Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page features standout drama series scripts in 2026 Emmy contention.
Ira Parker may have had his Game of Thrones training on House of the Dragon, but HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was his first time in charge of a Westerosi story and a unique challenge in the franchise’s canon. The series dropped the vast world-building of its predecessors and focused purely on a misfit pair of travelers – the young but scholarly Egg and blunt-force hedge knight Dunk. Set in a period of relatively stability for the Seven Kingdoms, the series was all about seeing the world through a narrower funnel.
Parker worked with Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to adapt the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, the first of which formed the spine of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ six-part Season 1. A pivotal moment takes place in episode 5, “In the Name of the Mother,” where a down-on-his-luck Dunk is forced to take part in the first Trial of Seven in a hundred years, pitting his ramshackle team of seven warriors against the unstable and arrogant Prince Aerion’s polished team in a violent and bloody fight.
The battle ends with a shocking reveal that puts the episode straight alongside the likes of “The Mountain and the Viper” and “The Rains of Castamere” from the original Game of Thrones.
L-R: Hiram Martinez, Ti Mikkel and Ira Parker
Courtesy/Getty/HBO
Below is the script for “In the Name of the Mother,” written by Hiram Martinez, Ti Mikkel and Parker, with an intro from Parker. In it, he discusses the importance of the penultimate episode to the Game of Thrones canon and how you create tension and build narrative in a fight scenario where the hero is almost certain to live to tell another story.
A Trial of Seven. The first one in a hundred years. The stakes are as high as they get on our scrappy, little Westeros hangout joint. After four episodes of eating and drinking and dancing, an ill-considered punch up, and a kangaroo court, we find ourselves at the penultimate episode. And no one does a penultimate like GoT… between the Battle of the Bastards, the beheading of Ned Stark, the Red Wedding, and Blackwater, we are like Egg, standing on the shoulders of giants. The question that has been bearing down on us all season, “How good of a fighter is Dunk?”, is finally about to be answered. But the question that loomed large in the writers’ room was not, “Can Dunk fight?” but rather, “Can Dunk die?” Even in this realm with such fondness for killing heroes, Dunk is our sole POV, you don’t have to be a savvy audience member to realize that Dunk will almost certainly survive. So where’s the threat? Where’s the tension? Where are the stakes? Where’s the episode?
We endeavored to tell a different story… Standing in for life and death, our penultimate episode became a tale of endurance. What must Dunk endure to make it through this trial? To become a knight? To earn his place amongst these champions? Dunk is not special. He’s not a secret Targaryen prince. He’s not been trained by great warriors. He just never stops coming. From a Flea Bottom orphan to a squire. From a squire to hedge knight. And from a hedge knight to a champion. What we discover, is that the path to better things asks simply for one foot to be placed in front of the other. But that’s easier said than done, both for Dunk, and the writers penning this journey.
Read the script below.
