Whereas few usually consider jousting tales as their very own subgenre of fiction, a shocking quantity of films and TV reveals have been constructed across the spectacle of armored knights on horseback smashing into different armored knights on horseback. Entries inside the jousting canon embody 2021’s The Final Duel, 1981’s Excalibur, and 1952’s Ivanhoe (which Martin identifies because the closest to getting the entire thing proper). One jousting film specifically, nonetheless, tends to face out among the many pack. And its conceit resembles A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ carefully sufficient that showrunner Ira Parker banned point out of it from the writers’ room and set.
“[A Knight’s Tale] is the one factor that we weren’t allowed to talk of within the writers room or on set,” Parker says, “It’s an excellent film that has a permanent high quality, however we got here out first. The Hedge Knight was written two years earlier than that got here out.”
Parker is correct. Regardless of its frankly unacceptable 59% Rotten Tomatoes rating, A Knight’s Story is an excellent film. It’s additionally strikingly much like The Hedge Knight and now A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Within the 2001 movie, Heath Ledger stars as William Thatcher, a lowly squire in 14th century Europe who desires of massive issues. Future comes knocking for Will within the opening scene when the knight he helps, Sir Ector, dies from unseen accidents following a joust, permitting William to don his armor and end off the match. Along with fellow squires Roland (Mark Addy, who would go on to play Sport of Thrones‘ King Robert I) and Wat (Alan Tudyk), William crafts the false id of Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein and continues to enter into tournaments, step by step bettering and changing into one thing of a Medieval sports activities superstar.
This could all sound pretty acquainted to those that have now seen A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ first episode (which is fittingly known as “The Hedge Knight”). Like A Knight’s Story, this story opens with the dying of a knight and a squire electing to take up his horse, sword, and armor to proceed to joust. Whereas Ser Duncan the Tall doesn’t undertake the id of a fallen knight or fabricate a brand new one like William Thatcher does, there does appear to be a component of fiction in his assumption of knighthood. He swears that Ser Arlan regularly mentioned knighting him earlier than he died, however a flashback reveals that Ser Arlan consented to no such factor. Equally, the identify “Duncan” itself is perhaps a brand new creation.
“What’s your identify?” Ser Duncan’s new squire Egg asks him.
“Dunk.”
“Ser Dunk? That’s no identify for a knight? Is it quick for Duncan?”
“Yeah…uh, sure… Ser Duncan of… Ser Duncan the Tall.”
To be clear, A Knight’s Story and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ comparable beginnings shouldn’t be a case of 1 copying the opposite. The Hedge Knight was first printed in 1998, two years after the primary Tune of Ice and Fireplace novel A Sport of Thrones was launched and nicely earlier than the franchise grew to become a world phenomenon so it was unlikely to affect a Hollywood movement image. If something, A Knight’s Story filmmaker Brian Helgeland was extra explicitly impressed by “The Knight’s Story” chapter of Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century basic The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer even seems as a personality within the movie performed by Paul Bettany (which simply goes to point out you that each Den of Geek article is destined to intersect with Marvel at one level or one other).
