On Sunday night, HBO brings us back to Westeros—again—for its second spinoff series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Based on George R.R. Martin’s Don Quixote–esque novellas about a hedge knight and his little squire, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms looks to be an interesting pivot for Thrones, swapping out the blockbuster scale and epic scope for a more intimate, character-driven story taking place over the course of a few days. If it’s a hit, the show could prove that Thrones has serious staying power, big or small—or maybe it’ll just be another confirmation of our collective fascination with knights.
From medieval sword wielders to video game icons, knights have been a storytelling staple for centuries. Some knights represent chivalric values and save kingdoms from ruin; others are billionaire brand-builders with swooshes or an Empress of Soul. Whatever form knights take in pop culture, it’s high time we celebrate them. Once more, Megan “The Meg” Schuster and I have convened for an arbitrary ranking to answer a pressing question: Who’s the greatest knight in pop culture? (See also: our rankings for clowns, vampires, beef, bugs, and so on. I don’t even remember how we started doing these, but I’m certain that, in 40 years’ time, we’ll be doing a Retirement Homes, Ranked blog for AARP: The Magazine.)
We didn’t have any strict rules in place, but we’ve capped the list at 30—mostly for our own sanity—and we were mindful not to include too many knights from one franchise or Arthurian legend. Beyond that, Megan and I did what we do best: engaged in some verbal jousting to anoint a worthy champion. Without further ado, let’s see who earns their spurs. —Miles Surrey
More of The Ringer’s Definitive Rankings
Honorable Mention: Shrek
Surrey: Sorry, big guy—our AI overlords have spoken:
Megan Schuster: This entry and this entry alone has me rethinking my negative stance on AI. Much to consider.
30. Brandon Knight
Surrey: As an NBA casual, here’s what I know about Brandon Knight: He’s a glutton for punishment. His biggest claims to fame are: being ruthlessly posterized by DeAndre Jordan, getting taken to school by Kyrie Irving in the 2013 Rising Stars Challenge game, and missing a wide-open, game-winning layup against the Brooklyn Nets. This level of ignominy means Knight has made the cut, but unfortunately, he’s bringing up the rear. Another L in a career full of them.
29. Bob Knight
Schuster: You may be surprised to find such a legendary coach so far down this list. After all, as my colleague Matt Dollinger pointed out upon Knight’s death in 2023, “Indiana had a .734 winning percentage in the 29 years of Knight’s tenure; that mark is just .580 in the 23 years since he was forced out. Indiana has made just 12 NCAA tournament appearances over that span; Knight brought the Hoosiers to the tournament in each of his final 15 seasons.” He was, by all metrics, an incredibly winning basketball coach.
But Knight was also a horrible bully, who had a terrible temper, and is probably more known for tossing a chair across the court during a 1985 game against Purdue and berating and physically harming his players than he is for the victories his teams accumulated. Miles and I don’t suffer bullies on our lists, so Knight stops at no. 29.
Surrey: Not a great Knight for all the values a knight is meant to represent. But I’ll give him this, Megan: He had style.
The sweater remains undefeated.
Schuster: He also inspired one of my favorite small Parks and Rec bits: a Night Ranger cover band called “Bobby Knight Ranger.” Incredible stuff.
28. The Knights at Medieval Times
Surrey: Some of my favorite date nights are going to dinner followed by a show, but what if you’re craving dinner with a show? In that case, visit Medieval Times, the dinner theater chain that regales patrons with medieval jousting and sword fights. The thing I can’t stop thinking of, though, is what kind of person decides to turn playing a medieval knight into a vocation. Are they history buffs? Are they finding a unique way to pay their way through school? Or are they, as this iconic Saturday Night Live sketch suggests, aspiring actors looking for any excuse to go Method?
Either way, the Medieval Times knights exist in a strange liminal space between athlete, performer, and deeply committed guy in a tunic. We have to respect the dedication, even if, as a dining experience, paying upward of $70 for chicken and a potato without the dignity of a fork is a crime.
Schuster: My new dream reporting assignment is asking a Medieval Times knight: “So what’s your motivation?”
