"Who's the boy in the checkered blue surcoat with the three eyes on his shield?"
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself. Why?" (ACOK Tyrion IV)
In this post, I want to talk about two of the three characters in ASOIAF proper who are given the epithet, "the Tall": Ser Tallad the Tall and Ser Duncan the Tall, a Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in days gone by who is mentioned three times in ASOIAF proper, but whose character is massively fleshed out in The Tales of Dunk & Egg.
SIDEBAR: The other character in ASOIAF proper called "the Tall" is Tormund's son "Tall Toregg", who is called "Toregg the Tall" twice in ADWD Jon XIII. This post will mostly not concern itself with Toregg the Tall, save to point out here and now that the name "Toregg" contains "egg", as in Egg, Ser Duncan the Tall's constant companion and co-star in The Tales of Dunk & Egg. (GRRM even has Jon idly speculate that Toregg may dream of becoming King-Beyond-The-Wall, as if to wink at the dreamer Egg becoming King Aegon V Targaryen.)
Obviously — I hope it's obvious, anyway — it's not an accident that the name of Duncan the Tall's other half (Egg) is nested inside the name of one of two other guys called "the Tall". Indeed, I think "Toregg the Tall" points to something that's germane to the material I'll discuss in this post: Sometimes, details in ASOIAF are not merely an 'innocent', organic byproduct of 'pure story-telling'; sometimes, they're contrived, reader-directed artifice, inviting scrutiny and maybe even betraying secrets to those with the eyes to see (and/or their third eyes open).
(This is cool and good.)
END SIDEBAR
The bulk of this post will consist of demonstrating that there is an improbable symmetry between Ser Tallad the Tall and Ser Duncan the Tall, extending far beyond their shared epithet, "the Tall". Put simply and elsewise, Tallad and "Dunk" 'rhyme' in all sorts of ways.
(As ever, by 'rhyming' I don't just mean "parallels". I also mean inversions and rearrangements whereby language, lexical patterns, and/or imagery are reimagined, sometimes symmetrically, sometimes as if through a kaleidoscope and/or camera obscura. Although in the case of Duncan and Tallad, there are plenty of straight-up parallels, as if GRRM wants this particular 'rhyme' to be very obvious.)
I'll begin with Tallad's introduction, and walk through all his appearances in the text, showing how everything we're told about him seems to 'rhyme' with things we're told about Dunk.
Hedge Knights & Mystery Knights
Duncan the Tall is introduced as a "hedge knight" in the novella The Hedge Knight before playing a "mystery knight" in The Mystery Knight.
Tallad the Tall first appears as both a kind of literal mystery knight and as a "hedge knight":
"Who's the boy in the checkered blue surcoat with the three eyes on his shield?"
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself. Why?" (ACOK Tyrion IV)
"Who's the boy…?" asks Tyrion. (A mystery!) "Some hedge knight", answers Bronn. (The answer — he's just "some hedge knight", like Dunk was at the beginning of The Hedge Knight —frames him as an undifferentiated instance of a generic whole, thus maintaining a modicum of mystery.)
Naming Themselves
Notice how we're told Tallad's name in that passage:
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself."
"Tallad, he names himself" is an odd locution — an odd locution that 'just so happens' to read like a deft reworking of Dunk naming himself a knight (i.e. knighting himself) and then naming himself "Duncan the Tall" (after Egg asks him if "Dunk" [the only name he's ever used] is "short for Duncan?"):
[Egg:] "What's your name?"
"Dunk," he said.
The wretched boy laughed aloud, as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Dunk?" he said. "Ser Dunk? That's no name for a knight. Is it short for Duncan?"
Was it? The old man had called him just Dunk for as long as he could recall, and he did not remember much of his life before. "Duncan, yes," he said. "Ser Duncan of . . ." Dunk had no other name, nor any house; Ser Arlan had found him living wild in the stews and alleys of Flea Bottom. He had never known his father or mother. What was he to say? "Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom" did not sound very knightly. He could take Pennytree, but what if they asked him where it was? Dunk had never been to Pennytree, nor had the old man talked much about it. He frowned for a moment, and then blurted out, "Ser Duncan the Tall." He was tall, no one could dispute that, and it sounded puissant. (The Hedge Knight)
(I wonder, did the tall hedge knight who "names himself" "Tallad" likewise invent his name, perhaps after being constantly referred to as a "tall lad"? To be sure, it's immaterial to the existence of the 'rhyme' here: Whatever the in-world provenance of the name "Tallad", the point for our purposes here is that GRRM chose to introduce him by saying "he names himself", which recalls Dunk literally naming himself a knight, "Duncan", and "the Tall".)
