We’ve Already Got Our Attention Set on the Next ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel, ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’
If you’re already dreading the Targaryen withdrawal that will come when House of the Dragon season 2 ends, fear not—there’s always someone from Westeros’ most hot-headed family ready to spark some more drama. And that will come next in the form of Game of Thrones’ newest spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.
Based on a series of novellas—The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mystery Knight—collected under the name of Tales of Dunk and Egg, the show will be set around eighty years after the events of House of the Dragon and some ninety years before Game of Thrones, so it will still be in the years of House Targaryen’s reign over the Seven Kingdoms.
With production on the show officially underway in Belfast, Ireland, where much of Game of Thrones was also filmed, and the release date set to be sometime in early 2025, we do know quite a bit about the people who we’re going to see throughout the expected six episodes. So here’s a breakdown of the roles that have been announced so far, as spoiler-free as possible.
Who is in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms?
The most important roles in the show are, of course, those of the titular Dunk and Egg. Duncan the Tall, a squire who takes up the hedge knight mantle of his deceased master, will be played by Irish actor Peter Claffey, whom you might have seen in the third season of Vikings: Valhalla and in the movie Small Things Like These alongside Cillian Murphy.
Egg, who will soon be revealed to be an incognito Targaryen prince by the never-heard-before name of Aegon, will be played by British actor Dexter Sol Ansell, who starred in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as young Coriolanus Snow.
Several other actors have been announced alongside them, forming the cast of that whole mess of events that was the Tourney at Ashford Meadow of 209 AC—which is where The Hedge Knight is set.
On the Targaryen side of things, we’ll see Bertie Carvel, Sam Spruell, and Finn Bennett play Baelor Targaryen, Maekar Targaryen, and Aerion Targaryen respectively. Baelor is the Prince of Dragonstone as well as his father’s King Daeron II’s Hand of the King. Baelor’s younger brother Maekar—the fourth of Daeron’s children with his Queen Myriah Martell—is Egg’s father. Aerion, one of the best examples of that special Targaryen brand of being completely unhinged, is instead one of Egg’s three older brothers.
Then there’s Tanzyn Crawford, set to play the Dornish puppeteer Tanselle—who just wanted to do her job at a tourney swarming with people and instead found herself in the middle of the usual Targaryen tomfoolery. Finally, Daniel Ings will star as Ser Lyonel Baratheon, the heir to Storm’s End known throughout the realm as “the Laughing Storm.” Here’s to hoping he will finally have the antlered helmet Robert should have had.
While the plot of the first of the three Tales of Dunk and Egg is relatively contained, there are rumors and speculations about whether or not the show will expand on the story to also include some events that aren’t exactly connected to the main story but that are still pretty important to the Westeros of that time. And yes I am indeed talking about the Blackfyre rebellions—after all, they went on for years, so much so that the last Blackfyre pretender was slain by none other than Ser Barristan Selmy, the same one who we see as an aged member of the Kingsguard in Game of Thrones.
At the time of Dunk and Egg, King Daeron II is dealing with the aftermath of the first Blackfyre rebellion, where the King, his sons Baelor and Maekar, and his bastard half-brother Bloodraven crushed Daemon Blackfyre and his army at the Battle of the Regress Field.
So I think it makes sense to hope to see maybe even just a glimpse of Bloodraven, one of the most fascinating characters in the entire Targaryen family tree. And with him, well, you can’t not have also a little bit of Shiera Seastar—another one of King Aegon IV’s Great Bastards and so half-sister to both Bloodraven and King Daeron—who was famously Bloodraven’s lover and a suspected expert of dark magic.
In fact, the rumor mill is spinning so hard that there are already two names associated with the roles of Bloodraven and Shiera: Jamie Campbell Bower, who has been fancast as pretty much every male member of House Targaryen for years over on Tumblr, and Tamzin Merchant, who was actually Martin’s initial choice for Daenerys. Now, nothing is confirmed, of course, so take these for the rumors that they are. But I for one would love to see it happen.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
