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This podcast episode reviews the first episode of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," an adaptation of George R.R. Martin's novellas. The current season is an adaptation of the first novella, "The Hedge Knight."
The host praises the show's faithfulness to the source material. She liked the casting of Dunk and Egg, while acknowledging fan controversies regarding age discrepancies for certain characters like Dunk and Sir Lyonel Baratheon.
The episode highlights the show's strategic use of original content, flashbacks and early character interactions, to expand the narrative for a television audience and provide necessary exposition.
The host also discusses podcast updates, including a relaunch of the newsletter, a poll for listeners to vote on season five topics, and an invitation for civil feedback on episodes. The poll, open until February 22nd, currently indicates latest results for "discussing fan theories known to book readers but not show watchers" for season five. Season four of the podcast will focus on "House of the Dragon" season three reactions.
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00:01 --> 00:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Westerosi Primer.
00:06 --> 00:14 [SPEAKER_00]: For full show notes and more about all things Westeros, head to the Westerosiprimer.com.
00:14 --> 00:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Before I start playing the intro music, check out this friend of the show.
01:00 --> 01:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings fellow accolades.
01:01 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to another episode of the Westerosy Primer.
01:04 --> 01:06 [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Liz.
01:06 --> 01:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're new to this podcast, welcome.
01:08 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoy this journey of all things Westeros.
01:12 --> 01:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And in this episode, I'll be talking about episode one of a night of the 7 Kingdoms.
01:19 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So, now that I am back from my short hiatus of two months,
01:25 --> 01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: This time I'm going to discuss my reaction and thoughts of the very first episode of the new TV series.
01:36 --> 01:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully HBO Max is not going to change its name again, but we will have to see what happens.
01:44 --> 01:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Now of course I have no idea if those of you listening to this episode are new to this podcast or you are longtime listeners who are coming back.
01:57 --> 02:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But regardless, welcome just to be polite to people who are new to this podcast.
02:06 --> 02:08 [SPEAKER_00]: I am going to limit the amount of spoilers.
02:09 --> 02:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I include in this
02:13 --> 02:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Try my best to avoid indicating what happens in future episodes because for those of you who have been listening to this podcast for a while now you are already aware that I actually spent the previous episodes of this particular season.
02:30 --> 02:40 [SPEAKER_00]: discussing the source material novelas that this TV show is based off of, pretty extensively.
02:40 --> 02:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you listen to those episodes, you would already be aware more or less what will happen in this season and in the future seasons of the TV show.
02:51 --> 03:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But for the sake of people who are listening to this podcast that our TV only watchers, and you do not want to be spoiled, I will take that into consideration, and I will limit my conversation to the TV show episodes specifically.
03:10 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_00]: If you are new to this podcast,
03:13 --> 03:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You can choose to listen to the earlier episodes that I just refer to.
03:19 --> 03:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you would prefer not to listen to them at this point and maybe you want to come back to those in a later date, you are more than welcome to do so.
03:30 --> 03:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I will, however, recommend that you at least listen to episode 301, which is both an introduction to the whole Duncan Egg saga.
03:43 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess you could say, and also I actually discussed my experiences at this past year's New York Comic-Con where they actually did a panel for a night of the seven kingdoms.
03:58 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And I got to see Peter and Dexter in person.
04:05 --> 04:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And I also got to see George R. Martin.
04:10 --> 04:14 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I actually had him sign my copy of Fire and Blood, which was very cool.
04:15 --> 04:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And I discussed that in more detail in that particular episode.
04:19 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not going to rehash all that in this one.
04:22 --> 04:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I would appreciate it if you listen to this episode to the very end because towards the end of the episode I have a couple of very important announcements to make in connection to this podcast overall.
04:51 --> 04:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So, first thing to talk about is the casting.
04:54 --> 05:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Dexter is absolutely adorable and he was an excellent casting decision to play egg.