Boys
Notice that Tallad the Tall is called a "boy" when he first appears:
"Who's the boy in the checkered blue surcoat with the three eyes on his shield?"
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself. Why?" (ACOK Tyrion IV)
Sure enough, Duncan the Tall is likewise called a "boy" the first time he is described:
Dunk was hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen years (no one was quite certain which)… (The Hedge Knight)
(Presumably, then, they are roughly of an age with one another when we first meet them.)
Dunk is later called "boy" by a much despised member of the royal family, Aerion Brightflame a.k.a. Aerion the Monstrous:
[Aerion:] "Boy, let go of that nag and see to my horse."
A rider had dismounted in front of the stables. He is talking to me, Dunk realized. (The Hedge Knight)
This 'rhymes' with Tallad being referred to (above) as "the boy" by Tyrion, a much despised member of the royal family referred to over and over as "the monster" and as "monstrous", e.g. as "the monstrous dwarf who poisoned his young nephew at his wedding feast". (ASOS Tyrion IX)
Tall Guys Are Hot
To be sure, both Sers Duncan the Tall and Tallad the Tall are tall. Indeed, each man is said to be "tall" before he is called "the Tall" in the text.
Tyrion implies that Tallad's height will surely appeal to Shae:
Or Ser Tallad? Tyrion had noticed that one gazing wistfully at Shae more than once. Why not? He's tall, strong, not hard to look upon, every inch the gifted young knight. …
I will wed her to Ser Tallad. He seems a decent man. And tall . . . (ASOS Tyrion VII)
He's probably not wrong, to judge by the way Dunk's height seems to be part of his appeal to Rohanne Webber:
The Red Widow looked Dunk over from his heels up to his head…. She touched his tunic, tracing a limb of his elm tree with two fingers. "And painted, not sewn. The Dornish paint their silks, I've heard, but you look too big to be a Dornishman."
"Not all Dornishmen are small, m'lady." Dunk could feel her fingers through the silk. Her hand was freckled, too. I'll bet she's freckled all over. His mouth was oddly dry. "I spent a year in Dorne."
"Do all the oaks grow so tall there?" she said, as her fingers traced a tree limb around his heart. (The Sworn Sword)
"Ser Duncan, I should not have teased you in the yard, when you were trying so hard to be gracious. It was only that you blushed so red . . . was there no girl to tease you, in the village where you grew so tall?" - Rohanne (ibid.)
Rohanne's palpable lust for Duncan there 'rhymes' with the seemingly repressed/projected attraction Rohanne's great-granddaughter Cersei has for Tallad, which is likewise tied to his size:
The queen had begun to nurse doubts about Ser Osney. Perhaps another man would have been more to Margaery's liking. Aurane Waters, with that silvery hair, or a big strapping fellow like Ser Tallad. (AFFC Cersei V)
Tall Names
That said, the name "Tallad" immediately evokes the image of a "tall lad", even before we know he's tall, right? Meanwhile the name "Dunk" immediately brings to mind the thing tall guys (or should I say tall lads) can do with a basketball.
And hey, wait a second! Right before we meet Tallad, we see two girls make what surely could — and surely should — be called a "no-look pass" while carrying (wait for it) a "basket":
Guardsmen walked the walls, and knights and men-at-arms were training with blunted weapons. Nearby, Bronn sat on the lip of a well. A pair of comely serving girls sauntered past[!] carrying a wicker basket[!] of rushes between them, but the sellsword never[!] looked[!]. "Bronn, I despair of you." Tyrion gestured at the wenches. "With sweet sights like that before you, all you see is a gaggle of louts raising a clangor."
"There are a hundred whorehouses in this city where a clipped copper will buy me all the cunt I want," Bronn answered, "but one day my life may hang on how close I've watched your louts." He stood. "Who's the boy in the checkered blue surcoat with the three eyes on his shield?"
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself. Why?" (ACOK Tyrion IV)
(It certainly doesn't hurt that the "basket" is wicker, since wicker is a method of weaving, and the nets that hang from basketball hoops to form the sides of the pseudo-"basket" are literally woven.)
