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Why Baelor Targaryen Joins Dunk’s Side in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (1 Cut Scene Would’ve Made It Better)
Baelor Targaryen makes a brave, bold decision in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Season 1, Episode 4, “Seven,” as he decides to join Ser Duncan the Tall’s side in the trial of seven. In a sense, this is simply continuing the family’s legacy: Targaryens have long fought and feuded with one another, after all (most notably in House of the Dragon‘s civil war), but the Dance of the Dragons this is not. Baelor is not going to war with his brother, Maekar, and nephews, Daeron and Aerion, over the Iron Throne or the fate of the realm. He’s fighting them for something smaller, and yet in a way, more important.
Maekar has little choice but to side with his two sons and to try to save his house from further embarrassment. Baelor, on the other hand, has no need to get involved. Certainly, no one would expect him to partake in the trial of seven even on his family’s side, let alone that of a hedge knight. But that’s part of the motivation: if he, the heir to the Iron Throne, won’t do what’s right and honorable, then why should anyone else? It’s easy to say the right thing, but harder to back that up with action. Dunk proved himself a truer knight than anyone at Ashford Meadow by defending the weak and the innocent. Now it’s time for Baelor to do exactly the same thing.
A Missing Book Scene Adds More Weight To Baelor Targaryen Joining Dunk’s Side
It would be easy to say that Baelor sides with Dunk just because it is the right and honorable thing to do, and that is indeed a major part of it, as he truly views the knight’s actions as protecting the innocent. It’s also clear that he holds no high regard for Aerion, though that’s not really a motivating factor here, as much as he deserves to be taken down a peg or two. There’s also some canny strategy, since the Kingsguard are involved in the trial of seven on the opposing side. He’s royalty, whom they are sworn to protect, so they cannot harm him, thus giving Dunk’s side one advantage.
But there is also the strategy of ruling, something that is in Baelor’s future as King Daeron II’s heir, and it’s where a missing book scene would’ve underscored the point in a stronger way. In George R.R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight, prior to the teams being revealed and Dunk’s “Are there no true knights?” speech, we get a lovely moment between him and the smallfolk:
“The viewing stand had already begun to fill, the lords and ladies clutching their cloaks tight about them against the morning chill. Smallfolk were drifting toward the field as well, and hundreds of them already stood along the fence. So many come to see me die, thought Dunk bitterly, but he wronged them. A few steps farther on, 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,’ the smith said.”
Thematically, it’s one of the most important scenes in the book, and is the very essence of Dunk as a character. He may not be a noble (hell, he may not even be a knight), and yet he is the one true knight among them all. This stands in contrast with the Targaryens who accuse him: Daeron, not unkind but definitely a drunk, and Aerion, cruel, arrogant, who injured a woman and used unsavory tactics to defeat his opponent in the joust. Tactics that, it should be remembered, prompted the smallfolk to rise in angry protest.
House Targaryen does not have the same power it used to. There are no dragons in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and it fought off a rebellion just 13 years before the time of the show – a rebellion where many sided against them (and one that Baelor fought in). The family’s presence at the tourney is to remind people of who they are, but Baelor understands that it needs a different approach from the one Aerion is taking. They need to show the smallfolk that the royal family still values honor, kindness, and decency, just like they do, and he, as the future of the house and the Seven Kingdoms, is the person who has to do that. In that, it becomes not only him doing what is right, but almost a duty.
New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms release Sundays at 10 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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