05:01 --> 05:16 [SPEAKER_00]: From what I remember at the panel, he's pretty funny, he's very smart and I look forward to seeing him over the course of not only this season, but also in the future seasons of the show.
05:16 --> 05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think he has a lot of potential to really grow and develop as an actor, which only makes sense because he was nine years old when he was filming this season.
05:26 --> 05:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a lot of room for him to grow and mature and really explore more aspects of egg.
05:35 --> 05:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Peter is also a pretty good casting choice.
05:39 --> 05:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He's definitely got the right height for the character.
05:43 --> 05:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He also definitely portrays many aspects of dunk very well.
05:48 --> 05:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I would say that compared to how he is in the novella.
05:52 --> 05:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He's pretty spot on.
05:55 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: There was, however, a lot of controversy amongst fans online, other book readers, mainly because dunk in the novellas was definitely a teenager, which makes sense because typically speaking,
06:14 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_00]: when you are a squire for a night you're typically in your teens.
06:21 --> 06:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little embarrassing and quite frankly, it's suspicious that you would be somebody in your 20s and you're still a squire.
06:29 --> 06:38 [SPEAKER_00]: At that point, if you are 20 something and you're still a squire, you should honestly just
06:38 --> 06:43 [SPEAKER_00]: how long does it take you to learn how to be a knight really?
06:43 --> 06:45 [SPEAKER_00]: It just comes across as a little weird.
06:47 --> 06:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, some of Dunks behavior and some of his decision-making without spoiling stuff,
06:55 --> 07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It also makes a lot more sense if he's a teenager versus somebody who's in his 20s or even in his 30s, which is why it does come across as a little weird that somebody who's clearly in their 20s is behaving and doing things the way he's doing things.
07:12 --> 07:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, it also makes sense that you would have somebody who is relatively older than the character is on page Simply because there are certain things that will come up over the course of the show that Maybe a little sketchy having a teenager do those types of scenes, but yeah, so I see both sides of the argument
07:41 --> 07:56 [SPEAKER_00]: But personally, I do lean on hand waving a little bit about how some of the behavior doesn't make sense when the actor playing the characters in his 20s and the character should be in his teens.
07:56 --> 08:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm prepared to hand wave this mostly because I do see the practical aspects of the casting choice.
08:02 --> 08:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But regardless, he does a very good job portraying the character which is ultimately what really counts.
08:08 --> 08:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, he's definitely tall enough because I believe he said in the panel that he's six seven or six six or something around that range, he's definitely a height to play dunk.
08:23 --> 08:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So that works out great in that respect.
08:26 --> 08:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The only other casting choice that I can really talk about is Daniel Engs, who plays Sir Lionel, Brathion, because he's the only other character in the first episode that we, of course, saw.
08:41 --> 09:03 [SPEAKER_00]: This week that is really notable and worth talking about, there was some controversy online about his casting, similar to how, not everybody agreed with the idea of a 20-something-year-old person playing a teenager, many people felt that,
09:03 --> 09:09 [SPEAKER_00]: the actor Daniel Ingles is too old to portray Lionel Baratheon.
09:09 --> 09:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Lionel Baratheon, I believe is meant to be in his 20s and Daniel Ingles is definitely older than that.
09:19 --> 09:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He is around 40.
09:21 --> 09:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not a
09:25 --> 09:40 [SPEAKER_00]: At all, it's just that it does come across slightly strange mostly because you don't come across too many men who are that age range that would typically be doing attorneys.
09:40 --> 09:50 [SPEAKER_00]: anymore because you have to think of attorneys from the perspective of it being the equivalent of say competitive sports.
09:52 --> 10:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you can have knights who are getting older who still participate in these things, but it's not as common, especially somebody who is apparently the heir to
10:10 --> 10:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:11 --> 10:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And also, again, with the whole age thing, as you could see from this week's episode, Lionel Brattingen is a big loud personality and also reckless in some small ways.
