A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms made me care about Game of Thrones lore

A little way into A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — the moment in episode two when Dunk meets the Targaryens and asks Baelor to vouch for him — I did something I’d never done before: I opened a Game of Thrones wiki. I’ve been a casual follower of George R.R. Martin’s world, never read the books, never watched House of the Dragon, and I tuned in because the show promised a lighter, more grounded, character-focused take with shorter runtimes.

The show’s strength is how it uses the vast existing world-building as texture rather than exposition. Writers can rely on everything already established so the characters and their small-scale stories can stand on their own without spelling out family trees or centuries of history.

That background is there if you want to dig into it, and absent if you don’t, which keeps the show feeling fun rather than like homework. Still, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms invites curiosity.

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