Diksha Sundriyal
HBO’s ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ follows the story of Ser Duncan the Tall, aka Dunk, who comes to Ashford Meadow to prove himself as a knight worthy of his title. This is the first time that he is participating in a tourney, and this is also the first time that he has started telling people he is a knight. But people find it hard to believe, mainly because his former master, Ser Arlan of Pennytree, died rather quickly and with no one around at the time of his death, there was no way for anyone to witness Duncan getting knighted. The first episode begins with Dunk burying Ser Arlan, but it’s in the second episode that we discover what truly happened to him. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ser Arlan Died of Carelessness
The second episode of ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ begins with Dunk’s voiceover, where he tries to remind people of who Ser Arlan really was and how great a knight he had been. He uses the words to describe the contrasting characteristics of his former master, revealing that he may have seemed harsh and unfeeling on the outside, but he was an entirely different person on the inside. One of the things that Ser Arlan did was that he never complained. Even as he was dying, he didn’t say anything about it. He just got on with it. Perhaps, if he had said something, someone might have been able to help him, and he would likely have lived longer.
What happened there was that Ser Arlan got a wound on his arm. The origin of the wound is not revealed. Perhaps, he got it in a tourney, or a fight, or due to some other act of carelessness. Whatever the reason, it was a pretty significant cut on his arm. However, instead of seeing a doctor, he decided not to talk about it and let things unravel anyway they would. He most likely knew that he was dying because, at his age, he must have known that a wound like that, when left unattended, festers to the point of killing the person. Because Ser Arlan didn’t do anything about it, his injuries worsened as they got infected. Even as he tried to get on with it, the problem escalated with each minute that he didn’t receive help. Eventually, the infection ate him from the inside out, and one day, he fell from his horse and never got back up.
While Dunk had noted some changes in his master, he didn’t realise the extent of the problem until they’d reached the point of no return. As Ser Arlan’s health took a turn, Dunk could see something wasn’t right. But, in the late knight’s words, he was “thick as a castle wall,” and it took him too long to register that his master never received the treatment for his injuries. So, it was on the last day of Ser Arlan’s life, when the infection would have caused the fever that turned him delirious and eventually led him to lose consciousness, that Dunk realised how far things had fallen. When Ser Arlan fell from the horse, he would have tried to help the man, but the problem was that he didn’t know the first thing about treating someone. Moreover, they were too far from any settlement for Dunk to go and get help, even if it meant making his master somewhat comfortable in his dying moments. All he could do was wait for him to die, and when that happened, he gave Ser Arlan a proper funeral, or at least, as well of a funeral as he could, given the circumstances.
Read More: When Does A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Take Place? Timeline, Explained
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