27. Meta Knight, Kirby
Surrey: This little guy is a staple in Nintendo’s Kirby games, a mysterious warrior who’s stoic and highly principled, even if it means occasionally opposing Kirby. But the reason Meta Knight has given me so many sleepless nights is because he’s also a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series—one so overpowered in Brawl that there’s a cottage industry of YouTubers explaining how Nintendo had to course correct in the sequels. I’m glad future generations of gamers won’t be subjected to Meta Knight’s Brawl-era reign of terror, but he already KO’d my childhood.
26. Jamal Walker, Black Knight
Surrey: I have so many questions for director Gil Junger. This dude’s first film was 10 Things I Hate About You, one of the best teen rom-coms ever made. Then Junger immediately destroyed whatever goodwill he built up by making Black Knight. Following a medieval theme park employee who accidentally travels back to 1328 England, Black Knight features Martin Lawrence’s Jamal Walker [deep sigh] asking prisoners if they’ve heard of Shaq, performing the Heimlich maneuver on an executioner, and, uh, doing this:
You don’t need me to tell you Black Knight has a 15 percent on Rotten Tomatoes—you already know that any movie prominently featuring what resembles a Philadelphia Eagles jersey in medieval England is well beyond saving. Walker’s knighthood is as tenuous as Kevin Patullo’s offense was.
25. Jordan Knight, New Kids on the Block
Schuster: You probably know Jordan Knight from NKOTB fame—he was the lead singer of one of the most popular boy bands of the ’80s and ’90s (and as such was a heartthrob for millions of people around the world). But I’d like to use this space to introduce you to Knight’s solo and collab career. Knight released five albums after his NKOTB days. They are titled (with my personal annotations):
- Jordan Knight (classic, great title)
- Jordan Knight Performs New Kids on the Block: The Remix Album (first solo project must not have done so well, huh buddy)
- Love Songs (great SEO on that one)
- Unfinished (aren’t we all?)
- Nick & Knight (which was a collaboration with, that’s right, Nick Carter)
Truly fascinating stuff all around.
24. Moon Knight, Moon Knight
Surrey: There was a time when Marvel had enough juice to put Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke in a Disney+ miniseries, but, as has been the norm post-Endgame, it landed with a thud. In Moon Knight, Isaac plays a man with dissociative identity disorder who makes a deal with Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon and vengeance, to become a masked vigilante. Basically, Moon Knight is Batman with shittier branding, and the show never fully commits to whether it wants to be a psychological character study or a standard-issue CGI slop-fest. For all the talk of gods and fractured identities, Moon Knight doesn’t feel distinct enough to justify his own mythology, reduced instead to another MCU hero cycling through trauma in a cape.
I would say Moon Knight is the worst use of Isaac in a superhero property, but then I remembered X-Men: Apocalypse exists:
23. Army Black Knights Football Team
Schuster: The Army squad has cool uniforms, a solid name, and a legendary matchup with Navy every college football season. Outside of that, though, they haven’t historically been what one would call good. They claim five national championships … but the last of those came in 1946, and two came in the 1910s (as a Minnesota Gophers fan, I respect early 1900s championships, but it was still a long time ago).
Army had one of its best seasons ever in 2024, finishing with a 12-2 record and ranking as high as no. 16 in the AP poll in Week 12. And its showdown with Navy that year (who finished with a 9-3 record) was one of the most anticipated bouts between the two schools ever. But Army lost that game. The Black Knights went on to finish this season 7-6. And historically, they’re about as likely to finish .600 or below as they are to finish above that mark.
22. Black Knight, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Surrey: A warrior who embraced a never-say-die attitude to its ridiculous breaking point, the Black Knight guards a small bridge at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail that King Arthur must cross. Soon after they start sword-fighting, Arthur chops off one of his limbs, but that doesn’t deter him one bit. “’Tis but a scratch,” the Black Knight insists before … losing his other arm and both of his legs.
As a knight, he’s completely ineffective; as a monument to stubbornness, denial, and chivalric bravado, he’s peerless. All told, the Black Knight gives new meaning to the idea of cutting one’s losses.
