A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms occupies a distinct corner of the Westeros chronology: roughly 77 years after House of the Dragon and about 89 years before Game of Thrones. Even with that wide chronological gap, the series still leaves room for playful Easter eggs and brief nods to familiar figures from the wider saga.
Although Dunk and Egg are protagonists of a self-contained set of novellas, their narrative already threads into George R.R. Martin’s broader Song of Ice and Fire mythos. At the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms panel during New York Comic Con, Martin entertained the idea of transplanting celebrated knights from Westeros’ past into Dunk and Egg’s era.
“It would be fun to have other great knights from Westerosi history,” he said. “I think Jaime Lannister would like to enter tournaments, winning some, fighting some of them. And Tyrion would just bet on them.”
Some of Martin’s fanciful suggestions—like Jaime Lannister appearing at tournaments—aren’t feasible because those figures are born generations later. Still, cameos from the wider Game of Thrones roster aren’t entirely out of the question. After the panel, Polygon spoke with series creator Parker about whether he had a list of potential cameos for the adaptation; his answer was an unequivocal “yes.”
“My favorite is, and look, it’s not until the third book, but there’s a baby Walder Frey,” Parker explains. “I have this, hopefully, really funny idea that people are probably gonna kill me for. But this idea that something’s happening, like there’s a runaway horse cart, and this baby’s about to be killed, and Dunk intervenes and saves baby Walder Frey.”
Image: HBO
Walder Frey—later portrayed by David Bradley on Game of Thrones—is the shrewd and treacherous lord who controls the Twins, the strategic crossing between north and south. He is infamous for orchestrating the Red Wedding, a brutal betrayal that cemented his villainous reputation. The image of the upright, honorable Dunk rescuing an infant who will grow into such a duplicitous figure would land as a darkly comic irony.
“We don’t ever make a thing of it,” Parker adds. “It just happens, and we’re on with the story. That’s sort of the closest we get to it in the three novels that have been written.”
While Parker has flirted with a few recognizable cameos, his priority is to pepper the show with subtle callbacks for devoted readers while keeping the main narrative intact. He points to a scene in episode five as an example: young Dunk walking a road back toward King’s Landing—the same road Brienne and Pod once traveled.
Fans have long suspected that Dunk is an ancestor of Brienne of Tarth, an idea Martin confirmed in 2016. Although that lineage hasn’t been explicitly dramatized in the books or earlier screen adaptations, the series may now provide subtle confirmation for attentive viewers. Parker says those quiet connective threads—small details that reward long-time readers—were important to include.
“It was important to put in little, tiny touches like that,” he says. Filming in Belfast—where parts of Game of Thrones were shot—also made it natural to reuse locations and visuals when appropriate. “We’re there, so we might as well use what they use when it’s appropriate.”
Source: Polygon
