I don’t think it’s so clear cut but yes the preponderance of evidence seems to indicate just that.
And frankly I like it that way, a bit of “strategic ambiguity” gives some very appreciated spice to the plot.
There was a bit in The Hedge Knight that I think made it clear that Dunk had not been knighted. I’ll put it in a spoiler box.
(Egg is explaining what happened just before he met Duncan and why he is bald.)
“Yes. So Daeron shaved it off. He meant for us to hide until the tourney was over. Only then you took me for a stableboy, and…” He lowered his eyes. “I didn’t care if Daeron fought or not, but I wanted to be somebody’s squire. I’m sorry, ser. I truly am.”
Dunk looked at him thoughtfully. He knew what it was like to want something so badly that you would tell a monstrous lie just to get near it. “I thought you were like me,” he said. “Might be you are. Only not the way I thought.”
I agree. Just as Dunk is dancing around the question, so are the writers, even though they’ve given us plenty of clues. It seems to really work with the show.
I don’t think knights are entitled to the gear of their masters?
I would say that Dunk didn’t knight Raymund because he doesn’t have the right to, not because he doesn’t know how (although me might also not know how).
Agree that it’s ambiguous; Dunk never admits to anyone or to himself that he wasn’t knighted, but definitely evidence pointing that way.
I’ve watched several reactions to the show and I think <50% of the people pick up on it being in question. Feels well handled.
Any knight can make another knight. That’s a principle that they’ve mentioned many times, including right before that scene. If he was an actual knight, he would certainly have had the right to, and that was also the perfect opportunity to do it.
The only thing I don’t know is if Dunk didn’t do it because he didn’t know how, or because he was afraid of inflicting an unknowing Raymund with a false knighthood that might come back to bite him later (because he liked Raymund, who was his friend). That was the only thing I wasn’t totally sure about.
It occurs to me that you may be saying the exact same thing I am here. 
I was, yes.
I believe it’s believe it’s the latter. Dunk says “I shouldn’t.” Which might be a lie you say if you forget the words, but I think it’s relevant. Given how obsessed he is with knighthood I think once he learned the words he wouldn’t forget and he had quite a few years to learn them (unclear how old show Dunk is).
Extremely good point. Dunk is no genius, but he’s obsessed with knighthood, and I think he’d have this very much down pat. It’s not like it’s a secretive process; knights often do it out in the open (as happened on this show). And Dunk spent quite a lot of time with knights in Arlen’s service, as indicated by all of the anecdotes he had about one knight or another. He clearly just didn’t want to make his friend a fake knight.
Anything other than Dunk unequivocally stating he was not knighted is not making it clear. The show did seem to take great pains in implying that he was never knighted, but it is never confirmed. I think it is supposed to be ambiguous, though strongly hinted towards “no”. If the answer was no then he refused to knight Raymund because he knew it would be fake. Book spoiler: in the books it is claimed he never knighted ANYONE in his lifetime, which is a lot more convincing.
That’s not true. It happens all the time in storytelling that you can give information without being explicit. They don’t need to state it, they just need to show it, and I believe they have done so.
I didn’t say it was a dealbreaker. Just a bit jarring is all because we never really were introduced to “Young Dunk” or Rafe before this. And just the length of the story made me wonder if Dunk got knocked into a coma or something.
Then again, I don’t know that I’d want to watch five episodes of “Young Dunk” interspersed with “Ser Dunken the Tall”.
The longer flashback was definitely something different, sure.
In the real world (such as it is) Rafe is a male name, and the sex of the character ‘Rafe’ does not seem to be explicitly stated in G.R.R.M.'s books. So making her a female love interest is a choice made by the showrunners. Fine by me.
Do you remember where in the books that occurs? Because I just read the book last week and don’t remember it.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I remember having this question after reading the books and looking up the answer and that was one of the factoids I found.
I suspect it’s in the Mystery Knight because that’s the one I remember least.
Here is a Reddit post talking about the evidence (from the books!) showing Dunk not being a knight.
The post was from 11 years ago, so long predated this show. But it seems very close to what is on the show.
(There are some spoilers in it, but it doesn’t really go much beyond anything that wasn’t in the show yet, at least if you stick to the original post.)
Interesting that in the book, as he is lying in the mud during the duel, presumably when the big flashback took place in the show, he has this thought:
I’m not even a hedge knight.
That might just be self-doubt, but it seems like confirmation (again, in the book which isn’t the same thing as the show) that he was never knighted.
I’m quite sure that nowhere in the 3 Dunk and Egg novellas is there anything to suggest Dunk never knights anyone in his lifetime. The three books published so far cover, at most, a couple of years or so of Dunk and Egg’s wanderings, and none of them flash forward to the end of Dunk’s life (or flash forward at all, in fact).
I agree that it is more likely than not that Dunk was never knighted, and his hesitation to knight Raymund reflected that, but I thought at least part of it was that he was knighting Raymund so he could fight in this unpredictable melee and thus there was a good chance that what he was doing was signing the death warrant of probably his only adult friend in the whole world.
I think it depends on the show. I can understand this argument for some shows however.
For Breaking Bad that would have been an utter disaster. The entire point of the show was to show Walter’s transformation. If you shrinking that down to a single season it would been awful.
At least in the show it seemed that Dunk was desperate to have people help him, and was grateful for Raymund to join him. He didn’t seem to show any hesitancy aside from the actual process of knighting him.
Not that he didn’t care; he asked frequently who died on his behalf. He clearly didn’t want people to die, he wasn’t callous. But he knows what it means to be a knight, and realizes that fighting and dying is part of it.