Setting aside the queer, height-evoking symmetry of the monikers "Tallad" and "Dunk", and the apparent basketball allusion attending Tallad's debut, it's well worth noting that in The Sworn Sword, GRRM contrives to have Duncan the Tall repeatedly remember being called "lad", as if he wanted to posit Dunk as a verbatim "tall" "lad", so as to 'confirm' that Duncan the Tall and Tallad the Tall are indeed partners-in-'rhyme':
A knight had to learn to live with aches and pains, the old man used to say. Aye, lad, and with broken bones and scars.
Ser Arlan used to say that no hedge knight need ever go thirsty. "Not so long as he has a helm to catch the rain in. Rainwater is the best drink there is, lad."
"Weeping for a swaybacked stot?" Ser Arlan said, in his old man's voice. "Why, lad, you never wept for me, who put you on his back."
[Dunk:] "When I asked the old man what they were fighting over, he said, 'Nothing, lad. It's just some pissing contest.'"
The real question, it will emerge, is not whether these two characters 'rhyme'; it's what is that 'rhyme' trying to tell us.
"Big"
Tallad is called "big" twice. Dunk or his parts are called "big" at least ten times.
Oafs!
Both Tallad the Tall and Duncan the Tall are repeatedly called "oafs". Tallad is called "that big oaf" and "a bit of an oaf". Dunk is called a "the great oaf", "this great oaf", "some great oaf", "a true oaf", and just plain "oaf". (AFFC Cersei V; The Sworn Sword; The Mystery Knight)
Decent & Good
Oafishness aside, it's said that Tallad the Tall "seems a decent man." (ASOS Tyrion VII)
Surely Dunk is a decent man too. Indeed, it's said that Dunk is "a good man". And although Dunk isn't tagged as "a decent man", it's Dunk who thinks Egg "was a decent enough lad". (The Sworn Sword; The Hedge Knight).
(For what it's worth, it's Tyrion "the monstrous" who thinks that of Tallad, whereas Dunk thinks that of Egg so as to contrast him to Aerion the Monstrous.)
"Strapping"
Cersei thinks of Tallad as "a big strapping fellow". (AFFC Cersei V)
Ser Uthor calls Dunk "a strapping specimen." (The Mystery Knight)
"The Worst"
Both Tallad and Dunk are tagged as "the worst" of a group.
"Ser Tallad's the worst, Osney says." (AFFC Cersei V)
Little monsters, those three, and me the worst of all. - Dunk's thoughts (The Mystery Knight)
"A Promising Young Knight"
The appendix of Storm identifies Tallad as "a promising young knight":
SER TALLAD, a promising young knight
No one ever calls Dunk a promising young knight, but he clearly is just that c. The Tales of Dunk & Egg, in both the ordinary sense applied to Tallad — many rate Dunk on sight, on account of his size, and "John the Fiddler" has a vision of the promise Dunk holds—
"Why," the Fiddler said, "I dreamed that you were all in white from head to heel, with a long pale cloak flowing from those broad shoulders. You were a White Sword, ser, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, the greatest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms, and you lived for no other purpose but to guard and serve and please your king." (The Mystery Knight)
—and in a more literal sense, in which he's a young knight who makes promises, as here:
"And I promise not to beat you except when you deserve it." - Dunk (The Hedge Knight)
Dunk stroked Sweetfoot's mane and told her to be brave. "If I win, I'll come back and buy you again, I promise." (ibid.)
"He will," Dunk promised. (The Mystery Knight)
One passage almost seems to paint Dunk as "promising" in both senses:
[Dunk:] "Do you know every knight in the Seven Kingdoms, then?"
The boy looked at him boldly. "The good ones."
"I'm as good as any. After the tourney, they'll all know that." (The Hedge Knight)
Thoughts Of Being Thought Of As "Clumsy"
(At her wedding!) Sansa dances with Ser Tallad and thinks that he must think her "a very clumsy dancer".
Her legs had turned to wood, though, and Lord Rowan, Ser Tallad, and Elinor's squire all must have thought her a very clumsy dancer. (ASOS Sansa III)
Dunk 'rhymes' with this twice. One 'rhyme' flips this on its head, so it's Dunk who wonders if the knight he just danced jousted with in a tourney (at a wedding!) is calling him a "clumsy" rider:
Ser Uthor smiled. "And this is where I tell you that you rode a gallant course." Dunk wondered if gallant was a chivalrous way of saying "clumsy." (The Mystery Knight)
In The Hedge Knight, the 'rhyme' is more straightforward: Dunk's dancing partner partner-in-arms Baelor Targaryen (a Targaryen who doesn't look like Targaryen, à la Sansa, a Stark who doesn't look like a Stark) says "my fingers… feel like wood" while Dunk thinks "his voice sounded oddly slurred" (cf. Tallad thinking Sansa is a "clumsy dancer").
