Peter Claffey thinks Ser Duncan the Tall is trying to be a good man in a world that doesn’t really reward that—and to explain it, he reached for one of fantasy’s biggest touchstones. In a new interview, the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star compared the moral texture of Dunk and Egg’s story to The Lord of the Rings, arguing that Dunk’s struggle for honor looks very different in George R.R. Martin’s Westeros than it would in Tolkien’s Middle‑earth.
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Claffey says people in Martin’s world gain status by “doing hideous things” and “stabbing people in the back, literally, figuratively.”
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He contrasts that with The Lord of the Rings, where most evil feels “fairytale” aside from Morgoth and Sauron, and honor is more common.
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For him, Dunk’s whole journey is about how hard it is to remain “a decent knight” with any status in a world built to punish that.
Dunk’s honor in a world built on backstabbing
Peter Claffey starts by laying out how harsh Martin’s universe is for anyone trying to climb without getting their hands dirty. “In Game of Thrones and in George R.R. Martin’s world, people get so far in positions and status and stuff by doing hideous things and being part of and stabbing people in the back, literally, figuratively,” he explains to Nerdist, pointing to how advancement is usually bought with betrayal.
Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on HBO
By contrast, he says, Tolkien’s saga leaves more room for classic chivalry. “And with, for example, the glorious trilogy that is The Lord of the Rings, you see so much more honor there, other than we’re talking Morgoth and Sauron, other than those pure evil beings, it’s a lot more of that sort of fairytale evil, that sort of thing,” Claffey notes. That difference makes Dunk’s path uniquely painful: “So, navigating trying to be a decent knight like Dunk, a knight with some status, must be a truly difficult thing.”
A road story where being “a decent knight” is the real quest
Claffey has talked elsewhere in the same interview about how the series balances humor and brutality, keeping a “whisper” of comedy without breaking the grounded feel of Westeros. Here, his Lord of the Rings comparison adds another layer: Dunk and Egg may share the banter, warmth, and travel‑log feel of a fantasy quest, but the stakes are closer to Game of Thrones—political traps, social cruelty, and violence that doesn’t care if you’re trying to do the right thing.
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