Schuster: You have to respect someone who has absolutely no idea when to leave the table. Double, triple, quadruple down, king! It’s only your life at stake!
21. Grail Knight, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Surrey: I’ll say this for the Grail Knight: This dude is committed. He spends centuries in solitude, guarding a temple containing the mythical Holy Grail. Even though he’s immortal, the Grail Knight’s so frail that he falls over trying to swing his sword at Indiana Jones; he can’t even leave the temple, otherwise the Grail’s magic will wear off. If Indy didn’t find him, no doubt the Grail Knight would still be stuck there today, bored out of his mind. Unless there’s some fiber-optic cables running underneath the temple, he’d have no way to keep himself entertained. Could you even explain the concept of Tubi to someone who’s over 900 years old?
The Grail Knight staying true to his vow is commendable, but was it even necessary? The temple is booby-trapped to the gills and contains so many cups that, unless you’re an expert archaeologist, you’ll probably choose the wrong one and immediately die (see: Walter Donovan). By isolating himself while the rest of the world left the Arthurian legend behind, the Grail Knight chose … poorly.
20. The Vegas Golden Knights
Schuster: There’s an argument to be made that the Golden Knights should be much higher on this list. As an expansion team that joined the NHL in the 2017-18 season, they made history by making the Stanley Cup final in their very first year, and they went on to win the whole thing in just their sixth season of existence. They’ve made the playoffs in seven of eight seasons (excluding this year), and they were so good so early on that many thought the NHL would change its expansion draft rules for the Seattle Kraken, which joined the league in 2021.
So why aren’t they higher than 20th? I’m a horribly bitter Minnesota Wild fan, and I’ve had to watch this newbie team win tons of shit over the years while my squad, which is based in the literal State of Hockey, has been mired in mediocrity. We never said these lists were objective!
19. Knight Rider
Schuster: Listen, the concept of the show is pretty silly (if prescient): A man fights crime with the assistance of an AI-driven, self-aware car called KITT. But when that man is David Hasselhoff, and when the poster looks like this …
… you have to at least respect it.
Surrey: Also, when the opening credits go this hard … I’m just happy to be along for the ride.
18. Wayne Knight
Surrey: Boy, did Wayne Knight have a stranglehold on ’90s pop culture. He was the disgruntled employee responsible for Jurassic Park becoming Jurassic Park; he worked for Michael Jordan in Space Jam; he lent his voice to characters in Hercules, Tarzan, and Toy Story 2; he looked like he was on the verge of cardiac arrest staring at Sharon Stone during that scene in Basic Instinct; he’s freakin’ Newman!
In Hollywood, Knight’s a quintessential That Guy; here, he’s a worthy knight whose reputation as a chaotic scene-stealer precedes him.
17. William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke
Schuster: You know it’s a good list anytime someone from the 1100s is on it, so thank you, William Marshal, for solidifying this ranking! Marshal was the younger son of a minor English nobleman, so to make his way in life, he was sent away to Normandy around the age of 12 to be trained in becoming a knight. (Back then, these lessons included studying Latin, French romance literature, and the art of chivalry. We used to be a society.) Marshal was officially knighted in 1166, and he went on to become a famed competitor in military tournaments, a servant to five English kings, and a “warrior of outstanding prowess,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Talk about making your way up in the world!
16. Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher
Surrey: Like my burly uncle who hangs out on the periphery of family gatherings, Geralt of Rivia mostly communicates with grunts and the occasional—OK, frequent—expletive. But beneath that gruff exterior is a fearless, principled warrior who is essentially a monster bounty hunter, charged with protecting a young princess from a fallen kingdom. (This is the best explanation I can manage for The Witcher, perhaps the single most confusing show I’ve ever watched.)
Geralt shares many noble qualities with our other pop culture knights, but in a pricklier package: a taciturn loner who insists on keeping virtually everyone—including the audience—at arm’s length. But when he’s got this irresistible earworm following him around by a humble bard, it does more to win you over than Geralt ever could with his monosyllabic vocabulary.
