Chapter Text
Dunk wakes face-down in a hedge with a headache and the taste of stale beer clinging to his tongue. His dream is still slowly fading away, the flash of a white cloak and a man with mismatched eyes turning to face him with a smile. It’s the kind of dream that comes after too many pints at The Stag. The warm morning air drifts through the leaves above him carrying the scent of cut grass and the rich earthiness of his garden. Somewhere nearby a magpie warbles noisily from a fence-post, likely singing for its breakfast having spotted him outside. Levering himself upright with a groan, he blinks blearily at the weatherboard house squatting beside the road in the hazy dawn light. He glances down to find one of his work boots is missing and a quick check of his phone reveals a flat battery. A long sigh escapes him and he rubs at his face, knocking off bits of dirt and grass stuck there with sleep. There's a vague recollection of coming home, feeling warm and sappy in the Summer heat and deciding he would camp outdoors like the hedge knights of old. Looking down at his feet, one navy sock and one boot, he sighs again. It had seemed like a great idea at the time…
He makes his way up to the porch slowly and fishes his spare key out from under the heavy pot beside the door. He lets himself into his grandmothers small and cluttered house, with her old stag tapestry hanging proudly in the lounge room and books covering every available shelf. They range from histories of the Seven Kingdoms, military studies and biographies of famous knights, to enough material on the Kingsguard to feed his obsession with knights and medieval lore. A framed print of Ser Duncan the Tall in full armour and helm, from a museum reconstruction, has pride of place beside the TV.
Making a beeline for the kitchen to where his second best charger lives on the counter, now his best charger after losing his main one last week, he plugs it into his phone. The screen remains stubbornly black for several seconds before finally displaying the red sliver of a battery icon. He exhales, at least that problem is solvable. His missing boot can wait. He starts stripping off his clothes enroute to the bathroom, slinging them at the washing basket and stepping into the shower. Grimacing at the hair in the drain he's been neglecting to clean, he turns the taps and presses back against the glass to let it get hot. Once the steam starts to rise around his feet he gets under it to let the hot water pound against the back of his neck, stiff from his unplanned outdoor nap.
Slowly, fragments of last night begin resurfacing. The Stag had been busy, Friday nights always were. He'd gone with a couple of the boys from work, intending to have a couple of beers and be home by ten. Only, at around ten, they had met up with a group of friends from the footy club and then an argument had started with somebody saying something categorically wrong about his favourite historical topic.
"The Kingsguard were basically glorified bodyguards."
He winces. Gods, he remembers that. Someone had laughed and said the institution itself was fundamentally pointless once dragons died out. Then it was either Gary or Callum, who made the fatal error.
"You're the expert, Dunk."
He groans aloud beneath the water. He is not an expert, he's a plumber from the Stormlands with an unhealthy amount of free time and a hyperfixation. But once provoked…
He rubs shampoo through his hair and closes his eyes, he can hear himself over the muddled noise of the pub crowd, "The role of the Kingsguard wasn't just about physically protecting the monarch though."
Oh no. He can practically see himself gesturing with his pint.
"The Kingsguard was about continuity and legitimacy. They were an important symbol linking each monarch to the next!"
There'd been a pause, before the inevitable.
"...Take King Baelor's reign for example."
His groan echoes in the confines of his cramped shower and he mashes the facewasher against his neck scrubbing it furiously. Of course he'd brought up King Baelor II, he always ends up bringing him up.
"Because if you look at the surviving accounts of Ser Duncan during that period…"
He presses both hands over his face, Gods above. There had been booing and he'd heard Callum shout, "He's doing it again!" He hadn't seen whoever had yelled, "He's talking about his boyfriend!" Which had earned immediate protests from around the table, hands slapping at the wooden table top, sticky from spilled beer.
"S’not canon mate!"
"There's literally no evidence!"
"Well that's a fuckin' lie!"
"It's all the woke agenda mate, they'll make anyone gay!"
