Sign up to the newsletter to keep up to date with news about Westeros, the podcast, and other fun stuff! While I go on a hiatus until June, check out this poll! Vote on who you think is the best and worst Targaryen king!
This podcast episode concludes season 3 of the podcast. This time, Liz reviews the season 1 finale of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms." She praises its adaptation of the novella while highlighting deviations that create potential continuity issues for future seasons.
Liz discusses the show's effective portrayal of Dunk's trauma and Maekar's guilt over Baelor's death. There are original scenes like Dunk's interaction with Ser Lyonel and Raymun's storyline.
Liz also announces the podcast's hiatus until June 2026, After months of voting open, Season 5 of the podcast will cover fan theories after "House of the Dragon" Season 3 reactions.
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00:01 --> 00:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Westerosi Primer.
00:05 --> 00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: For full show notes and more, about all things Westeros, head to the Westerosiprimer.com.
00:14 --> 00:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Before I start playing the intro music, check out this friend of the show.
00:46 --> 00:50 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you very much.
00:59 --> 01:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings fellow accolites, welcome to another episode of the Westerosi Primer, my name is Liz.
01:05 --> 01:07 [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.
01:11 --> 01:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And in this episode, I'll be talking about a night of the seven kingdoms episode titled The Moro.
01:18 --> 01:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, everyone, it is the season finale of a night of the seven kingdoms that I will be discussing this time.
01:26 --> 01:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, this is also going to be the season finale for this podcast.
01:31 --> 01:41 [SPEAKER_00]: As you will imagine, I will be going on a short hiatus because season four of this podcast will be my reactions to
01:41 --> 02:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Season 3 of House of the Dragon, very recently HBO released a teaser trailer for the upcoming season, and they indicated that the TV show will be airing in June, which will be excellent for me, because hopefully that will mean that the season finale for House of the Dragon will air before I
02:09 --> 02:19 [SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully that will work out just fine, but if not, I will make an announcement about it when the new season of this podcast starts.
02:19 --> 02:31 [SPEAKER_00]: So as usual, I will appreciate it if you listen to this episode to the very end as I do have a couple of important announcements to make before ending this episode.
02:31 --> 02:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So overall, what did I think of this final episode?
02:35 --> 02:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Overall, I felt like it was a very good episode.
02:38 --> 02:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I will have to admit, I think there are some parts of the episode.
02:43 --> 02:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not as much of a fan of, but I will get more into that in just a bit.
02:49 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Along the same lines as the previous episode, there are some scenes that are taken straight from the novella and some that were purely invented for the TV show.
03:01 --> 03:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So just to start things off, one of the original scenes is the very beginning, actually, where we have dunk and surlion all together.
03:12 --> 03:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That scene was, of course, invented for the TV show because as I've indicated in a earlier episode, these scenes with Lionel are things that are written specifically for the TV show and definitely did not happen in the novella.
03:27 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, it does create a strange situation, because in many respects, it would make sense for dunk to actually join surallion all at storms, and because joining Lyonol is exactly the type of thing that episode one dunk would have immediately jumped on the opportunity.
03:48 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Because that's literally the thing that every hedge knight would want.
03:51 --> 04:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The chance to serve a Lord and have an elevation in status and more practical benefits, such as having a home to stay in, getting regular meals, even earning a decent wage as a sworn knight to a Lord, especially for a really major Lord like House Barathian is.
04:14 --> 04:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But, of course, for the sake of the story, obviously, Dunk doesn't take up on Lionel's offer, although it will be interesting to see if we do actually see Lionel again in the future.
04:27 --> 04:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's mainly because there are indications that possibly there may be more seasons past season three.
04:36 --> 04:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But that remains to be seen.
04:38 --> 04:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It highly depends on whether or not the ratings continue to do well and HBO is interested in green lighting more seasons.
04:47 --> 05:00 [SPEAKER_00]: There have been interviews that I reparker the showrunner did, where he indicated that George did give him a lot of valuable information about other story ideas he had for Dunkin Egg.
05:00 --> 05:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And I wouldn't be surprised if one of the ideas does include them going to the storm lands at some point, but that remains to be seen.
05:09 --> 05:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I think they did an excellent job with exploring, dunk, feeling, pretty guilty and somewhat traumatized by everything that's happened to him.
05:20 --> 05:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He's gone through a lot.
05:22 --> 05:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And just to remind all of you, everything you watched in all six episodes of this TV series, they happen to dunk in less than a week.
05:34 --> 05:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a lot for one person to deal with in just a few days time.
05:38 --> 05:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's quite understandable that dunk has a lot of trouble figuring out what to do
05:50 --> 06:09 [SPEAKER_00]: It's also really great that they included the funeral scene for Baylor because that is another reminder for the audience about targeting funerals, which are of course traditionally cremations, as we have seen in House of the Dragon.
