A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Recap: The Incredible Egg

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
The Squire
Season 1 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★
Previous Next
Previous Episode
Next Episode

In my recap of the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series premiere, I wrote that no one needs to know any of the deep lore from George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” universe to enjoy this show. This remains true. But given the big revelation at the end of this week’s episode, I thought it might be helpful to provide some Westeros history, for context.

The most important thing for you to know is that by the time Ser Duncan rides into Ashford Meadow at the start of this series, the people of Westeros have grown tired of the Targaryens. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set over 200 years into the Targaryen dynasty, and about 70 years after the devastating civil war depicted in House of the Dragon. We’re still about 80 years away — roughly three generations — from Robert Baratheon leading a rebellion that sticks and ending the Targaryen reign.

So there’s a reason why, in this week’s “The Squire,” the jousting tournament crowd boos and throws stones after the obnoxious Prince Aerion intentionally lances his opponent’s horse, causing the animal to fall on top of its rider and crush his leg. There’s a reason why the friendly squire Raymun Fossoway crudely tells Dunk, “The only honorable thing a Targaryen can do for this realm is finish on his wife’s tits.” And there’s a reason why a fortune teller walks up to Egg and predicts, “You shall be king, and die in a hot fire, and worms shall feed upon your ashes, and all who know you shall rejoice in your dying.” 

Why Egg? Because, as we learn in “The Squire,” Egg’s real name is Aegon Targaryen. His father is Maekar Targaryen, the sourpuss sibling of the wise and kindly Baelor Targaryen, who is currently serving as the Hand to their father, King Daeron II Targaryen. Egg is a prince. Sure, he’s waaaaay down in the line of succession. He’s the fourth son of the fourth son of the current king. But as the fortune teller implies, Egg’ll get there.

If you knew nothing about Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas before watching this show, did you guess Egg’s secret? I’ll be honest: Long before I read “The Hedge Knight,” I knew that the Dunk and Egg tales were about the adventures of King Aegon V Targaryen as a boy, when he was a squire to a traveling knight. I never knew that Egg’s true identity was meant to be a surprise. That didn’t spoil “The Hedge Knight” for me, so I’m hoping those of you who stumbled on the true premise of Seven Kingdoms (such as by reading the show’s Wikipedia page) don’t feel cheated.

To be fair, I think knowing about Egg in advance does add some rich layers to the first half of this season. There’s some delightful irony in the way the lowborn Ser Duncan unknowingly bosses around a prince (while still basically treating the boy kindly, because Dunk’s a good dude). And in “The Squire,” it’s chilling to see Prince Aegon shout “Kill him!” toward Aerion’s jousting opponent, essentially wishing his brother dead. 

Still, the big twist does hit harder in this TV version, because the show’s writers have made such an effort from the beginning to develop Egg into a more well-rounded character. (No pun intended.) In this episode in particular, we really get to see him as a whole, complex little person, whether he’s complaining about another breakfast of hard salt beef or he’s fantasizing about growing old alongside Ser Duncan, settling on some grateful lord’s land with the lord’s second-fairest daughter. (Dunk gets the fairest.)

All of the early moments in “The Squire” of Dunk and Egg just hanging out together are all wonderful: like Dunk buying and cooking some goose eggs to placate his hungry squire, and later teaching him how to sew. Or Egg idly asking his new mentor, “Is it odd that I have black hair growing out of my stones?” (A perplexed Dunk: “It’s odd you’re telling me.”) 

The overall loveliness of these scenes is encapsulated in the episode’s opening, which sees Egg waking up early to train his master’s horse to be tournament ready. He talks gently to the animal, while referring to the disdain his father — still unidentified at this point — has for the intelligence of horses. When a one-eyed knight wanders by, Egg starts geeking out in his usual Egg-y way when he realizes he’s talking to Ser Robyn Rhysling (William Houston), the maddest knight in Westeros. When Ser Robyn scoffs that he’s never heard of Ser Duncan, Egg boasts, “You will!” That’s a good lad. 

As for Dunk, he has a day filled with surprises. It begins when the Master of the Games brings him a proposition: to challenge Lord Ashford’s skilled youngest son, who has agreed to lose on purpose in the tournament so that the Ashfords can make a pile of coin by gambling on the fixed outcome. (Note again how the Westerosi aristocracy has fallen on hard times.) A prideful Dunk turns the offer down … for now. 

Dunk is surprised also when he learns he won’t be jousting on a day when only knights of high birth and renown are allowed to enter the lists. (“Then why have I been vomiting all morning?” Ser Duncan grumbles.) But his biggest surprise comes when Egg calls on him to help Tanselle, the too-tall puppeteer, who is being assaulted by Aerion. 

It seems that Tanselle’s spectacular, crowd-pleasing performance as a dragon slayer is tantamount to treason against the Targaryens. But this doesn’t stop Ser Duncan from landing a hard punch on Aerion, knocking out one of the prince’s teeth. When the guard arrives and restrains Dunk, Aerion is set to break all of his attacker’s teeth in retaliation. But then Egg shouts at Aerion to stand down, calling him “brother.”

Boom! Twistaroo. Cue closing credits. I can’t imagine how fun this ending must’ve been for people who weren’t expecting it. Alas, alas. 

The implications of all of this for Ser Duncan and Prince Aegon will have to wait until next week. None of it bodes well for our heroes, I can say that. So let’s push that darkness aside for now and enjoy some lighthearted ribaldry. Because this is an especially raunchy episode on the whole — and sweetly so. 

At one point, we hear Egg singing a classic pub-style ditty about the Targaryen dynasty, slyly replacing all the vulgar words. (“Horse die in battle / The battle was the front / Blackfyre’s not a trueborn / He came from the wrong … Country was in peril,” etc.) Later, at the Baratheon pavilion, a song about a thumbless woman with a talent for fingering men’s bungholes inspires Egg to wax poetic about the service such a lady has provided to the realm, without anyone ever knowing her name. 

All of this speaks to Egg’s charmingly sunny take on the world — with the exception of his own family. In one of this week’s nicest scenes (among many), Egg is sitting contently on the hill with Ser Duncan and says, “I could be quite happy in a place like this.” When Dunk says, “You’re in a place like this,” Egg sighs and says, “I meant for a while.”

Prince Aegon knows his squiring days could be short-lived. But until he gets yanked back to King’s Landing or Dragonstone, he’s going to savor every second. 

A Few Clouts in the Ear

• A nice bit of framing in those early scenes between Dunk and Egg: Ser Duncan’s face filling the left side of the frame, looking gigantic, while Prince Aegon’s face, on the right, is appropriately tiny. 

• One advantage to knowing in advance that Egg is Prince Aegon is that you can enjoy all the moments when someone almost mentions who the kid really is but doesn’t. For example, in this episode, Raymun someone wonders if Prince Maekar has left Ashford Meadow to “search for his misbegats,” and then names all the problems with Maekar’s kids. One’s a drunk, one’s vain, one’s a maester, and one … well, that sentence never gets completed. But now we know.

• The vain one, by the way? That’s Aerion. The drunk? We’ll learn more about him next week. The maester doesn’t appear in the novellas at all, except as a passing mention. 

• While we’re on the subject of the Targaryen family, you may be wondering where Aegon V’s reign falls in Westeros history. There’s no need to go into the fine details. (The novellas sure don’t.) But as for where we are in HBO’s timeline, you may be interested to know that Aegon V will one day sire King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, who will sire “the mad king” Aerys, whose reign Robert Baratheon and Jamie Lannister will violently end. Or, to put it into more meaningful terms for Game of Thrones fans: Egg is Daenerys’s great-grandfather.