15. Phil Knight
Surrey: Let’s hear it for the man who transformed a swoosh into a global symbol for athletic achievement. As a cofounder of Nike, Phil Knight tapped into the idea that you don’t just market sports apparel for what it can offer in the heat of battle—you need to build a mythology around it. (It also doesn’t hurt to sign a little athlete by the name of Michael Jordan fresh out of college.) If you were stepping on a basketball court in the ’90s, you’d better be rocking a pair of Air Jordans. It’s gotta be the shoes, right?
Other knights on this ranking wore armor, but there’s a lot to admire about a modern-day Knight who turned the art of making it into a multibillion-dollar empire.
14. Gawain, The Green Knight
Schuster: Did I personally inflate Gawain’s ranking on this list because he’s played by Dev Patel in the 2021 Green Knight movie? Obviously. Gawain isn’t a particularly knightly fella. He goes to brothels, hooks up with a married woman in exchange for a green girdle, and shows cowardice when he goes back to the Green Knight to fulfill his challenge and flinches when he’s faced with reality. Now, Gawain does get some points for ultimately giving in and living up to his end of the bargain, but he only really did that after he had a vision of how his life would turn out if he didn’t—as a reviled king who abandons his child and who ends up beheaded anyway. So I guess he doesn’t get that many points.
Surrey: Except whatever points Gawain loses for being a disreputable knight are canceled out by the fact that he looks like Dev Patel. Hot people simply live by different rules than the rest of us.
13. William Wallace, Braveheart
Schuster: Just thinking about this movie has me ready to grow out my hair, toss in a tiny braid, and paint my face blue and white. (For everyone’s sake, I won’t attempt the Scottish accent. You’re welcome.) The legacy of this flick has been harmed somewhat by it starring, and having been directed and produced by, Mel Gibson. But William Wallace may be the most “I’ll follow you to the gates of hell” movie character of all time—challenged only by Russell Crowe’s Maximus in Gladiator.
I mean, here is a 16-minute montage of “Top 5 William Wallace Moments” that I watched in its entirety simply because I clicked on it and couldn’t stop. Enjoy!
12. Link, The Legend of Zelda
Surrey: One of the most iconic video game creations of all time, Link is technically several characters over the course of The Legend of Zelda series, a warrior reincarnated whenever evil threatens the land of Hyrule. Despite being the knightly equivalent of the Dalai Lama, each iteration of Link tends to take on a familiar form: They’re a young Hylian boy, they slay in a stylish green tunic, they wield the Master Sword, and, most curious of all, they never speak.
That a character without any dialogue has become so revered speaks (heh) to the importance of immersion in gaming—when you play, you feel like you are Link, and inhabit his best qualities. (This would also explain why it’s taken so long to get a Legend of Zelda movie adaptation off the ground—he belongs in the silent film era.) We should all be more like this humble king, and let our actions do the talking.
11. Antonius Block, The Seventh Seal
Surrey: The weary, disillusioned protagonist of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Antonius Block is a knight locked in battle not with a sword but with an existential quandary: Does God even exist? Returning to a plague-ravaged Sweden, Block challenges Death to a game of chess in a last-ditch effort to find some meaning in his life—or at least buy himself a little extra time. (The literal life-or-death stakes put The Queen’s Gambit’s chess matches to shame.)
Unlike many knights on this list, Block isn’t motivated by glory or conquest; instead, he reckons with the fear that his life was wasted searching for answers that were never coming. In the end, he doesn’t beat Death, doesn’t receive divine answers, and doesn’t ride off into legend. Instead, he finds a measure of grace in confronting the unknown—which, if you ask me, is scarier than anything a knight could encounter on the battlefield.
Prep for ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’
10. Ser Jaime Lannister, Game of Thrones
Surrey: You get only one chance to make a first impression, and it doesn’t take long for Jaime Lannister to become public enemy no. 1 in the Game of Thrones pilot. As if killing the king you’ve sworn to protect isn’t bad enough, Jaime is seen by little Bran Stark going to pound town with his twin sister, Cersei, and when he realizes they’ve been spotted, he doesn’t hesitate to throw the poor kid out a tower window. I hated this man with every fiber of my being.
