A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

A smart egg wearing the last air bender and an egghead for a gentle giant; both horse-whisperers on a path to prove their worth, honor, grit, valor and legacy in their own ways.

It’s been a guiding finger in these types of stories of Kings and Queens, Knights and Empires that most often the giants with muscular stature looking like Atlas, wearing bushy beards, gulping ales by the buckets and whoring around with maidens, Seven Kingdoms pokes holes in that rulebook with a lance. Within the trope conquered by brutes and troglodytes, our man is the one ture real man.

Our knight is not a highborn nor is he a trueborn, he is not a smooth-talker, but rather gets called smooth-brained, keeps his nose clean and flatters the upper class when necessary for which he gets humiliated, he dances, he sews, he plays tug of war. He sheds tears. Some might call him an oaf, some might take umbrage with his odour, he is often put in his place for he doesn’t have two coppers in his pockets to rub together nor does he have the royal blood to make the kingsguard bow before him. Duncan slouches all through his way much of the season, keeps to himself, doesn’t have a manly beard or shiny armor or a shield, actually no beard at all, doesn’t pay heed to the politics and at ease with himself that he isn’t very blessed and endowed in that large noggin of his over his trunk-like neck. What he has is rare and decidedly far more worth in value in a land where brothers kill their own to wear the crown and sit in the throne. Warrior, brave, just, protector of the innocent.

And above all that, yes, minor detail, he is the chosen one. So, evidently enough, with it comes plot armor in addition to, well, literal shiny ones with helms.

The most standout feature of A Knight of The Seven Kingdom that jumped out of the screen for me is how gracefully it handles the follies inherited from the previous generations and makes something good out of it by sieving the toxic chaff and still remain better off with enough useful teachings. Every generation down the line becomes a better version of its former, contrary to the overwhelming volume of prevalent whining and trashing of the next generation while reminiscing and vying for the supposed great era of men through the lens of atavism.

A Knight of Seven Kingdoms reminds me of a simpler time of Television when stories were told for light-hearted entertainment and basic principles of good and evil.

With a sonorous score, playful banter, lovely adoring chemistry between a Ser and his squire, all the dining and drinking under trees and sleeping under the open starry night sky, long talks about dreams and ailing hearts, embarrassing instances which add humor and levity to the dark and drab aesthetics with muted colors of this little show eyes for something specific and not one bit more. Pure entertainment without too much investment in endless character journeys. It wears its sentiments on its sleeves and isn’t at all reluctant about showing all the bright bits for a show that has a gloomy moody setting through acts of humanity. A knight who knows what he wants, what is beyond comprehension is how this show fits a 10ft wide heart inside a 7ft Duncan The Tall. The mighty spirit of an underdog orphan from Flea Bottom and his mysterious but precociously wise 3-ft-tall squire.

✍️

🎬

🎉