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“The Hedge Knight”
Legends I, edited by Robert Silverberg, 1998
(reprinted in A
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)
So I know I said I was
going to work through Dreamsongs Volume 2 starting this week but I lied.
Who wants to go back to Westeros?
Over the last almost
20 years, Martin has released three novellas set in Westeros about ninety years
before A Song of Ice and Fire, each following the continued adventures
of Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall and Aegon “Egg” Targaryen, who would later be
king with Dunk serving in his Kingsguard. Clear links to A Song of Ice and
Fire beyond the historical exist: Egg mentions that his brother Aemon is at
the Citadel studying to be a maester, while Dunk has his shield painted in a
fashion that anyone familiar with Brienne’s story will recognize.
The first of these
stories, “The Hedge Knight,” shows how Dunk and Egg meet and how Egg ultimately
becomes the squire to a lowly hedge knight. It also contains many of the same
themes of A Song of Ice and Fire, from the tension between chivalry and “reality”
(read: people being selfish buttheads), to borrowing tropes from medieval
romance (particularly the Fair Unknown), to the dual nature of the Targaryens.
The story begins with
Dunk’s knight master, Ser Arlan of Pennytree, dying, leaving Dunk unknighted.
In order to make sure he doesn’t starve to death and/or turn outlaw, Dunk goes
to the tourney at Ashford and claims to be a knight in order to fight in the
lists and earn some money. While Martin never comes right out and says that
Dunk’s lying, the clues are many and obvious. “Ser” Dunk is no such thing.
However, as Maester Luwin says, “a man’s worth is not marked by a ser before
his name,” and Dunk shows that he’s just as much a knight as the rest of
them—perhaps even more so. Dunk encounters a bald eight-year-old boy who starts
following him around and squiring for him at the tourney. When he sees Prince
Aerion beating a young Dornish girl (who Dunk was already attracted to), he
beats up Aerion, which of course gets him in a peck of trouble. He asks for
trial by combat, and Aerion takes that up to eleven by demanding a “Trial of
Seven,” or melee with seven knights against seven knights (rather than a
one-on-one trial by combat). The nature of the knights on each side is a clear
chivalry-and-honor versus selfishness-and-evil split. Of course Dunk’s side
wins, though at horrible cost, and Egg is given permission to continue squiring
with Dunk as a hedge knight.
At this point in
history, Targaryens are everywhere, unlike in A Song of Ice and Fire where
there are maybe three (I say maybe because I’m not convinced of Young
Griff’s identity). This gives Martin the chance to illustrate the
madness/greatness dichotomy he voiced through Ser Barristan in A Storm of
Swords. Aerion, for example, believes he is a dragon. Daeron has
visions (he may be a greenseer, though the Targaryens call them “dragon dreams”)
and self-medicates with wine to stave them off. Maekar is just cruel. But Baelor
is a good an honorable man and Egg is decent, too, though young and a tad
innocent (which causes all sorts of trouble in the story, but he doesn’t mean
to). It’s no wonder that Aerion, Daeron, and Maekar end up on one side of the
conflict with Baelor on the other, and it’s symbolic that the only Targaryen to
die is Baelor.
~*~
A hedge knight is the truest kind of knight[. .
. .] 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.
~*~
The main thematic
conflict in “The Hedge Knight” is the tension between chivalry/honor and
selfishness/pride, and this, too, is most clearly symbolized by which side of
the Trial of Seven each character ends up on. Aerion is the main antagonist,
dragging Daeron into it (because Daeron lies about how he lost Egg, casting
Dunk as a monster knight who kidnapped the young prince). Maekar stands with
his sons, of course, though he knows them and could just as easily have not
taken a side. While Daeron and Maekar can almost be excused—they have to stand
with their family, after all—the true treachery comes at the hands of Ser
Steffon Fossoway, who first promises to help Dunk, then switches sides for the
promise of being elevated to lord, very nearly leaving Dunk in the lurch.
Aerion’s side is rounded out by three members of the Kingsguard, who really don’t
have a choice here because they’ve vowed to protect the royal family. But it
serves to further exemplify Jaime’s statements about conflicting oaths; these
three men are knights, sworn to protect women and the weak. They’re also sworn
to protect Aerion. So when Aerion attacks a woman, their vows come into
conflict. This isn’t dwelt on a lot in the story; they’re just the three
Kingsguard filling up the ranks of Aerion’s seven. But the subtext is still
there.
On Dunk’s side are the
honorable knights—and a few who have reason to oppose the dishonorable ones.
