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Game of Thrones killed its hero in the first book. Dunk gave one back.

A Song of Ice and Fire is an anti-hero’s journey, and the show forgot that the minute it ran out of book. Ninety years earlier, in the same world, a hedge knight named Dunk shows what a real hero looks like.

, 8 minute read

Spoilers for all eight seasons and all five books.

I came to the show first. I started after the third season had finished airing, so I got to binge the first three seasons straight through.

The hero dies in the first book

Every fantasy story you grew up on has a hero. A farm boy with a destiny, a sword, a wise old mentor and a dark lord to beat. You know he is going to make it, because that is what heroes do.

George R. R. Martin set that up in A Game of Thrones and then cut its head off. Ned Stark is the most honorable man in the book. He has the sword, the code and the moral high ground. He goes to the capital, he tells the truth to the wrong people, and he is executed for it before the first book is over.

That is the whole series in one scene. Honor does not save you in Westeros. It gets you killed.

Martin has said the only thing worth writing about is what Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” He does not buy good versus evil, because the real world does not look like that. So the books do not have a hero’s journey. They have an anti-hero’s journey, told through a rotating cast of people who are all compromised in some way.

Jaime Lannister pushes a child out of a window in the first book. Three books later he is one of the most sympathetic people in the story, and nobody wrote him a redemption arc. He just got a point-of-view chapter, and you finally heard what was going on in his head. Tyrion, Theon, Arya, the Hound, Cersei. Every one of them does something terrible and something human, sometimes in the same chapter.

That is what is amazing about the story. It does not ask who the hero is. It asks what people do with power, grief and fear, and it lets the answer be ugly.

The books and the show split early

For four seasons the show tracked the books closely, and it was the best thing on television. It won 59 Emmys, more than any drama ever.

But it was already cutting and changing things, some of them big:

  • Lady Stoneheart. In the books, Catelyn Stark comes back from the Red Wedding as a silent, vengeful corpse hanging Freys. The show left her out entirely.
  • Young Griff. In the books, a young man who claims to be Aegon Targaryen, Rhaegar’s son, survived and is invading Westeros. The show never introduced him.
  • Sansa and Ramsay. In the books, it is not Sansa who is married to Ramsay Bolton. It is Jeyne Poole, a steward’s daughter passed off as Arya. The show gave that storyline to Sansa.
  • Dorne. The books have Arianne Martell and a slow-burning Dornish conspiracy. The show cut her and gave Dorne the Sand Snakes.
  • Jaime. In the books he leaves Cersei behind and goes to end the siege of Riverrun. On the show he goes to Dorne with Bronn.
  • Barristan Selmy is alive and fighting for Meereen in the books. The show killed him in an alley.

None of that ruined it. Adaptations cut things. The trouble started when there was nothing left to adapt.

Where it went wrong

In 2016, season six passed the published books. From then on the showrunners were working from an outline Martin had given them of the last two books, not from the books themselves.

Then the seasons got shorter. Season seven was seven episodes. Season eight was six. Years of story got crammed into thirteen hours.

You could feel the change. The early seasons were about people. The late seasons were about getting to the ending, and the people got bent to fit it. Jaime spends seven seasons growing away from Cersei, then walks back to her in a few scenes. Daenerys burns King’s Landing, and whether or not Martin ends it that way, the show did not earn it. Bran is made king because somebody gives a speech about stories.

The critics said it plainly. Season eight sits at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. They called it rushed and said the show had traded character for twists and spectacle. Fans started a petition asking HBO to remake the whole season with different writers. HBO said it “wasn’t something we seriously considered.”

Here is how I see it. Without the books, the show stopped being an anti-hero’s journey and turned into a plot with endpoints. Martin writes characters and lets them crash into each other. The last seasons picked destinations and dragged the characters there. That is the exact thing the books were built to refuse.

For me, season six was the beginning of the end, even though I like parts of it. Jon Snow gets brought back to life by the Red God, R’hllor. The Battle of the Bastards finally gives some payback to Ramsay Bolton, the most hated character on the show after Joffrey.

But season six is where they lost Tyrion. He was the show’s best character, known for his quick wit and his strategic mind. Without the books to guide his banter, that wit was all but neutered, and he got reduced to jokes about boobs and booze.

Jon Snow was supposed to be Azor Ahai, the Prince That Was Promised, and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. After all the dogshit the fans got dragged through, the only acceptable justice was Jon killing the Night King and taking the Iron Throne, crowned Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

We got neither.

Did we get Arya using her Faceless Men training to cross every name off her list? No. Did we get answers about Bran’s power to change the past? Did he use his powers for any good reason at all? No. Was he the most drab, dry, useless character ever? Probably. And the layout of the Battle of Winterfell was a disaster.

It all sucked.

My favorite characters

The best characters on the show, in order:

  1. Tyrion. An authentic character and an underdog. Mistreated by almost everyone, and smarter and more cunning than all of them.
  2. Arya. Also authentic. Determined, scrappy, and an underdog.
  3. Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight. Authentic, from humble beginnings, and not afraid to speak up on principle. But loyal, too.
  4. Jon Snow. After some humbling, he settles into who he really is once he experiences love with Ygritte.
  5. The Hound. A fighter who speaks his mind, and another product of family mistreatment. A bit of an underdog in his own right.

Not one of them is a hero in the old sense. Every one of them is an underdog, and every one of them is a little broken. That is the anti-hero’s journey in five people.

And then there is Dunk

About ninety years before the main books, in the same world, Martin wrote a completely different kind of story.

The Tales of Dunk and Egg started with The Hedge Knight in 1998, then The Sworn Sword in 2003 and The Mystery Knight in 2010. They were collected in 2015 as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Ser Duncan the Tall is a hedge knight. No land, no lord, no money. He is huge, slow with words and honest to a fault. His squire is a bald little kid called Egg, who turns out to be Prince Aegon Targaryen.

This is the hero’s journey, and it has a clear protagonist. There is one point of view, and it is Dunk’s. The old knight who raised him is dead when the story starts, which is the mentor already gone. He sets out into a world bigger than he is. He stands up for a stranger when it would be smarter not to, and it costs him. It builds to a trial by combat, and he has to find out whether anybody will stand with him.

What makes it work is that it is the same world. The lords are still petty, the Targaryens are still dangerous, and honor still gets people hurt. Dunk is just the rare man who stays decent anyway. Game of Thrones asks what happens to a good man in a bad world, and the answer is Ned Stark. Dunk is the other answer.

Anyone who has read the main books knows where Egg ends up, and it is not happy. That knowledge sits under every page.

HBO turned the first novella into a series, also called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It premiered in January 2026 with Peter Claffey as Dunk and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg, and it landed at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Season two adapts The Sworn Sword and is due in 2027.

I have only seen the first season of the show. I haven’t read the novellas or any of the other source material. My favorite moment is when Egg calls back to Dunk saying he would hunt him down with dogs, and barks at him.

Still waiting

The Winds of Winter still is not out. As of January, Martin said he had about 1,100 pages. He has called it “the curse of my life.”

HBO owes us a retcon. I highly doubt Martin finishes the books. We can only hope someone comes along and finishes them for him, and that HBO picks it up as an homage to the fans. Go back to the source material and redo the whole thing, as an animated series or something.

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