At any rate, with none of his squire’s privileges and protections of rank and title, Dunk straight-up decks a man he knows to be a Targaryen. Having seen his own father hanged as a boy, he is under no illusions about the nature of Westerosi justice. He knows standing up for Tanselle will cost him his life. Then he does it anyway.
Ser Duncan sees armed and armored agents of the state assaulting a woman of color — racism against the darker-skinned Dornish is pervasive at court during this time period in George R.R. Martin’s stories — and places her life above his own. He does this instinctively, without thinking, without letting the almost certainly fatal consequences deter him. He has seen the powerful doing evil, and he has chosen to fight it. For him, there’s really no choice to make at all.
When Aerion petulantly asks Dunk why he has chosen to throw his life away, it’s a rhetorical question. But it sheds more light on the prince than he realizes. Men like him really can’t understand that kind of selflessness, that sense of kinship with one’s fellow human beings. That inability is the tyrant’s biggest weakness. And it’s what gives free people hope for a fighting chance — a hope which belongs to all who invoke it.
Tags: a knight of the seven kingdoms, fantasy, George R.R. Martin, new york times, tales of dunk and egg, TV, TV reviews