06:09 --> 06:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I think they also did an excellent job with giving Valar a scene as well because we briefly saw him in episode three and we hadn't had a chance to see him again until this episode where he actually gets lines.
06:23 --> 06:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it is a very heartfelt scene where Valar is filled with grief and to be fair to him.
06:33 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty understandable why he is
06:36 --> 06:45 [SPEAKER_00]: maybe not yelling at dunk, but he's definitely feeling things about seeing dunk that his father basically died because of dunk.
06:45 --> 06:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Now this isn't to say that we necessarily have to agree with dunk being blamed, but you do actually understand why Prince Valar would feel this way.
06:54 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: and as a reminder, Baylor in the book is only 39 years old when he died, so it's not wrong when Velar says that Baylor was young because he was young.
07:06 --> 07:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in fact, Baylor is actually younger than I am when he died.
07:11 --> 07:16 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of crazy to me that about how young this character actually is.
07:16 --> 07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, Valar is not the only one who is mourning Baylor's death.
07:21 --> 07:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If there's anybody who would feel horribly about all of this in their family, of course, be Mekar because Mekar now has to live the rest of his life further in Baylor's
07:33 --> 07:56 [SPEAKER_00]: shadow, not because he's jealous of Baylor, but mostly the shadow of his older brother is going to be hanging over him, because he is technically the one who killed his brother, and it's going to be a thing that haunts him for the rest of his life, whether or not people actually say anything
07:56 --> 08:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Even if other people are willing to forgive him, there will always be a part of the make-ah, that will never forgive himself for what's happened.
08:05 --> 08:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe there is a quote in the Ice and Fire novels where Maester Aiman spoke to Samuel Tahrly about how
08:16 --> 08:23 [SPEAKER_00]: make our never felt that being in his position was a reward.
08:23 --> 08:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It's meant to be his punishment for swinging that mace that day.
08:28 --> 08:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is how he lived for the rest of his life.
08:32 --> 08:40 [SPEAKER_00]: He never views anything he does in the future going forward past this story as an honor or anything like that.
08:40 --> 08:52 [SPEAKER_00]: He views it as his own punishment because so many things that he ends up doing in the future are things that would have been his brothers and that's all I'm going to say about that.
08:52 --> 09:05 [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to get a better understanding of what I'm referring to, you will have to listen to season 2 of this podcast where I do have an episode about Maker.
09:05 --> 09:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And you also can listen to the episodes I did earlier in this season when I discussed the novellas.
09:13 --> 09:14 [SPEAKER_00]: but at any rate.
09:15 --> 09:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So another really great scene is, of course, make our having a conversation with the dunk about having egg become his squire for real.
09:26 --> 09:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And dunk makes it very clear that he was very reluctant to take on egg as a squire.
09:34 --> 09:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I feel like they did a really excellent job demonstrating how he's reluctant, mostly because he is still feeling a lot of guilt.
09:45 --> 09:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, he's also traumatized about being connected to somebody so important, given that his interactions with the Targaryens up to this point have mostly been very bad in so many ways.
09:59 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And, understandably, he doesn't want to get involved any further with them, not because he has any personal beef with them at this point, but it's almost inviting more misfortune into his life and into their lives by having this further association with each other.
10:18 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_00]: and you can't completely blame him for feeling that way because look exactly what has happened to him, of course.
10:26 --> 10:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I would say that, yeah, it's perfectly understandable.
10:30 --> 10:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It's also an interesting change in the story where the thing that ends up changing dunks mind about the situation with
10:43 --> 11:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you were to go back and listen to the episode I did earlier in the season where I specifically did a discussion and analysis of the original novella that this particular season is based off of you would know that that conversation with day run never happened.
11:02 --> 11:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The interesting thing, though, is that because Dunk was traumatized and very reluctant to get involved with the Targaryens again, it ends up becoming day-run who convinces Dunk to change his mind about that, which is of course different from the book because in the book, Dunk himself is the one who
11:25 --> 11:35 [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't mind taking egg on again as my squire, but my condition is that egg has to travel on the road with me.
11:35 --> 11:40 [SPEAKER_00]: We are not going to be serving our squire night.
11:40 --> 11:44 [SPEAKER_00]: relationship while serving you in summer hall.
11:44 --> 11:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And just like in the TV show, his reasoning is that by being in a protected environment like at summer hall or hypothetically in the right keep as examples.
11:56 --> 12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Egg would be in this cocoon, this controlled environment where he has to constantly deal with politicking, but he's not truly learning valuable life lessons, and also he's not getting a full perspective of behavior.
12:16 --> 12:28 [SPEAKER_00]: because like in the show, in the book, Dunk points out the fact that day-run and area on were raised the way they were and look at how they turned out.