That had devolved into a heated debate about whether the relationship between King Baelor Breakspear and Ser Duncan the Tall had truly been one of platonic friendship, or if it had been something more. Heated mainly because everyone was drunk and invested in egging him on. It’s an argument that currently occupies most of the internet and Dunk personally has very strong opinions on the matter which makes him an easy mark for the entertainment of his friends, Callum's spotty face crumpling into a shit eating grin as he comes up with increasingly unhinged fake facts about King Baelor. It’s not that every meaningful relationship in history needs to be romanticised, it just irritates him when people flatten nuance into rigid labels. It’s probably also that whenever he’s read contemporary accounts about them, he feels such a strong pull to understand their story. Thinking of how Ser Duncan appeared beside Baelor throughout the records, as a constant fixture, like there was an invisible thread connecting them. It often feels as though there's a thread connecting him to them too.
The water streams over his face and, for a brief moment an image surfaces, soft and blurry. There’s a man seated beside a fire with silver threaded through dark hair. He imagines a voice, "You always come back to me."
His breath catches and the image vanishes. Opening his eyes he reaches to turn the water colder.
The shower succeeds in washing away the stale beer, the headache and most of his embarrassment. Wrapped in a ratty yellow towel too small for his hips, he pads back into the kitchen where his phone has accumulated enough charge to spring back to life the moment he presses the power button. It vibrates immediately. A stream of missed calls, group chats, work texts and footy scores. Enough of them roll through to make him briefly consider throwing it back onto the charger and pretending he’s lost his phone.
Instead he carries it down the hall to his bedroom and drops onto the edge of the unmade bed beneath a shelf crammed with books to start clearing them, one by one. The towel falls open immediately as he sits on it so he rummages for clean boxers with one hand, swiping away notifications with the other.
Halfway through, his thumb pauses.
Rae (8:17 AM)
oi
Rae (8:18 AM)
u awake yet?
Rae (8:18 AM)
please tell me you've seen this
A wumblr link follows, which makes Dunk frown. Rae only ever sends him historical posts when she thinks they will either make him flip his nut, or send him down a multi-hour rabbit hole. There’s rarely an in-between. Picturing her raised eyebrows and the way she bits her lower lip when she wants him to bite he rolls his eyes, but curiousity wins out and he taps the link.
The original post is already climbing into the tens of thousands of notes.
Houseofthedragonfruit
hot take:
Ser Duncan the Tall is literally the only non-Targaryen Lord Commander who gets treated like honourary family by the royal court. Everyone talks about Ashford and Summerhall but nobody talks about the fact Baelor II basically spends years dragging this man everywhere with him before making him Lord Commander.Feels like his promotion had less to do with being The Greatest Knight Ever™ and more to do with the fact he'd already spent half his adult life at the beck and call of the future king.
idk discuss.
Dunk huffs, and clicks to have a scroll through the notes. It's exactly the sort of chaos he expects. Some of the replies are thoughtful additions with citations and scans from obscure manuscripts, the rest are people insisting Duncan was either criminally overrated or secretly the greatest political mind Westeros had ever produced. There's already a meme comparing him to the prime minister's chief of staff.
Someone else has written:
they were boyfriends your honour
He snorts, he's reblogged many a post with that tag.
Dunk scrubs at his jaw, contemplating the post. He could argue in the notes, he's done it before. He would likely lose track of responses with them splitting into a bunch of different conversations where nobody would cite their sources properly, only to end up with someone bringing up the Blackfyre Rebellions despite them having nothing whatsoever to do with the original post.
No. If he wants an actual conversation...He closes Wumblr to open Reddit, navigates to r/AskHistorians and starts typing.
Posted by u/HedgeKnight96
Was Ser Duncan the Tall's rise to Lord Commander influenced by his years as Prince Baelor's sworn sword?
saw a post on wumblr saying duncan was basically the only lord commander of the kingsguard who wasnt a targaryen or closely related to one that seemed to receive like... special attention from the royal family??
im not saying nepotism lol
more wondering if spending so many years as baelors sworn sword wouldve basically trained him for command in a way the other kingsguard didnt get
like obviously he was already a famous knight after Ashford but his career seems to really take off once hes attached to baelors household
is there actually evidence for this??
