an unnamed greatsword, inherited from his first master
Notable for
rising from a Flea Bottom orphan to Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; squiring the boy who became Aegon V
A Flea Bottom orphan who ended his life guarding the king he'd once served as squire
Duncan's origins are, by design as much as by loss of record, close to a blank page: raised in King's Landing's Flea Bottom, of a birth low enough that no chronicler thought it worth preserving even after he'd risen far past it. He came up squiring for an aging hedge knight, Ser Arlan of Pennytree, and inherited the man's sword, his shield, and his wandering trade when Arlan died on the road — acquiring, along the way, a squire of his own: a secretive boy called Egg, who turned out to be Prince Aegon Targaryen, fourth son of a fourth son and, by the accidents of the Great Council of 233 AC, eventual king.
That friendship carried Duncan further than his birth ever should have. When Egg became Aegon V, Duncan followed him into the Kingsguard and, in time, commanded it — a hedge knight without a household name leading the seven sworn to the body of the King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, which the Citadel's own records treat as remarkable enough to note twice.
He died, so far as the surviving accounts agree, at Summerhall in 259 AC, in the fire that also killed Aegon V and the king's own son and namesake, Prince Duncan the Small — a blaze connected, by every scrap of testimony that survived it, to the king's obsession with hatching dragon eggs by ritual and wildfire together. What exactly happened in the castle that night the Citadel cannot say with confidence; the maester who might have explained it left only a letter so badly blotted by rain that its second half is unreadable.
Perspective
Duncan is the viewpoint character of the standalone Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas set roughly a century before the main series, following a Flea Bottom-born hedge knight's rise through the eyes of his own plain, practical decency.
Key events
unrecordedBorn into low birth in King's Landing's Flea Bottom.
unrecordedSquired for the aging hedge knight Ser Arlan of Pennytree.
unrecordedInherited Arlan's sword, shield, and wandering trade after the old knight's death on the road.
unrecordedTook on a secretive squire of his own, a boy called Egg — in truth Prince Aegon Targaryen.
233 ACFollowed Egg, now King Aegon V, into the Kingsguard.
unrecordedRose in time to command the Kingsguard.
259 ACDied at Summerhall in the fire that also killed Aegon V and Prince Duncan the Small.
Reading the character
Duncan the Tall is the Tales of Dunk and Egg's answer to the question the main series keeps asking in grander, bloodier terms: what does plain decency actually accomplish in a world built on birth and blood? A Flea Bottom orphan with no name worth preserving becomes, by the accident of a friendship he never engineered, commander of the body sworn to protect the King of the Andals — and the Citadel's own records treat that rise as remarkable enough to note twice.
His death at Summerhall folds him into one of the setting's genuine unsolved mysteries: a fire that killed a king chasing dragons back into the world, and took Dunk along with him in circumstances no surviving account can fully reconstruct. That the tall, plainspoken hedge knight of the novellas ends as an unresolved footnote in someone else's tragedy is, in its way, exactly the kind of quiet, unglamorous ending his whole career suggested he'd have found honest.
Legacy
Some retellings hold that Ser Duncan's own valor bought other survivors their escape from the flames; the Citadel notes the claim without being able to confirm the specifics, and flags his death itself as attested rather than certain — no body was ever positively identified among the ruins.