12:29 --> 12:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, make our walks away from this conversation seemingly not open to the idea and the book ends with eggs showing up the
12:43 --> 13:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The TV show does it very differently where, yes, they have the similar scenes playing out on the screen, but then it ends with the discovery that actually egg lied and his dad never actually gave him permission to go off with dunk again.
13:01 --> 13:20 [SPEAKER_00]: which is humorous for the TV show, but in my personal opinion, that does create a bit of a continuity issue potentially in the earlier episodes I did this season where I analyze the next two books that the show will be adapting.
13:20 --> 13:23 [SPEAKER_00]: the sworn sword and the mystery knight.
13:24 --> 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: There is a very significant detail in those two novellas that on the surface they appear to be minor details but they're very important details and that's where this change in the show makes it where it's not going to make sense because Slice Boyle are alert.
13:43 --> 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: When Duncan Egg go wandering around, Egg carries around with him a signet ring.
13:51 --> 14:01 [SPEAKER_00]: This ring has a marking, a symbol on it, and it is the personal insignia of makear, which Egg has that.
14:01 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Is if Duncan Egg ever get themselves into a situation where they can't get themselves out,
14:10 --> 14:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Egg has to show off the ring to prove his identity, which means that any lords that they happen to be around are obligated to help them.
14:20 --> 14:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, how would Egg get that ring?
14:23 --> 14:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in the book, he actually did get this ring from his father.
14:27 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be interesting to see if in season two and three when references to the ring if at all that will come up in the show to begin with, but also I will genuinely be curious to see that if the ring does come up in the future two seasons,
14:46 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not egg is gonna explain why he has it.
14:50 --> 14:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I suppose he'll tell Dunk that his father gave him the ring, but in reality he probably just uinked it or something.
14:58 --> 14:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows?
14:59 --> 15:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's a little detail that I feel like may not be a huge deal to some people But to some book readers like me.
15:07 --> 15:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that's a bit of a continuity issue, but that's that
15:12 --> 15:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Another funny bit in the episode was the scenes with Raymond, most of that is also original stuff of the TV show.
15:21 --> 15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as I recall, Raymond doesn't marry anybody, but yeah, that's going to be an amusing adventure.
15:29 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, I remember when I was reading the novella that a part of me kind of wished that Raymond also came along, at least part of the journey, but I get that the point of these stories is that it's Duncan egg traveling around together as the night and squire doing their adventuring on the road.
15:50 --> 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: but still, apart me did kind of wish that Raymond tagged along because it's pretty clear that he and Dunk are great friends at this point.
15:58 --> 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I would genuinely be curious to see if at some point they run into him again, but as of the third novella that George wrote, that hasn't happened.
16:10 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I overall felt that the show did a very good job adapting the source material and I genuinely look forward to seeing the second season.
16:22 --> 16:40 [SPEAKER_00]: There are indications that they do plan to release the second season at some point next year in 2027, though, of course, naturally we have no idea when that's going to be because they are still currently in production.
16:40 --> 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I would not be overly surprised if they try to release it around the same time next year.
16:49 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Potentially they may push it off into spring or even summer.
16:54 --> 17:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of depends on what the production schedule for how so the dragon season 4 will end up being.
17:01 --> 17:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine that HBO may want to alternate years for these two shows just because they kind of recognize that there was a content drought that happened in 2025, plus now that season one did so well, they're going to be more optimistic that season two will hold its own as the big show that they air.
17:24 --> 17:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But yes, so that is my reaction to these season finale.
17:43 --> 17:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, before I close out this episode and, of course, this season, I am going to make my important announcements.
17:51 --> 17:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So, like, I've been promising.
17:53 --> 17:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I will announce the final results of the poll slash survey.
17:59 --> 18:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing for a few months now.
18:01 --> 18:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I asked all of you listeners to please let me know what topic you would like me to cover for season 5.
18:10 --> 18:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, my thing with the results is that I am seeing a very strange tie happening.
18:20 --> 18:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, literally the last weekend, I did get some new votes coming in, which I definitely appreciate that.
18:29 --> 18:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is, is that the six of you who have participated in this poll have put me into an awkward situation where now there's a tie.
18:39 --> 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel kind of bad because the newer votes actually voted for two separate things.
18:45 --> 18:50 [SPEAKER_00]: There's now two votes backing the idea of me doing character essays.
18:51 --> 19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And then another vote asking for me to do a west rose to a one where I cover some more background information about west rose that I didn't include in my first season episodes.
19:05 --> 19:18 [SPEAKER_00]: I have to admit, I do kind of feel bad that some of you guys wrote it for those things, but I have to admit, I am leaning towards doing the tie-breaker vote of doing the fan theories.
