So... the luck is ours alone?
Over the last year or so I've been working my way through the A Song of Ice and Fire book series. I got the little "leatherbound" bookset for Christmas 2022 and just this month (January 2026) I finally made my way to a little over halfway through A Dance With Dragons (I'm a slow reader, okay?) Sometime around the time I finished A Storm of Swords (say, December of 2025) I was reminded of a new HBO adaptation of another of George R. R. Martin's works, based on the novellas lovingly referred to as the "Dunk and Egg" novellas. I was skeptical; Game of Thrones fell off in quality after season 4 and House of the Dragon had a disastrous season 2. I also had not finished the main book series, and was saving the novellas for last. However, HBO's marketing got me (I love Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell's little friendship) and decided to watch. And I'm SO glad I did. What I watched was a lighthearted, yet heartbreaking, tale of a man with a heart of gold and morals, a better man and a truer knight than the usual fare from ASOIAF (Jaime Lannister hem hem), who strives to do his part to make the world a better place. It is especially refreshing to experience Westeros through the eyes of a member of the smallfolk, especially speaking as someone in poverty.Dunk is an amazing character, good natured, a bit naive, and generous. He mirrors his own deceased father figure (and the knight he squired for) by taking in an orphan, feeding, clothing him, and teaching him what he knows. He embodies what a true knight should be, even without the official title (while this has not been explicitly confirmed, it is certainly alluded to in both novella and the tv series.) A man who swore vows, and a man who remembered them.
