The Booziest Targaryen in ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Reveals His Surprising Inspiration

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has just two episodes left to go. Its most recent installment, the early-arriving “Seven,” revealed Dunk’s next challenge, a harrowing Trial of Seven (and the also harrowing task of assembling six other knights to fight alongside our hero). But it also brought a character we met back in episode one out of the shadows, shedding a little bit of light on why he is, well, the way he is.

It’s Daeron Targaryen, played by Henry Ashton. He’s Egg’s perpetually drunk older brother, so reluctant to fight at Ashford Meadow—as ordered by his family—that he hides out in a roadside inn, losing track of his sibling in the process. When he’s finally discovered and dragged back into the fold, he tells a huge lie, accusing Dunk of kidnapping Egg.

When he and Dunk meet again in “Seven,” Daeron admits he said that to save face with his father, the perpetually disapproving Maekar. But just when you think Daeron is merely a selfish lush (also a bit of a coward, promising he won’t fight back during the melee), he brings up the eerie dream he had involving Dunk and a dead dragon, which he believes is prophetic.

The Targaryens are an odd family, but this ne’er-do-well with mystical leanings is among the oddest members we’ve met so far. In a new interview with the Radio Times, Ashton explained Daeron doesn’t know what his dreams mean. He finds them just as confusing as Dunk does.

“When he has this premonition of a dead dragon, he makes assumptions of who that would be and what that means… He doesn’t quite know what it means, but he knows it’s not good for him or his family,” Ashton said.

“It’s a shame that such a great power—these dreams and premonitions that he has—are [given] to a man that is unfortunately unable to handle it,” he added, echoing Daeron’s own take on the situation.

Ashton also revealed that A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s showrunner, Ira Parker, and director, Owen Harris, had different ideas of whether Daeron is “a good man who’s pretending not to be, or not a good guy but pretending to be.” Ashton went with “a good person, but he’s so consumed with his own problems and pain that he behaves awfully.”

There were also two fun anecdotes in Ashton’s interview. One is that Daeron’s character description specifically pointed to the 1987 cult black comedy Withnail and I (“very charismatic and upper class, but also just completely disheveled and just an absolute mess”). The other is that Ashton actually auditioned for Game of Thrones back when he was still a student: “It was for Jon Snow. I think they went to every school and auditioned every teenager!”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms returns to its usual time this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.

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