The Mystery Knight — Dunk IX

The Fiddler unmasked: Ser John is Daemon the Second of House Blackfyre, come for a hatching and a crown. He offers Dunk a place at his side — a white cloak from a black king — and Dunk sees the whole wedding for the treason it is.

The chapter retold

The Fiddler is unmasked, and the wedding's whole purpose with him: Ser John is Daemon the Second of House Blackfyre, come out of exile for a dragon's hatching and a crown. He offers Dunk the very thing his dreams promised — a white cloak from a black king, a place at the side of the man who means to be the next pretender — and Dunk, hearing it plainly at last, sees the marble hall for the treason it has been all along. The chapter turns charm into menace in a sentence: the likeable Fiddler was a Blackfyre claimant the whole time, and Dunk is standing at the dead center of the Second Blackfyre Rebellion.

This movement: The Black Dragon and the White

• The Fiddler unmasked: Daemon the Second of House Blackfyre, come to hatch a dragon and a rebellion in the same marble hall.
• Egg's boot yields Maekar's signet ring, and Dunk spends its weight to buy Glendon Ball a knight's answer: trial by joust against the pretender himself.
• Fireball's son puts the black dragon in the dirt in a single course — and dawn shows Bloodraven's host ringed around Whitewalls.
• The Second Blackfyre Rebellion ends without a battle: Daemon taken, the wedding lords fined to the bone, Black Tom Heddle dead on Dunk's sword, and Whitewalls condemned to come down stone by stone.