10:27 --> 10:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not what you typically imagine a 40 something
10:35 --> 10:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody who is still on the younger side and has some impulsiveness to them would behave that way.
10:43 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's the opinion of some people.
10:47 --> 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, I'm the kind of person who feels like as long as the actor does a pretty good job of portraying the character I'm willing to give them a chance, although I do have to agree that sometimes casting decisions should still be reasonable.
11:07 --> 11:19 [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of if this character is meant to be within a certain age range, you really should try to stick with casting actors who are about the same age range as well.
11:19 --> 11:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise it just looks really off, but hey, I'm not a casting director, so I can't make that kind of decision really.
11:27 --> 11:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Just so I don't spoil things for listeners who either don't want to be spoiled or who Did not read the novella and did not listen to episode 302, which is the episode I discussed the hedge night novella I will say that they did a very good job adapting the novella
11:52 --> 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Especially considering that because it's only about 200 odd pages, at least in the ebook version, which is how I read it, it's very difficult to do a normal 10 episode hour-long season.
12:12 --> 12:35 [SPEAKER_00]: out of that because there's just so much material you can work with and inevitably you're going to have some filler in the episode so that it doesn't turn into 15-20-minute webisodes which is something I'm going to circle back to in a little bit but I will say that the scenes at word
12:35 --> 12:44 [SPEAKER_00]: from the novella were very spot on those of you who either read the novella or you listened to that earlier episode I had done.
12:44 --> 12:54 [SPEAKER_00]: You would probably agree with me when I say that like they did a very spot on job with how they adapted those particular scenes.
12:54 --> 13:13 [SPEAKER_00]: One really good example is the very first opening scene, which is also how the novella starts, which is dunk doing a very simple burial for Sir Arlin and there's a bit of melancholy and self-reflection.
13:13 --> 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Another really spot on scene was actually the
13:18 --> 13:42 [SPEAKER_00]: scenes where Dunk shows up at the end and he runs into this little kid that he later finds out his named egg and then he sees the drunk guy at the table who has a mini freak out when he sees Dunk that whole sequence is actually in the novella and they did a very spot on job adapting that.
13:42 --> 13:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Another very good scene that I thought was great is the scene later on where Dunk returns to his camping spot and then he sees Egg there with a campfire or star in cooking some fish.
13:57 --> 14:00 [SPEAKER_00]: That was also another scene that is from Linavela.
14:00 --> 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It does a very good job building up the relationship between Egg and Dunk.
14:07 --> 14:14 [SPEAKER_00]: that we're going to see develop further over the course of the season and hopefully in future seasons of the show.
14:15 --> 14:24 [SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned earlier, because the source material is relatively short, they would have to naturally pay.
14:24 --> 14:53 [SPEAKER_00]: had out the episodes to some degree by creating some original scenes to bridge the gap, I guess you could say, between certain bits that happened in the novella and also there's opportunities to expand on certain things they can mention as exposition in the novella, but does not actually
14:53 --> 15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: One really fun example of this are actually those light little flashbacks that we get of Dunk and Sir Arlin, especially when Dunk was a kid, those little bits are actually funny because you don't really get to see those in the novella you do get some passing.
15:16 --> 15:26 [SPEAKER_00]: off-hand commons and passing references in the novellas to things that happened when dunk was younger and traveling with Sir Arlin.
15:27 --> 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But we never really get much into that in the novella itself and it's pretty neat to see that actually depicted even if it's just five seconds in the TV show.
15:40 --> 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The other interesting decision which
15:43 --> 15:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I can't speak for other book readers, but personally, I actually thought it was a pretty clever idea.
15:49 --> 16:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Was they invented the whole sequence with dunk being in Lion Baratheon's tent, because that is definitely not a scene that happened in the novella.
16:00 --> 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, dunk never speaks to Lionel Baratheon until towards the end of the novella, which I'm not going to spoil.