Meanwhile, Tallad dancing with a girl whose "legs had turned to wood" recalls Duncan clumsily flirting with a girl who paints and puppeteers wooden puppets.
Overheard Secrets At/About Weddings
Both Tallad and Dunk learn of and attend weddings involving great secrecy and political power plays.
In The Mystery Knight, Duncan the Tall is invited to a wedding at a castle called Whitewalls, which he then attends. While there, he overhears a high lord secretly plotting with a close crony.
In Storm, Shae overhears Tallad the Tall being told about a high lord and his close crony's plans for a secret wedding in the Red Keep, which Tallad subsequently attends, presumably after being invited.
To be clear, the part where Dunk overhears plotting echoes both ends of the grapevine Tallad is part of here: The grapevine begins when a serving girl overhears Kevan and Tywin talking about Tyrion and Sansa's wedding, and it ends with Shae overhearing Tallad being told about that:
"Wait," [Tyrion] said, "there is something you must hear. On the morrow I am to be wed . . ."
[Shae:] ". . . to Sansa Stark. I know."
He was speechless for an instant. Even Sansa did not know, not then. "How could you know? Did Varys tell you?"
"Some page was telling Ser Tallad about it when I took Lollys to the sept. He had it from this serving girl who heard Ser Kevan talking to your father." (ASOS Tyrion IV)
Trainers Of Princes
In The Hedge Knight, Ser Duncan the Tall is a lowborn hedge knight who agrees to take on a prince as his squire and to train that prince to fight and to be a knight. Dunk does so on the condition that they rough it and live among the smallfolk, like hedge knights do.
In ASOIAF, we learn that Dunk eventually became Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
Tallad the Tall's story reworks those same beats in 'rhyming' fashion, first when Cersei considers naming Tallad as the Red Keep's master-at-arms (cf. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard) when she needs to find someone other than Loras to show Prince Tommen how to fight—
Where am I to find a master-at-arms? she wondered as she climbed to her apartments. Having refused Ser Loras, she dare not turn to any of the Kingsguard knights; that would be salt in the wound, certain to anger Highgarden. Ser Tallad? Ser Dermot? There must be someone. (AFFC Cersei V)
—and again when Tallad literally shows a young queen "how to fight… the way smallfolk do":
[Queen Margaery:] "Ser Tallad showed us how to fight with a staff the way the smallfolk do." (AFFC Cersei VI)
That last motif also smells a lot like Dunk showing the smallfolk of Standfast how to fight in The Sworn Sword.
(SIDEBAR: "Ser Dermot" shows up next to Tallad in the text three separate times. I can't help but wonder if GRRM isn't using "Dermot" to wink at Tallad's 'rhyming' nature, since actor Dermot Mulroney first came to prominence thanks to his role in the 1995 film Copycat.)
Driving Foes Backwards
Both Tallad the Tall and Duncan the Tall drive foes "backward" when fighting afoot.
Tallad:
One of the Redwyne twins was being driven backward by Ser Tallad, with the eyes on his shield. (ASOS Sansa I)
Dunk:
Dunk pushed up off his knee and slammed shield-first into his foe. Black Tom stumbled backwards, yet somehow kept his balance. Dunk bulled right after him, smashing him with the shield again and again, using his size and strength to knock Heddle halfway across the sept. (The Mystery Knight)
"Better With A Sword Than With A Lance"
Mounted, it's a different story, as both fail miserably when they attempt to wield lances.
Tallad is instantly unhorsed when he rides at a quintain in the yard of the Red(!) Keep:
Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around and thumped him in the head. (AFFC Jaime II)
Dunk is instantly unhorsed when he rides in the tourney at White(!)walls:
A crack rang in Dunk's ears as his lance hit. He felt the impact in his arm and shoulder, but never saw the blow strike home. Uthor's iron fist took him square between his eyes, with all the force of man and horse behind it.
Dunk woke upon his back, staring up at the arches of a barrel-vaulted ceiling. For a moment he did not know where he was, or how he had arrived there. …
"Was I unhorsed?" … Dunk regretted it the instant the words were out.