19:18 --> 19:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I did struggle a bit because on the one hand, listeners who actually participated in this vote,
19:26 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: started saying they were interested in the character essays, but then some of the early participants to this whole exercise voted for the fan theories.
19:38 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of feel like I should acknowledge that and give them the win.
19:44 --> 19:56 [SPEAKER_00]: plus another thing I should also mention is that if you were to listen to season one of the podcast, I actually had a similar bizarre situation I have to admit.
19:56 --> 20:14 [SPEAKER_00]: In that poll, there was strangely enough a three-way high where it was down to the character essays, me talking about House Targaryen,
20:14 --> 20:26 [SPEAKER_00]: but so that's another reason why I'm leaning towards the fan theory choice mostly because I have to acknowledge the previous time I ran one of these surveys that was one of the choices selected that was part of the time.
20:27 --> 20:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so that's going to be the season that I will cover after I do the one on House of the Dragon.
20:34 --> 20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be me doing the fan theories.
20:37 --> 20:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So for those of you who participated in the vote, I want to appreciate that you did that.
20:43 --> 20:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This also goes to show that those of you listening to the show and who are going to continue listening to this podcast.
20:50 --> 21:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Next time I run one of these season theme polls, I really would advise you to participate because if you feel disappointed that the idea that you were interested in was not selected well, you should have voted if you didn't vote.
21:07 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's that.
21:08 --> 21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what I'm going to be doing over the course of the next three months will say of this hiatus.
21:16 --> 21:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, because currently we don't know the exact air date for House of the Dragon, I will only state that I will come back with this podcast at some point in June.
21:29 --> 21:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, once they announced the air date, that's roughly around the time that I'm going to be
21:37 --> 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: However, if you want a reminder of when I'm going to start releasing new episodes of this podcast, I highly, highly recommend that you sign up to the newsletter because I will be doing some content on the blog during the hiatus.
21:59 --> 22:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I am not going to be the type of person who's going to constantly spam you with newsletters because I get it.
22:07 --> 22:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Your inbox is already filled with tons of stuff.
22:11 --> 22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I know my inbox is certainly filled with tons of stuff.
22:14 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm just saying is that if you are really interested in listening to future episodes of this podcast, I really do recommend that you sign up to the newsletter because when I release new episodes, you will get prompts reminding you that a new episode dropped.
22:34 --> 22:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Also periodically I do write blog posts and just so you don't have to constantly go to the website, which of course I definitely appreciate it if you do go to the website and read the blog and explore everything I have on the website.
22:49 --> 22:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Just so you don't feel like, oh, I have to constantly go on there to see if anything new happens.
22:56 --> 23:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You will get a notification in your inbox when you sign up to the newsletter.
23:00 --> 23:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And don't worry, you're not going to get a bazillion emails from me.
23:03 --> 23:10 [SPEAKER_00]: You will only get a weekly digest type of email.
23:10 --> 23:13 [SPEAKER_00]: I have set them up to be released on Fridays.
23:13 --> 23:16 [SPEAKER_00]: So that would be when you will get them.
23:16 --> 23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So, aside from signing up to the newsletter, another thing I also want to mention to people is that I have an open-ended fun hole that I've been running since I released season 2 of the podcast, which is a general poll to all of you listeners asking, who do you think out of all the kings
23:46 --> 23:52 [SPEAKER_00]: I admit it's been a while since I promoted that poll, but it is a poll that is an open ended one.
23:52 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not ending it anytime soon.
23:55 --> 24:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I am just genuinely curious to see who you thought was the best or the worst of the kings.
24:00 --> 24:09 [SPEAKER_00]: In case you are curious to know more about these kings because you just straight up don't know who you would pick as the best or the worst one.
24:10 --> 24:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely listen to season two
24:13 --> 24:25 [SPEAKER_00]: podcast with this hiatus that I'm about to go on, you will have plenty of time to catch up an old content that I have released, although be aware, of course, all of these episodes are going to spoil stuff for you.
24:25 --> 24:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But at this point, if you frankly don't care about spoilers and you just want to learn more about this fictional universe, then by all means feel free to go listen.
24:37 --> 24:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And as a reminder on my website, the westerroceprimer.com.
24:43 --> 25:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So the name of this podcast.com, you can also go there to check out the pages for each of these podcast episodes where you are more than welcome to leave comments with feedback, discussions, whatever.
25:00 --> 25:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so while I go on this hiatus, I will be doing quite a few things, both related to this podcast and stuff not related to this podcast.
25:10 --> 25:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you're going to be curious to see what I'm doing, sign up to the newsletter and you will find out along the way.
26:06 --> 26:08 [SPEAKER_00]: What did you think of this episode?
26:09 --> 26:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Check out thewesterocprimer.com and let me know what you think of this episode.
26:14 --> 26:19 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a friend or two that might like the show, make sure to share.