What makes George R.R. Martin such a talented (albeit frustrating) writer, though, is how he manages to transform Jaime from a vile villain into a sympathetic antihero. Instead of being celebrated for saving King’s Landing from the Mad King, he’s branded a dishonorable oath breaker. He’s one of the few people in Westeros who sees the greatness in Brienne of Tarth (more on her shortly) and his brother, Tyrion. But no matter how much Jaime grows, he can never fully outrun the choices that define him—or the incestuous love that ultimately brings him to ruin. He’s a knight of unforgettable contradictions, undone by the latest branches of his family tree being a circle.
Schuster: To paraphrase our golden boy: the things he does for love.
9. William Thatcher, A Knight’s Tale
Schuster: Look at this face and tell me you don’t want to watch this movie:
If you haven’t already seen A Knight’s Tale, you’re missing out. It has everything: Heath Ledger, Paul Bettany, historical figures, historical anachronisms, humor, life lessons, and a banging soundtrack full of music from the ’70s. This isn’t your classic knighthood movie, full of repressed emotions and stoic expressions and gallantry galore. No, the opening scene features dozens of medieval characters singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and the post-credits sequence features four characters having a farting contest. Talk about a great movie bookend.
Surrey: Nothing to see (or smell) here: A farting contest is a classic male bonding ritual.
8. Brienne of Tarth, Game of Thrones
Schuster: Tall Queen, Breaker of Boughs, Scraper of Ceilings, Duster of Eaves. How I miss seeing Brienne on my screen every week! She may not have been as fun as fellow GOT knight Jaime Lannister, the man she so adored. But she’s ahead of him on this list for one major reason: She was way more loyal!
At times that made Brienne a real Debbie Downer—who wants to hang out with a Goody Two-shoes? But it also made her one of the few Thrones characters you could count on to do the right thing, all the time (RIP, Ned Stark, you sweet, sweet idiot). Her motivations were pure, her heart was big, and her sword was mighty. Not to mention she became the first female Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. How’s that for shattering a glass ceiling (with her head)?
7. Don Quixote
Surrey: Forget dragons or horseback-riding warriors—here’s a knight whose greatest enemy is reality itself. In Miguel de Cervantes’s celebrated novel, Alonso Quijano is a minor Spanish noble who reads so many chivalric romances that he imagines himself to be Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight-errant who mistakes the ordinary things he encounters in rural Spain as medieval adversaries. (His most iconic “battle” is tilting at windmills he mistakes for giants.)
The character’s level of delusion has been immortalized with the term quixotic, a shorthand for chasing impossible ideals with unwavering conviction. But what keeps Don Quixote from being reduced to a punch line is the sincerity behind the madness. He isn’t cruel, power-hungry, or self-serving—he just wants to live up to the ideals of the knights in his stories. In his extreme commitment to playing pretend, Don Quixote ends up becoming an enduring figure in his own right, proof that believing in something wholeheartedly—quixotically—is more admirable than having nothing to believe in.
Schuster: I was supposed to read Don Quixote in Spanish for my Spanish capstone in college; let’s just say after a couple of failed attempts I had to do a bit of back-and-forth with the English version and still ended up wholly perplexed by Sancho Panza. What a story.
6. Robin Hood, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Schuster: If you, like me, initially looked at the title of this entry and thought, “Robin Hood isn’t a knight, the whole thing is that he steals from the rich and gives to the poor!” I get it. But the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner, starts off a little different. This Robin Hood is an English nobleman, and while there’s some question as to whether he’s “technically” a knight, he sure acts like one throughout this movie. So we’re counting it.
Robin comes home to England after the Crusades and creates an army of misfits that takes on a corrupt local sheriff; the crew provides food for the poor of their community by robbing the rich that come through the woods—while that might not be wholly above board, the intention is pure. He fulfills a life debt, saves a woman from a marriage against her will, and eventually has his own marriage blessed by the King. Overall pretty noble stuff.