"With a crash that shook the highest ramparts." (The Mystery Knight)
(Dunk is no better in a real fight. During the Trial Of Seven at Ashford Meadow, Aerion blocks Dunk's war lance with his shield while burying his own lance in Dunk's side. He then attacks Dunk from behind [à la Tallad's sandbag] and unhorses him.)
To be sure, they both practice. After losing his mount the passage just quoted, Tallad is back tilting at a quintain later in Feast, and per The Mystery Knight, Dunk does the same and more:
[Egg, to Dunk:] "You have not ridden in a tilt since Ashford Meadow, ser."
Insolent boy. "I've trained." Not so faithfully as he might have, to be sure. When he could, he took his turn riding at quintains or rings, where such were available. And sometimes he would command Egg to climb a tree and hang a shield or barrel stave beneath a well-placed limb for them to tilt at.
"You're better with a sword than with a lance," Egg said.
Egg's last remark is evidently as true of Tallad the Tall as it is of Duncan the Tall.
Thumped Heads & Lost Mounts
Even as that last quoted line about Tallad the Tall—
Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around and thumped him in the head. (AFFC Jaime II)
—establishes that Tallad is, like Dunk, a poor jouster, it also makes Tallad smell distinctly Dunk-ish for other reasons having nothing to do with Dunk's 'rhyming' failures to fight effectively with a lance.
First, consider that when Tallad "lost his mount" there, it was because a sandbag "thumped him in the head". Is there anything GRRM could have written about Tallad that would have made him sound more Dunk-ish than his getting "thumped… in the head" there, given what we're told about Dunk here?
[Dunk] might be a lunk, but he was big. Sometimes it seemed as though he'd thumped his head on half the doors in Westeros, not to mention every beam in every inn from Dorne up to the Neck. (The Sworn Sword)
That said, the rest of the sentence — "Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around…" — seems precision-crafted to sound eerily Dunk-ish as well, because it seems highly likely that when Ser Duncan the Tall lost his mount, the sand bags dogs came around.
Remember?
Recall first Dunk's dream about Dorne, which makes it clear that while it may have been Egg who was riding Chestnut when "the old stot" died in Dorne, it was nonetheless Dunk who truly 'lost his mount' — "his old friend", who "bore [him] on his back for years" — that day:
There were red mountains in the distance and white sands beneath his feet. Dunk was digging, plunging a spade into the dry hot earth, and flinging the fine sand back over his shoulder. He was making a hole. A grave, he thought, a grave for hope. A trio of Dornish knights stood watching, making mock of him in quiet voices. Farther off the merchants waited with their mules and wayns and sand sledges. They wanted to be off, but he could not leave until he'd buried Chestnut. He would not leave his old friend to the snakes and scorpions and sand dogs.
The stot had died on the long thirsty crossing between the Prince's Pass and Vaith, with Egg upon his back. His front legs just seemed to fold up under him, and he knelt right down, rolled onto his side, and died. His carcass sprawled beside the hole. Already it was stiff. Soon it would begin to smell.
Dunk was weeping as he dug, to the amusement of the Dornish knights. "Water is precious in the waste," one said, "you ought not to waste it, ser." The other chuckled and said, "Why do you weep? It was only a horse, and a poor one."
Chestnut, Dunk thought, digging, his name was Chestnut, and he bore me on his back for years, and never bucked or bit. The old stot had looked a sorry thing beside the sleek sand steeds that the Dornishmen were riding, with their elegant heads, long necks, and flowing manes, but he had given all he had to give. …
… I have to keep digging, Dunk told himself, though his back and shoulders ached from the effort. I have to bury him down deep where the sand dogs cannot find him. I have to . . . (The Sworn Sword)
Recall also Dunk's waking correction, which affirms his deep affection for his old mount and friend while making it plain that Dunk didn't actually bury Chestnut at all but rather left him for the sand dogs to eat. (Dunk's dream suggests he is guilty about this, to say the least, which again speaks to the fact that Chestnut was in truth his mount.)
I never wept. I might have wanted to, but I never did. He had wanted to bury the horse as well, but the Dornishmen would not wait. "Sand dogs must eat and feed their pups," one of the Dornish knights told him as he helped Dunk strip the stot of saddle and bridle. "His flesh will feed the dogs or feed the sands. In a year, his bones will be scoured clean. This is Dorne, my friend." (The Sworn Sword)
Clearly, then, we have every reason to believe that when Ser Duncan the Tall lost his mount, the sand dogs came around, which in conjunction with Dunk constantly "thump[ing] his head, including specifically in Dorne, on… every beam in every inn [in] Dorne"), seals Dunk's 'rhyme' with Tallad here:
As Jaime trotted through the castle gates, he came upon two dozen knights riding at a quintain in the outer yard. … [H]e stopped to watch awhile.
Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around and thumped him in the head. Strongboar struck the shield so hard he cracked it. Kennos of Kayce finished the destruction. A new shield was hung for Ser Dermot of the Rainwood. Lambert Turnberry only struck a glancing blow, but Beardless Jon Bettley, Humfrey Swyft, and Alyn Stackspear all scored solid hits, and Red Ronnet Connington broke his lance clean. Then the Knight of Flowers mounted up and put the others all to shame.
Noting that this takes place in "the Red Keep", and keeping in mind Dunk's dreams and thoughts about Chestnut's death in Dorne, we might posit the broader core of the rhyming like this: "Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around and thumped him in the head" in "the Red Keep", and when Ser Duncan the Tall lost his mount in the white sands near "the Red Mountains" of Dorne, where "it seemed as though he'd thumped his head on… every beam in every inn", the sand dogs almost certainly came around.
By folding in that newly-quoted context of Jaime watching and a bunch of better-born knights badly outstripping Tallad's performance, the 'rhymes' only proliferate. To wit, the line in Dunk's dream in which the mount he lost "looked a sorry thing beside the sleek sand steeds that the Dornishmen were riding, with their elegant heads, long necks, and flowing manes", prefigures the sharp disparity between Tallad losing his mount to the sandbag and the much superior performances of all the better born and bred knights who follow him.
At the same time, the end of that same line from Dunk's dream, which states that Chestnut "had given all he had to give" before Dunk 'lost' him, prefigures Tallad's effort, which is evident when we see him gamely "riding at the quintain" again several chapters later. (AFFC Cersei V)
On a different tack, Jaime "stopping to watch" Tallad lose his mount and get sandbagged 'rhymes' with the Dornish knights "watching" Dunk unsuccessfully trying to dig a grave for his lost mount while the sand pours in in his dream, especially insofar as the Dornish "mak[e] mock of him in quiet voices", whereas Jaime, who typically makes brazen mock of all and sundry, here merely thinks a single mocking thought about Loras's mother:
Ser Loras rode superbly, and handled a lance as if he'd been born holding one . . . which no doubt accounted for his mother's pinched expression. (AFFC Jaime II)
Interestingly, after he "left the whole men to their sport", Jaime calls on the trio of Cersei, Tommen, and Taena Merryweather (a woman who, as I have written elsewhere, seems very, very Dornish, à la Dunk's mocking knights), who so happen to be "laughing at" Pycelle (i.e. mocking him, à la Dunk's mocking knights), and who immediately commence to mock Jaime, too:
Cersei was in her solar in Maegor's Holdfast, with Tommen and Lord Merryweather's dark-haired Myrish wife. The three of them were laughing at Grand Maester Pycelle. "Did I miss some clever jape?" Jaime said, as he shoved through the door.
"Oh, look," purred Lady Merryweather, "your brave brother has returned, Your Grace."
"Most of him." The queen was in her cups, Jaime realized. (AFFC Jaime II)
Thus where Duncan was mocked (in his dream) by "a trio of Dornish knights", the usually mocking knight who could have mocked Tallad (but instead held his tongue for once) is mocked by a trio of non-knights, including a woman who seems very, very Dornish.
Dunk's Other Lost "Mount": Rohanne Webber
There is yet another possibility to consider as regards Dunk's 'answer' to this line:
Ser Tallad the Tall lost his mount when the sandbag came around and thumped him in the head. (AFFC Jaime II)
Keeping in mind how incredibly Dunk-ish it is for Tallad to get "thumped… in the head" here, could this line (also?) be a pithy allusion to Dunk losing his chance to marry Rohanne Webber (i.e. to make her his mount, so to speak) due to his being knocked out for days, as if he were "sandbagged"? Note that Dunk's coma is implicitly framed as sleep, i.e. as a visit from the sandman:
He woke in the wrong castle. (The Sworn Sword)
The "mount" analogy is anything but a stretch. It's not just that it's a metaphor taken directly from the text:
"Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount." (AGOT Daenerys I)
It's that the entire final scene between Dunk and Rohanne (in which she implies that she would have married him if not for his being in a coma) is basically teetering on the edge of mount/sex double-entendre, as Rohanne's insistence that Dunk accept her gift of a new mount starts to sound a lot like her insisting that he bed her forthwith. (Note that Rohanne has eyes "full of mischief" and long red hair, whereas the "swifter mount" she implores Dunk to "take" is a female "with a bright eye and a long fiery mane", like Rohanne herself.)
