyn princes there…