16:10 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: or those of you who didn't already listen to that episode, or you didn't read the novella.
16:16 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: If you frankly don't care about spoilers, just go check out episode 302.
16:23 --> 16:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But basically in the novella, they don't actually speak to each other until much later in the story.
16:29 --> 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's smarter to have them interact in the first episode mostly because of two reasons.
16:39 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: First reason is that for people who are not familiar with the lore, you don't know who Lionel Barathian is other than he is a Barathian, and that's about it.
16:50 --> 17:06 [SPEAKER_00]: You definitely get a really good feel for the character through this sequence, which is why as you watch the rest of the season, you're going to start being more interested and care a lot more about the character.
17:06 --> 17:26 [SPEAKER_00]: which of course is extremely important for people who are watching a TV show or a movie you have to be mentally and emotionally invested in what happens to some of the characters, otherwise you're going to get really annoyed and bored of thing you're watching.
17:26 --> 17:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, I will admit that having the two characters interact with each other a lot earlier will make their later interaction towards the end of the story make a little bit more sense at least in terms of the TV show.
17:44 --> 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In the novella it also makes a lot of sense why they don't really interact until later in the story, but for the purposes of a TV show, it does make sense why they would want to establish some sort of relationship between the two earlier, because one of the things that I will say makes the novella's a little bit tricky to adapt is the fact that
18:12 --> 18:14 [SPEAKER_00]: to dunk happens.
18:14 --> 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess you could call it off screen because the novellas are primarily through dunks POV, which would make sense why as the reader when you're following what's happening to dunk, a whole bunch of things were happening quote unquote off screen where dunk was not present.
18:36 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: that will get alluded to or hinted at, but you never actually see on the page, you only see the consequences of those things versus in a TV show where you do have the ability to see everything that's happening, but because of the way TV shows and even movies are done, you'll easily bounce
19:04 --> 19:16 [SPEAKER_00]: it would make a little bit more sense to the audience if you get the opportunity to see stuff that the main character may or may not be aware of.
19:17 --> 19:19 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's just my opinion.
19:19 --> 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So those are overall my thoughts of the first episode and I look forward to the next episode of the show.
19:43 --> 19:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So before I close out, there are a couple of very important announcements that I want to make.
19:48 --> 20:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Not many of you listening to this podcast signed up to the newsletter that I had created, which to be fair, I was not doing a very good job with.
20:00 --> 20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: writing that newsletter.
20:02 --> 20:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel bad about it.
20:04 --> 20:15 [SPEAKER_00]: However, now that it's 2026 with a brand new year, I have decided that I will put in a greater effort into creating an updating the newsletter.
20:15 --> 20:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you are
20:25 --> 20:31 [SPEAKER_00]: slash news letter where you will get to the sign up page.
20:32 --> 20:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, if you go to the westerocprimer.com, which is the website for this podcast, on the home page, I also have the sign up form to the news letter.
20:43 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically what you get with a newsletter is that when I am releasing episodes every Wednesday you will also get a newsletter reminder in your inbox letting you know hey a new episode has been dropped also you will get a digest of any new blog post that I released.
21:08 --> 21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I don't write too many blog posts, fortunately for some of you guys, the weekly digest version will satisfy your curiosity, so you can see if I post it anything interesting that you may want to read.
21:23 --> 21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the content that I post on the blog will vary from announcements related to Westeros, whether it's from HBO, George, whatever.
21:37 --> 21:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Occasionally, I will do fandom related content on their some opinion pieces.
21:45 --> 21:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I may even do blog posts that expand or
21:49 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Supplement some of the episodes that I've done on the podcast.
21:54 --> 22:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I am not the kind of person who Assumes that people will be obsessively checking out the blog all the time because that's not realistic So the newsletter does a pretty good job giving you a very basic Digest of any recent post I've done
22:13 --> 22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's very possible that there will be weeks where nothing new gets posted and you won't get a newsletter.