Two knights join him immediately: Ser Robyn Rhysling as a favor to Egg and Ser
Humfry Hardyng, who faced Aerion in a joust and wound up with a dead horse and
a broken leg due to Aerion’s treachery. Lyonel Baratheon, called “the Laughing
Storm,” joins because it seems like it’ll be good fun (Baratheons, amirite?).
Raymun Fossoway, Steffon’s cousin, demands to be knighted on the spot to join
Dunk out of disgust for his cousin’s treachery. He even repaints his shield so
his apple is green instead of red, both to differentiate himself on the
battlefield and to separate himself from Steffon (thus beginning the split
between the red-apple Fossoways and the green-apple Fossoways). Baelor joins
last because he recognizes that Dunk was doing exactly as he should—protecting
the weak.
~*~
“Why?” he asked Pate. “What am I to them?”
“A knight who remembered his vows,” the smith
said.
~*~
Many other knights
refuse to join either side, even the face of Dunk’s begging, reminding them
that he and Ser Arlan served many of them, even taking wounds in their service.
This mass refusal leads him to shout, “Are there no true knights among you?”
Clearly, this phrasing echoes Sansa’s frequent lament that there are no true
knights. Dunk has a similar idea of the duty and honor of a knight that Sansa
does, and while they both know (though it takes Sansa a bit to get there) that
it’s at least partly an illusion, they’re both still upset when knights and
lords fail to meet their expectations. They both hold themselves to the
standards of nobility and chivalry, though, despite the disillusionment and
Dunk really not being a knight.
It’s Dunk’s honorable
streak that leads Maekar to allow Egg to squire with him, even though Dunk
refuses a place in a household. Instead, he insists that Egg squire to him as a
hedge knight because, as he puts it, “Daeron never slept in a ditch, I’ll wager
[. . .] and all the beef that Aerion ever ate was thick and rare and bloody,
like as not.” The princes have never known hardship, and thus they are ruined;
Daeron is a drunk and Aerion is insanely cruel. Dunk’s offer should keep Aegon
from having the same fate. And we know that it does; The World of Ice and
Fire tells us that when he becomes Aegon V Targaryen, “Aegon the Unlikely”
due to the circumstances of his rise to the throne, he sends aid to the North
during a harsh winter, puts down the last of the Blackfyre rebellion, and
attempts to put in place several reforms to protect the smallfolk from their
lords. Unfortunately, he gets just enough of the dragon madness to wind up
dying, along with his son and Dunk, in a fire while trying to hatch dragon
eggs.
Martin also throws in
the romance trope of the fair unknown, which continues through the Dunk and Egg
stories, since telling people Egg’s true identity could be fatal for him. In
the early part of the story, before Egg has to reveal himself to save Dunk’s
life, Dunk has no idea that the cheeky eight-year-old following him around and
sassing him is a prince. Later, of course, he realizes that he should have
recognized the signs—Egg doesn’t want to go into the castle, he speaks
familiarly of the various knights and princes kicking around the tourney
grounds, he seems to take Aerion’s treachery in the joust personally—but until
then, he treats Egg like he would any other small boy. Of course, once Egg is
his squire and they’re headed out on the road, he does the same, because
teaching Egg humility is half the point of squiring him to a hedge knight.
Unfortunately, “The
Hedge Knight” has some of the same problems as A Song of Ice and Fire,
as well. The smallfolk, despite being the kind of people Dunk usually deals
with and who he’s protecting, are generally a faceless mob. Only the Dornish
puppet girl (Tanselle) and the smith (Steely Pate) get names. At least this
faceless mob is generally less bloodthirsty than, say, the faceless mob in the
King’s Landing riot that kills the High Septon. Like A Song of Ice and Fire (and the medieval romances Martin’s
emulating, whether he knows it or not), the primary focus is the nobility and
their hijinks.
There’s also the small
but extremely irritating issue that Martin has of introducing women with their
breast size, and I promise once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere. It would be one thing if it
just showed up in situations like this—Dunk is a 17- or 18-year-old man who’s
attracted to Tanselle, so noticing her boob size might be expected—but he does
it constantly in A Song of Ice and Fire. Men notice boob sizes. Women notice other women’s boob sizes.
Women are hyperaware of their own boobs. At least there’s no rape or attempted
rape in “The Hedge Knight,” which is a nice change, though it is unfortunate
that the one named female character feels so incidental to the whole plot. She’s
practically a MacGuffin—she’s there to give Dunk a reason to act to drive the
plot forward, not to act herself.
Next week, we’ll look
at “The Sworn Sword,” wherein Dunk spends some time sworn to service under
another knight.
Art by Gary Gianni from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
