The much more interesting book-plot in Dorne featured a Dayne with an unsavory aspect. Like a vampire in the sunlight.Ĭatelyn once suspected that Ser Arthur’s beautiful sister Ashara might be Jon’s mother, since the young Ned had been rumored to have been in love with her.Īrya met a nephew of Arthur Dayne’s who was a squire to Beric Dondarrion and probably the youngest member of the Brotherhood without Banners. I would have loved for Joffrey’s finger to have caught fire.
His section in the Kingsguard Book of Brothers is full of tales of his great deeds and heroism. There are stories told and mentions made. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.” Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more.
“The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. Ned also idolized Dayne, and would speak highly of the famous knight. Jaime quietly idolized him and was keenly aware of how little like Dayne he truly was.
Wielding the sword Dawn (the ancestral blade of the Daynes and held by the Dayne with the Sword of the Morning title) Ser Arthur Dayne does not survive the battle, and is buried by Ned and the only other survivor, Reed.Īlthough he enters and exits the story as a fever-dream of Ned’s, that’s not Arthur Dayne’s only presence in the books. Even if our only direct experience with Ser Arthur is in Ned’s rather brief dream. And rightfully so.ĭayne is one of those characters from the books who is mythic. In the dream, LC Hightower does most of the talking, while the show focused on Ser Arthur Dayne. In charge at the tower was the lord commander of the Kingsguard, Ser Gerold “the White Bull” Hightower, accompanied by the bat-helmed Ser Oswell Whent (the bat is the sigil of House Whent, so as far as I’m concerned, the Whents are AWESOME), and Ser Arthur Dayne aka the Sword of the Morning. Check it out in full over at – I’ll have just some snippets here.)
(If anyone wants to get a taste of the chapter, the artist Uros Obradovic made an amazing visual adaptation of it. The battle is not explicitly described in the book, it is a dream after all, and the poetic nature of how Ned interacts with the three gives it a surreal sensibility, as if it’s more allegorical than literal. (The show opted to reduce the numbers on both sides, so instead of seven versus three, it was six against two.) Of his six companions and the three warriors with white cloaks, only he and the little crannogman Howland Reed survived. In the first book, when Ned had been injured by his encounter with Jaime Lannister and had been drugged up, he dreamed of an old skirmish with three members of the Kingsguard. Game of Thrones often brings surprises, especially to those who haven’t read the books, but its sixth season had a delightful surprise in store for book readers by managing to give a glimpse into the past at the tail end of Robert’s rebellion, when young Ned Stark and a handful of men fought against the last of King Aerys Targaryen’s elite Kingsguard. But come back some time! Arthur Dayne will still be here waiting for you. Ser Arthur Dayne: They say King Aerys went mad reading this guy’s blogs.Īnyway, don’t spoil yourself.