How many boys and men in Westeros have longed to don the white cloak, to take their vows, and stand amongst the seven most elite warriors in the realm? Before his fall, Bran Stark was among those who aspired to join their ranks. After all, they are regarded as the greatest knights in the realm, and yet they are not. The Targaryens’ formation of the Kingsguard, while noble in concept, quietly marked the death of chivalry, or at least began to erode and chip away at it. Seven knights sworn to defend the king and embody knighthood’s purest virtues. They wear white to symbolise purity and honour. Yet the Kingsguard fundamentally shifts the meaning of knighthood. This brotherhood does not elevate chivalry; it institutionalises it. The order crushes personal conscience beneath hierarchy and binds moral choice to obedience.
A true knight is charged to protect the innocent, to defend the weak, to uphold justice, and to act with honour. These are sacred vows sworn before the gods. They are not meant to be hierarchical, and they are certainly meant to be sacred. However, initiation into the Kingsguard brings another set of vows. The knight must protect the king and royal family with his life, obey every command, and keep every secret. His duty to conscience, the helpless, and the innocent now falls beneath his oath to serve an institution. This is what I mean by a hierarchy of oaths. It is not merely that Kingsguard vows can contradict knightly ones; it is that those vows are ranked. Knights are no longer guided by morality but by the command structure of power, where obedience eclipses justice.
Ser Duncan the Tall is perhaps the purest example of what knighthood once meant. As a hedge knight, he lives by conscience and honour. He defends the innocent at great personal cost, striking a prince to protect Tanselle Too-Tall. That moment defines true knighthood: acting for what is right, not for who commands. Yet when Duncan joins the Kingsguard, that same moral strength becomes restrained. He does not lose his goodness, but his ability to act upon it. The institution transforms a knight of conscience into one bound by silence. During his service as Kingsguard and Lord Commander, Duncan witnesses the suffering of Rhaella Targaryen, a child trapped in a miserable marriage and forced into pregnancy at a young age. At what point did Duncan’s courage fade? Surely he and Aegon were close enough for him to speak against it. His death at Summerhall may show that his moral core remained, yet it is tragic that his greatest act of protection comes only through a duty permitted by the same vows that once silenced him.
Jaime Lannister provides the perfect inversion of Duncan’s tragedy. He lives within the same hierarchy but refuses to remain silent. Jaime recognises that his vows betray one another and exposes how the Kingsguard transforms knights into instruments of royal will rather than protectors of justice. When he kills Aerys, he loses his honour in the eyes of the world but reclaims the essence of true knighthood. His rebellion restores the morality that the Kingsguard stripped away. Jaime embodies the decay of chivalry under monarchy, yet unlike his fellow Kingsguard ‘knights’, he breaks free from it. In doing so, he reminds us that the greatest act of loyalty a knight can perform is not obedience to power but fidelity to conscience.
It is so tragic that in seeking to bind honour to the throne and enshrine themselves in protection the Targaryens severed knighthood from its soul.