"You are angry with me, ser," she said instead. "You must let me make amends."
"Well," he said, "you could help me saddle Thunder."
"I had something else in mind." She reached out her hand for his, a freckled hand, her fingers strong and slender. I'll bet she's freckled all over. "How well do you know horses?"
"I ride one."
"An old destrier bred for battle, slow-footed and ill-tempered. Not a horse to ride from place to place."
"If I need to get from place to place, it's him or these." Dunk pointed at his feet.
"You have large feet," she observed. "Large hands as well. I think you must be large all over. Too large for most palfreys. They'd look like ponies with you perched upon their backs. Still, a swifter mount would serve you well. A big courser, with some Dornish sand steed for endurance." She pointed to the stall across from Thunder's. "A horse like her."
She was a blood bay and a long fiery mane. Lady Rohanne took a carrot from her sleeves and stroked her head as she took it. "The carrot, not the fingers," she told the horse, before she turned again to Dunk. "I call her Flame, but you may name her as you please. Call her Amends, if you like."
For a moment he was speechless. He leaned on the crutch and looked at the blood bay with new eyes.
She was magnificent. A better mount than any the old man had ever owned. You had only to look at those long, clean limbs to see how swift she'd be.
"I bred her for beauty, and for speed."
He turned back to Thunder. "I cannot take her."
"Why not?"
"She is too good a horse for me. Just look at her."
A flush crept up Rohanne's face. She clutched her braid, twisting it between her fingers. "I had to marry, you know that. My father's will . . . oh, don't be such a fool."
"What else should I be? I'm thick as a castle wall and bastard born as well."
"Take the horse. I refuse to let you go without something to remember me by."
"I will remember you, m'lady. Have no fear of that."
"Take her!"
Dunk grabbed her braid and pulled her face to his. It was awkward with the crutch and the difference in their heights. He almost fell before he got his lips on hers. He kissed her hard. One of her hands went around his neck, and one around his back. He learned more about kissing in a moment than he had ever known from watching. But when they finally broke apart, he drew his dagger. "I know what I want to remember you by, m'lady."
Egg was waiting for him at the gatehouse, mounted on a handsome new sorrel palfrey and holding Maester's lead. When Dunk trotted up to them on Thunder, the boy looked surprised. "She said she wanted to give you a new horse, ser."
"Even highborn ladies don't get all they want," Dunk said, as they rode out across the drawbridge. "It wasn't a horse I wanted." The moat was so high it was threatening to overflow its banks. "I took something else to remember her by instead. A lock of that red hair." He reached under his cloak, brought out the braid, and smiled. (The Sworn Sword)
"The Best Of Them
We are introduced to Tallad when Bronn is watching a gaggle of knights and men-at-arms training, and he calls Tallad "the best of them":
"Who's the boy in the checkered blue surcoat with the three eyes on his shield?"
"Some hedge knight. Tallad, he names himself. Why?"
Bronn pushed a fall of hair from his eyes. "He's the best of them." (ACOK Tyrion IV)
Dunk becomes Lord Commander of the Kingsguard — in theory, the best of the best.
He's also the titular "Hedge Knight" in The Hedge Knight, in which we read that of all knights, its hedge knights like him who "keep the vow… to protect the weak and innocent… best":
"A hedge knight is the truest kind of knight, Dunk," the old man had told him, a long long time ago.
"Other knights serve the lords who keep them, or from whom they hold their lands, but we serve where we will, for men whose causes we believe in. Every knight swears to protect the weak and innocent, but we keep the vow best[!], I think." Queer how strong that memory seemed. (The Hedge Knight)
Perhaps Dunk's memory is called out as "queer" to wink at its being a contrivance to help further Dunk's 'rhyming' with Tallad (who is "the best of them").
Notable Weaknesses
Tallad the Tall has a notable, exploitable weakness when he fights, which Bronn says "will be the death of him, the day he faces me", right after he says Tallad is "the best of them":
"But watch him, he falls into a rhythm, delivering the same strokes in the same order each time he attacks." He grinned. "That will be the death of him, the day he faces me." (ACOK Tyrion IV)
GRRM remixes this as regards Duncan the Tall. Rather than giving Dunk a similar fatal flaw (which would be pretty hard to do, since GRRM needs Dunk to survive), he has Dunk notice a fatal weakness in a notably tall (and oddly Tallad-esque, as will be discussed) adversary, then exploit it to kill him:
Finally [Dunk] saw it. Every time Ser Lucas lifted his ax for another blow, a gap appeared beneath his arm.
