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This article contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms episode 2.
According to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker, one character in the Game of Thrones prequel series was particularly challenging to cast. The role wasn’t that of the seven-foot-tall hedge knight Dunk (Peter Claffey) nor his adolescent squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Instead it was a bombastic tourney competitor with a very familiar surname: Ser Lyonel Baratheon.
“I had begun to think that I had written [the part] poorly because we were getting auditions that just weren’t doing the scenes how they were in my head,” Parker tells Den of Geek.
Lyonel Baratheon is a deceptively hard figure to nail down. Simultaneously magnetic, intimidating, and sensual, he appears to synthesize all the best and worst qualities of his Game of Thrones descendants: brothers and rival kings Robert, Stannis, and Renly. Thankfully, an actor stepped forward to accept the challenge.
“Danny Ings came in and it was like I had scored the script for him or something,” Parker says. “He got the ups and downs. Lyonel’s cadence. When he speaks, his words just rip through the air like Al Pacino. George [R.R. Martin] said, when he saw him in the first episode, ‘You gotta be careful. This guy might steal the show,’”
British actor Daniel Ings has steadily climbed the TV ladder over the last decade with roles in notable projects such as Lovesick, I Hate Suzie, and Guy Ritchie’s surprise 2024 Netflix hit The Gentlemen. Now he’s embodying the knight they call the “Laughing Storm,” a bon vivant who arrives to Ashford Meadow with a level of curiosity and empathy that’s unusual for a Westerosi nobleman… let alone one who is in line to be Lord of Storm’s End one day. For Ings, the key to understanding Lyonel begins with his look, highlighted by a conspicuously gaudy earring that Game of Thrones fans have latched onto since the trailer first arrived.
“This is a guy who’s traveled the high seas and taken little trinkets from everywhere he’s been,” the actor explains. “He’s been to Dorne, he’s been east, he’s been west. He probably plucked [the earring] off a dead body and was like ‘Oh, that’s pretty I’ll take that.’ It was fun finding those little flourishes in prep. He’s pretty battle hardened. He’s lived. He’s got some scars. But he’s not afraid of a bit of flair.”
That colorful personality emerges in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ first episode when Lyonel is drawn to the novelty of a very tall hedge knight who enters his private party tent not with gifts but a simple desire to have dinner. The subsequent dance shared between Dunk and Lyonel served as a highly reshared highlight of the premiere.
“He sees this Dunk guy as like ‘Yeah, you’re interesting, you’re weird. You’re big too, so I can use that… that’s fun for me. Bring your little pal with the bald head over, let’s go.”
Episode 2 “Hard Salt Beef,” however, presents an even more illustrative Lyonel moment. For as interested as he is in others, Ser Lyonel Baratheon is always most fascinated with himself. Who else but Lyonel Baratheon would organize a game of tug of war among all the knights of Ashford Meadow only to abandon it midway through for a drink? Then, after wetting his whistle and trash-talking, Lyonel returns to the front of the line to deliver the decisive yank of the rope.
“It does distill the character to his barest elements, which is like hyper masculine and wanting to win and fight and do man shit. But also, at certain point, being like ‘Carry on, boys, because I’m gonna go and have a little sip of beer, and then I’ll be back in a minute,’” Ings says.
The hardest part of Lyonel’s tug of war wasn’t the pulling, it turns out, but the talking.
“It’s quite hard screaming Westerosi insults and making them up on the fly. Ira would come up and whisper to me ‘call them c*nt-strapped daisies.’ It was fun having to figure out the language while having [at the time 10-year-old] Dexter there on set. Can we do it? Can we not? Do we have to?”
New episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premiere Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with the finale on February 22.
The post A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Daniel Ings on the Scene That Best Explains Lyonel Baratheon appeared first on Den of Geek.