22:18 --> 22:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm hoping that this year I'm going to do a better job with updating that and releasing content.
22:25 --> 22:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The other really important announcement is, again, mostly for the benefit of new listeners.
22:32 --> 22:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But I really want to remind returning listeners that I have a poll that I am currently running.
22:39 --> 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, originally when I created this poll back in October, I wasn't really certain when season three of House of the Dragon would be released.
22:52 --> 23:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I established this poll, I had to label it a poll for season four slash five.
23:01 --> 23:09 [SPEAKER_00]: because basically the poll is to find out what are you listeners interested in me talking about for a future season of the podcast.
23:10 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So season four, as it turns out, is going to end up being strictly a reaction to House of the Dragon season three, similar to what I'm doing right now with a night of seven kingdoms.
23:25 --> 23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, point being is that the poll I've now renamed it, but basically it's a poll asking you listeners, so let me know what do you want me to talk about for season five of the podcast.
23:38 --> 23:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is going to be what I discuss next year, actually in 2027.
23:44 --> 23:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Currently, I've only received three responses from people who participated back in October in November.
23:53 --> 24:08 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the three votes was a right and vote where in essence they were asking me to discuss more about a certain character that I mentioned and also certain events that I
24:08 --> 24:25 [SPEAKER_00]: In the novella episodes, but I had to remind listeners that I already discussed this particular character and this particular event in season 2 when I pointed that out multiple times in the episodes.
24:25 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, that third vote did come in because somebody did put that down.
24:31 --> 24:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But currently, it's looking like season five.
24:35 --> 24:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be discussing some general fan theories that book readers were talking about, but that show watchers are not aware of.
24:44 --> 24:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And I also offer some other options for potential themes that I could be discussing.
24:52 --> 25:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're interested in participating in that poll, again, if you head over to the
25:13 --> 25:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I will put a link in the show notes to this episode as well.
25:18 --> 25:26 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so I really hope that more of you guys sign up to the newsletter and participate in the poll.
25:26 --> 25:32 [SPEAKER_00]: I will have the poll running until the end of February.
25:33 --> 25:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So...
25:33 --> 25:51 [SPEAKER_00]: the sixth and final episode of the season of a night of the seven kingdoms is scheduled for February 22nd and my reaction to that particular episode will be released on February 25th.
25:51 --> 26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically, you guys have until February 22nd to participate and let me know which theme you would prefer.
26:01 --> 26:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, to be fair, I technically could have the pole keep running until house of the dragon airs, but I feel like that may be potentially dragging this out, but I don't know, if you guys are interested in me actually keeping the pole up and running until house of the dragon airs, then
26:22 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Feel free to reach out and let me know.
26:24 --> 26:30 [SPEAKER_00]: You can contact me at host at the Westeroc primer.com.
26:30 --> 26:31 [SPEAKER_00]: That is the email address.
26:32 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Another notable thing I should mention as well, if you guys are interested in leaving me any kind of feedback on this episode and any of the previous episodes, feel free to go to the Westeroc primer.com.
26:47 --> 26:53 [SPEAKER_00]: on the episode pages, there is actually a section for people to leave comments.
26:53 --> 26:58 [SPEAKER_00]: So far, nobody's actually taking advantage of that, which is fine.
26:58 --> 27:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I get it most of you guys are just passively listening to these episodes, but if you have real strong opinions and thoughts about anything I've discussed on the show, definitely feel free to leave a comment.
27:12 --> 27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: If you
27:15 --> 27:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I am perfectly fine with listening to what you disagree with me about and why you disagree with me.
27:22 --> 27:41 [SPEAKER_00]: But please do so civilly and not throwing a lot of cheap shots and insults because that is not very conducive to conversation.
28:18 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_00]: What did you think of this episode?
28:20 --> 28:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Check out the westerosieprimer.com and let me know what you think of this episode.
28:26 --> 28:30 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a friend or two that might like the show, make sure to share.