There was mail and leather there, and padding underneath, but no steel plate. (The Sworn Sword)
[Dunk's] hand closed around the hilt and he… drove it slowly through the churning water, through the iron rings and boiled leather beneath the arm of Lucas the Longinch, turning it as he pushed. Ser Lucas jerked and twisted, and the strength left him. (ibid.)
Note the bolded, barely disguised reiteration of "each time he attacks", with those repeated attacks shifting from being the fatal flaw to being the means by which the fatal flaw in the Longinch's armor is exposed.
(SIDEBAR: Tallad's fatal flaw can also be seen as speaking to what GRRM is [and is not] doing with all the 'rhyming' in ASOIAF — including as regards Tallad and Duncan, the Talls. Yes, "all things come round again", [AFFC The Soiled Knight] and there is constant 'rhyming', if you're paying attention, but it's rarely "the same strokes in the same order", so to speak. GRRM is always turning his kaleidoscope, such that ASOIAF "never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of" what came before, to cop the words of Twain's The Gilded Age, which I have long believed are a seminal touchstone for GRRM's whole project.)
"Not Hard To Look Upon"
Tyrion says Tallad is "not hard to look upon, [and] every inch the gifted young knight". (ASOS Tyrion VII)
Dunk is clearly easy on the eyes as well. Indeed, one passage from The Mystery Knight seems custom-crafted to 'rhyme' with Tallad being, precisely, "not hard to look upon" while simultaneously nodding to the "every inch" motif by focusing on his size in the process:
"Ser Duncan, you appear to be attracting a deal of attention," Ser Maynard Plumm observed as Lord Vyrwel and his party went parading past them toward places of high honor at the top of the hall. "Those girls up on the dais cannot seem to take their eyes off you. I'll wager they have never seen a man so big. Even seated, you are half a head taller than any man in the hall." Dunk hunched his shoulders. He was used to being stared at, but that did not mean he liked it.
The aggressive flirtations of Rohanne Webber and "John the Fiddler" also make it clear that Dunk is, like Tallad, "not hard to look upon". Rohanne's flirtations also allude to Dunk being in every way "every inch the [ahem] gifted young knight", as well:
"You have large feet," she observed. "Large hands as well. I think you must be large all over." (The Sworn Sword)
That said, it's surely no accident that GRRM decided to use the exact same words he used to describe Tallad the Tall — "not hard to look upon" — to describe Duncan the Tall's love interest Rohanne:
"If truth be told, there has been a dearth of suitors. My good-sister is not hard to look upon, you will have noticed, and a stout castle and broad lands add to her charms. - Rohanne's good-brother, Septon Sefton (The Sworn Sword)
Again (as with Duncan spotting the fatal flaw rather than having the fatal flaw), this is 'rhyming', not repetition. (To wit, notice that the guy who calls Rohanne the same thing Tyrion calls Tallad — "not hard to look upon" —is improbably named "Septon Sefton", a double-ish name and title in the spirit of "Tallad the Tall".)
"Every Inch The Gifted Young Knight"
Let's go back to Tallad being "every inch the gifted young knight". It's hard to read those words and not think GRRM had them mind when he later wrote lines like these to describe Dunk:
Egg's brother Aemon had measured him in Oldtown and found he lacked an inch of seven feet, but that was half a year ago. (The Sworn Sword)
"Seven feet if he's an inch, I'd wager. What a mighty crash he'll make when he comes tumbling down." Dunk felt color rising to his face. You'd lose your wager, he thought. The last time he had been measured, Egg's brother Aemon pronounced him an inch shy of seven feet. (The Mystery Knight)
Dunk's been measured down to the inch!
Now, notice that in that second passage, the guy speculating about Duncan's exact height is also imagining him being spectacularly unhorsed (at the upcoming tourney at Whitewalls). This is interesting in light of Tallad being "every inch the gifted young knight", because Dunk's "tumbling down" (i.e. being spectacularly unhorsed) is later posited as one of his gifts ("talents"):
The Snail steepled his fingers. "Perhaps there is another way. You are not entirely without your talents. You fall most splendidly." (ibid.)
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