5. Gladys Knight
Schuster: She should probably be no. 1 on this list, Miles. I already regret having her at no. 5. I mean, listen to this!!
Her voice is a revelation. Her talent is beyond compare. She’s won countless lifetime and career achievement awards, gotten a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And again: THAT VOICE! What were we thinking??
Surrey: How I’m feeling right now:
4. Sir Lancelot
Schuster: Sir Lancelot is one of the premier knights of the Round Table, and one of King Arthur’s closest companions (more on Arthur in a bit). Legend says he was the orphaned son of King Ban and raised in a fairy realm, all the while ignorant of his true parentage and where he came from. He’s known by many names—White Knight, Black Knight, Red Knight, and Wicked Knight—but he’s most famous for his adventures and his scandalous love for Queen Guinevere.
The stories say the two had a magical connection, one neither could deny. And once, Lancelot was even driven to madness when he believed Guinevere doubted his love for her. That level of devotion is certainly knightly—even if having it for the king’s wife is not!
3. Jedi Knights
Surrey: Guardians of peace and justice throughout the Galactic Republic, Jedi knights are a bizarre cross between actual knights, martial artists, and space monks. Trained to suppress attachment, emotion, and ego from their early days as Padawan learners, Jedi knights uphold a rigid moral ideal that ends up becoming their undoing when the resolutely attached Anakin Skywalker enters the picture. (“Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate … leads to suffering,” Yoda once warned him—a bar.) No knights in this ranking have ever been humbled as thoroughly as the Jedi were during the execution of Order 66.
On reflection, the Jedi order was inherently flawed, but that doesn’t take anything away from how objectively cool they are. Their leisure wear would make Lululemon blush. Using the Force is like being the star of your own wuxia film. Wielding a lightsaber … I mean, who hasn’t made vwoooom and psshhew sounds in the privacy of their home when sweeping the floor? For all their hypocritical dogmas and extinction-level oversights, Jedi knights are still the platonic ideal of virtuous knighthood—in any galaxy.
2. The Dark Knight
Schuster: The Dark Knight is technically a Batman story, but it’s so much more than that. It’s part crime thriller, part romance, part psycho-killer horror flick, and part study of human behavior. It’s the best Batman film ever, hands down, and one of the best movies of the 21st century.
Interestingly, it’s lauded not for its portrayal of the Batman (though Christian Bale is quite good in it, despite his very memeable voice) but for that of the Dark Knight’s counterpart, the Joker, played by Heath Ledger. Ledger’s take on the longtime Batman foil is as lasting as it is chilling—I’ll be able to hear his voice hiss out “Why so serious?” and “Let’s put a smile on that face” in my head for the rest of my days. And right from the first scene of the movie, it’s clear who the real main character is in The Dark Knight.
Surrey: Wow, tough beat for Batman to get overshadowed by the Joker when his actual nickname is the Dark Knight! To give our caped crusader some credit: In the very last scene of the movie, Batman has to become something Gotham hates—taking the blame for Harvey Dent’s crimes and his death—in order to protect it. That kind of selfless endeavor is as valiant as anything a knight achieves on the battlefield.
1. King Arthur
Schuster: The knightiest knight who ever knighted. Don’t take it from us; take it from the famed Knights of the Round Table, to whom Arthur acted as sovereign. That says more about him than we ever could.
The legend of Arthur is a conflicting one. Some say he’s based on a real warrior who lived at the end of the fifth century; others believe Owain Ddantgwyn, king of Powys, is the inspiration, or Riothamus, a Romano-Briton who led an army against the Goths. Most likely, he’s some sort of amalgamation of many different real people, all of whom inspired a 12th-century monk named Geoffrey of Monmouth to tell Arthur’s story for the first time.
Regardless of whom he is based on, Arthur is known for many things: being raised in secret, pulling the sword Excalibur out of the stone that the wizard Merlin had enchanted, taking his place as king, and surrounding himself with other knights who were sworn to protect his kingdom. Arthur is the basis for so, so much of knight lore—and we likely wouldn’t have this list without him.