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Top Comment
u/XxChivalryCodedxX
oh shit this is a good one!
Big T!!! u/drbaelortarg your people need you!
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u/greenappleaday
i swear he just materialises whenever someone mentions baelor ii
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u/LionLover91
He's probably writing a 5,000 word response as we speak.
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u/drbaelortarg
This is an excellent question.
The short answer is yes, though probably not for the reasons Wumblr is suggesting.
The office of Lord Commander required a lot more than just martial ability. By the early fourth century, the position had evolved into one demanding administrative competence, political judgement, logistical experience, and above all a thorough understanding of royal governance. Ser Duncan appears to have acquired these skills during his lengthy service within King Baelor's household (particularly prior to his coronation).
While contemporary sources naturally emphasise his prowess as a knight, they also repeatedly place him in contexts extending well beyond personal protection. We find him accompanying Baelor during judicial circuits, diplomatic progresses, military inspections, meetings with marcher lords, and the prince's administrative tours through the Reach and Riverlands. Which suggests that Duncan spent years observing how a future king would govern. Such experience would have been extraordinarily valuable.
Indeed, if one compares Duncan's career with that of earlier Lord Commanders, his progression appears less unusual than it first seems. Rather than rising solely because he was Baelor's favourite knight, he had effectively served a long apprenticeship beside the man who would become king.
The claim that he received "special treatment" requires more nuance. He undoubtedly enjoyed Baelor's confidence, but whether that confidence resulted from exceptional ability, long familiarity, personal affection, or some combination thereof, remains a matter of scholarly debate. The surviving sources support all of those possibilities...
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u/HedgeKnight96
omfg thanks!!
this is exactly what i was trying to ask i feel like people underrate how much leadership is just... learning by watching someone else whos good at it for years
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u/drbaelortarg
Quite. One need not wear the crown to learn from the person wearing it.
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u/BlackfyreDidNothingWrong
theres literally no evidence baelor favoured him more than the other kingsguard
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u/HedgeKnight96
did we not just read the same response??
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u/BlackfyreDidNothingWrong
go on then
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u/HedgeKnight96
aside from all the stuff in the other reply hes the only kingsguard who travels with baelor basically everywhere before he becomes king theyre constantly mentioned together where baelor keeps putting him in charge of stuff like he was the first person sent to negotiate with marcher lords after summers field
theres also the whole time at summerhall where baelor specifically requests duncan while recovering
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u/BlackfyreDidNothingWrong
thats called doing his job
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u/HedgeKnight96
if your boss specifically asks for u by name to help every time shit hits the fan ur probably more than just "some bloke doing his job"
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u/drbaelortarg
I will say it might be worth distinguishing between favouritism and trust... There are plenty of sources that consistently demonstrate that Baelor trusted Duncan with responsibilities extending beyond those ordinarily expected of a sworn sword. However, there’s no current certainty around whether that trust reflected personal affection, exceptional professional competence, or both.
Historians try to resist equating possibility with conclusion (or at least this historian does).
Dunk leans back in his chair, which groans horribly at his daring to use it the way it was intended, and stares at the screen before breaking out into a grin. He clicks on u/drbaelortarg's profile. There are answers to various questions stretching back nearly a decade that include thousands of citations, discussions of medieval governance, manuscript traditions, castle architecture, and the politics of the Targaryen court. He’s pretty sure he actually recognises the name Dr Baelor Targarran from one of the websites he's looked at hunting for copies of Kingsguard journals.
Opening one answer on the logistics of supplying the royal progresses during Daeron II's reign he sees its accumulated over twelve thousand upvotes. He lets out a low whistle of appreciation. A quick google informs him that Baelor is indeed the author of a couple of papers Dunk already has in his own folder of articles and is a historian living in Kings Landing.
Going back to Reddit, Dunk clicks Follow without any further thought.