George R.R. Martin’s New GoT Star Names His Favorite Westeros Tale

For once, it isn’t a fan theory or a leaked outline revealing George R.R. Martin’s secrets, but one of his own actors. At Brazil’s CCXP convention, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star Peter Claffey told fans that Martin personally named The Hedge Knight as his favorite story he’s ever written—putting the humble Dunk & Egg novella at the very heart of HBO’s next Game of Thrones era.

Dunk, Egg, and the Story George R.R. Martin Loves Most

Claffey, who plays Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk) opposite Dexter Sol Ansell’s young Prince Aegon Targaryen (Egg), recalled Martin’s set visit during filming of the upcoming HBO series. “He told us that The Hedge Knight is his favorite thing he’s ever written,” Claffey said, adding that the author was “really happy” with what he’d seen so far.

The Hedge Knight, first published in 1998, is the opening novella in Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg cycle, later collected as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It follows a lowborn, oversized hedge knight and his sharp-tongued squire—secretly a Targaryen prince—on the tourney circuit almost a century before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire. The new series adapts this more intimate corner of Westeros, far from Iron Throne politics and dragon warfare. A second season, expected to tackle the follow-up novella The Sworn Sword, is already planned for 2027, with cameras on Season 2 starting this month.[1]

According to Claffey, Martin also joked with showrunner Ira Parker, “Please don’t mess it up,” underlining how personal this story is to him. The first season, running six episodes, is slated to debut January 18, 2026 on HBO and Max.[2]

A Smaller Westeros Story With Big Expectations

HBO is treating A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as a tonal reset from the apocalyptic stakes of Game of Thrones and the dragon-scorched spectacle of House of the Dragon. The series centers a wandering knight’s-eye view of the realm, and early reports suggest even the opening will be stripped back—no traditional title sequence—to match Dunk’s grounded perspective.[3] As we’ve already seen, HBO is betting hard on this shift: the show scored an early Season 2 renewal and is a pillar of the network’s post-Targaryen Westeros strategy.new Westeros era

For readers, the news that The Hedge Knight is Martin’s personal favorite only deepens the intrigue. The Dunk & Egg tales—completed so far by The Sworn Sword (2003) and The Mystery Knight (2010)—have long been cherished as quieter, character-driven stories that still feed directly into the great dynastic tragedies of A Song of Ice and Fire.[4]

Martin himself remains heavily involved in the show as writer and executive producer, even as The Winds of Winter continues without a release date.[5] Recent comments and legal filings have confirmed that the long-awaited novel is still unfinished, even while HBO pushes ahead with multiple Westeros projects.Winds of Winter still unfinished

Between a beloved novella, a grounded knight, and an author who’s openly protective of the adaptation, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is shaping up as the rare spinoff that might please both TV-only viewers and die-hard book devotees—especially now that we know it’s the story closest to Martin’s heart.