Why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Uses the Game of Thrones Theme as a Punchline

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Season 1 Episode 1, “The Hedge Knight,” streaming on HBO Max.]

The music featured in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is designed to reflect the Game of Thrones spinoff’s focus on humbler characters than the kings and queens of other series. “What was so beautifully done about House of the Dragon is this epic scale at which the story is told. So to have this big booming orchestral score was very important,” Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker says during a roundtable interview. However, for his series, “we realized early on that we’re telling a small story here — a small story about a simple person who has smaller ambitions. And so, certainly our sound had to suit that.”

The answer landed on by composer Dan Romer was bringing a “sense of whimsy” to the score, befitting the nature of the show’s young lead, a squire named Dunk (Peter Claffey) whose master has just died, leaving him on his own to seek adventure. “It’s a kid with a silly dream, trekking out to a new frontier, trying to do something that’s difficult,” Parker says. “Music overall in the show had to very much be a representation of Dunk.”

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Additionally, though, the creative team found a way to nod to the original Game of Thrones opening credits — and also set up how different in tone Kingdoms would be from its predecessors. In the opening minutes of the premiere, “The Hedge Knight,” Dunk decides that he’s going to seek his fortune at a tournament. Cue the swelling orchestral notes of Ramin Djawadi’s iconic theme… followed by Dunk graphically defecating out of stress.

Parker says that on the page, that moment “was written as ‘Dunk hears the hero theme in his head.’” However, they didn’t yet know what Dunk’s hero theme would actually be at that point, and when it came time to try what Romer had created to serve that need, the cue “felt like Dunk in this moment now.”

That wouldn’t quite work for the scene, Parker says, because “what he’s hearing in his head is that call to greatness — that call of a potential something else in the future. And what is the best call to greatness in the whole world? The Game of Thrones theme — the most iconic theme that’s ever been laid down before.”

Then, Parker continues, “as soon as [Dunk] hears that music, the reality of what it takes to actually go off and do that, and how terrifying it is hits him — and forces him into a very unheroic crouch… Which I think hopefully is very understandable to a lot of people who have had big ideas — and then been hit with the reality of ‘How do I go off and do this?’”

Despite literally opening with a poop joke, star Peter Claffey doesn’t feel like the show is “like a Game of Thrones comedy.” Instead, he says, “we just leant towards a sort of an awkwardness and a humor that comes from the awkwardness of Dunk — we leant towards those moments, but we didn’t corrupt the world of Game of Thrones with it being silly.”

Instead of, as Claffey puts it, “forcing comedy down your throat,” the series has “an air of humor and lightheartedness because we are dealing with small folk and people… not that high-born race towards the throne… It still has all the drama, it still has all the political turmoil that occurs between all the royals and all the small folk that come to Ashford. And it still has your Game of Thrones-style action and gore towards the end. But we had an opportunity to lean into some of the funnier sort of moments.”

Parker has experience playing in the realm of humor grounded in realism, as his past credits include two seasons of working on Better Things, Pamela Adlon’s acclaimed FX dramedy — a show he says was “beloved for a great number of reasons — number one, for its authenticity, which everyone is just trying to find within their work.” While he won’t “take credit for Pamela Adlon’s authenticity, even just being around her and by learning through osmosis, you do pick up a lot of things.”

In fact, he continues, “part of the reason why I think I ended up with [A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms] is because there are so many similarities between Better Things and the show. We don’t have much, like Better Things. We don’t have any dragons. We don’t have any dead coming to kill mankind. But we do have a lot of heart. And I think what people love so much about Better Things is that it’s honest and it has heart and it has characters who you are rooting for.” x

Parker acknowledges that Kingdoms co-creator/author George R.R. Martin has called Tales of Dunk and Egg, the original novella on which the show is based, “the best thing he’s ever written, which may be a version of him saying that this is his favorite thing that he’s ever written. And I took that to heart very early on.” The result, Parker feels, is a show that might not be for everyone, “but hopefully everyone will appreciate that we put forth an honest effort.”

Perhaps the end result is imperfect, he says. “But, you know, so is Dunk.”

New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premiere Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.