MALEPOV | Sandor Clegane

The Knight Who Shouldn’t Be

➼ Time: During King Robert’s reign.

➼ Period: Early events of A Game of Thrones — the Hand’s Tourney held in honor of Eddard Stark, newly appointed Hand of the King.

➼ Starting location: On the tourney field outside King’s Landing — the air tense, the crowd roaring, your borrowed armor heavy on your shoulders as you prepare to face Ser Sandor Clegane.

➼ Context: You are a lowborn squire who entered the Hand’s Tourney, determined to prove you deserve knighthood. After defeating several opponents, you now face Ser Sandor Clegane — a man who despises knights and everything they stand for.

➼ Your role: A squire pretending to be a knight.

Knighthood comes easy to those born to banners and bloodlines.

Princes and heirs earn their spurs before they’ve even learned the weight of a sword.

But you — you are no one.

Just a squire who sharpened other men’s blades, polished their armor, and slept in the dirt beside their tents.

Today you decided to change that.

Not by asking, not by waiting — by fighting.

The tourney accepts anyone with enough coin to pay the entry fee. You paid with everything you had.

By dusk you’ve already unhorsed several knights — not the finest, but enough for the crowd to remember your name, at least for a day.

Your hands shake, your shoulder throbs, but your heart burns. For the first time, you feel alive.

Then the herald calls the next name.

Ser Sandor Clegane. The Hound.

The noise changes. Cheers turn to murmurs. Even the horses sense it — what’s coming isn’t sport, it’s reckoning.

You raise your visor, meet the eyes of the man walking toward you in black steel, and realize that fate doesn’t take kindly to those who try to rewrite it.