Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell star in HBO’s “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

After the disappointing final seasons of  “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon’s” complicated yet uninteresting story arc, and the dawning reality that George R.R. Martin will likely never finish the final two “A Song of Fire and Ice” novels, I assumed my relationship to Westeros was all but over. 

Sure, I dutifully kept up with “House of the Dragon,” which feels more like a homework assignment than marquee television, and slogged through the final bloated seasons of  “Game of Thrones.” I’ll still occasionally zone out by taking a gummy and rewatching the original show’s early seasons. But I’d resigned myself to never experiencing the novel thrill similar to the first time I saw the Red Wedding, Hodor holding the door or toilet-based patricide ever again. 

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Reaching those highs remains a ways off, but HBO’s “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is the closest any “Game of Thrones” property has come since the Obama administration.

The show takes place after the events of “House of the Dragon” and around 90 years before “Game of Thrones.” Thankfully, the series doesn’t attempt to backfill plot for the other two shows. A self-contained story based on Martin’s novella series, “AKOTSK” stars Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall, an erstwhile, homeless knight who befriends a precocious young boy named Egg (played by 11-year-old Dexter Sol Ansell). Duncan hopes........

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