the answer, of course, is yes.

This has been going on for thousands of years! It doesn't change.

But another thing I haven’t seen discussed much that I think really contributed to the disillusionment that we see in the final episode is how it must have felt for Dunk to see the Kingsguard be ordered to fight for Aerion. He’s terrified to fight against them, of course, but he also canonically really idolizes the Kingsguard, in both the show and the book, and considers them the greatest and noblest knights in the land. He's dreamed of being one of them- every boy has, he says- and that dream gains a little fuel in the show when Donnel of Duskendale (dishonestly) claims to have risen from a similar class position to Dunk's.

Aerion is wrong, unequivocally- even if Baelor won't outright say that, which says something  about his own precarious position as part of that family, but Dunk knows it in his bones- but it doesn’t matter. They are sworn to the royal family and at their command. For Dunk, it's one level of having his naivete shattered to realize that a knight, even a prince, can be dishonorable and cruel. But it's another level to see the Kingsguard knights, who may themselves be much better men than Aerion, have no choice but to fight, and potentially kill or give their own lives in defense of that cruelty. 

There's only so much honor one can have- even those held to be the most honorable- when someone owns you.

And swearing yourself to a household is not just one person- lords die and are replaced by sons or cousins or brothers or nephews, and each may be a totally different kind of man. You could swear yourself to a great man like Baelor, and still find yourself laying down your life for a prick like Aerion. And once the shock passes and that has really had time to sink in, I can see why that would make him suddenly skittish of something he had previously wanted and sought out.

Dunk is still a loyal person, that’s a core trait. He's still naive and at times oblivious and a little too trusting, though I would imagine that fades at least a little over the years. But he needs the choice to give or withhold that loyalty based on a person’s actions. The life of a hedge knight gives him a freedom that household knights- even the greatest of them- do not have. Even if he swears his sword to someone, it's temporary, and it can be revoked, as we see him do with Ser Eustace when it's revealed how much he had lied to them. 

There are other factors too- he clearly considers the hardships of being a hedge knight to be character-building, which they definitely are for Egg. He seems to feel out of place in spaces too high for his station, maybe finds too much comfort to be uncomfortable. And the guilt is of course still there, the need to do something worthwhile with the life he’s been given. But I think the need for that freedom is still a major factor, and said hardships are the price he has to pay for that. Ultimately, I think Egg is the only one he would have ever sworn himself to after Ashford, because Egg is his family- he knows him as well as he knows himself (he thinks), and he basically raised him and imparted a lot of his own values onto him. He loves Egg, and he finally feels like he can give that loyalty to someone permanently.

As a sworn sword you don’t get to live honourably, even with your knighthood vows, because you pledged your sword to another persons moral compass.

And also Dunk realises that for every deed done for honour (defending tanselle) there can be negative consequences that are even worse (baelor dies) despite the intentions.

You take care to carry the responsibility of your honour, you defend the innocent against injustice as you have sworn to do, stand up to tyranny even against the entire royal household, even in a trial that envokes the will of the gods- and what do you get? Life threatening injuries, the blood of the crown prince and two Lords is on your hands, and the world is in a worse place than it started with the best Targaryen dead and his younger brother left a husk of a person.

Give me a Dunk that, when visiting Summerhall with Egg, offers Maekar every one of his clumsy courtesies but cannot look him in the eye, because if he does he'll choke on the name of a dead man who shares Maekar's right eye

Give me a Maekar who keeps his back to Dunk whenever they're in the same room, because he trusts Baelor's good man not to stab him in it, but he cannot look at him, he can't

Egg forces them to share a meal with the rest of the family, and thank the seven the boy never shuts up, because at least they don't have to force themselves talk to eachother, but they're so busy not looking at eachother that they reach for the same dish at the same time, and their fingertips brush, and they're flinching back as though the touch burned them like wildfire

(it's a very awkward rest of dinner for everyone)

Maekar's solar window overlooks the training yard. He watches Dunk train Egg. He watches Dunk spar with his men at arms. He watches Dunk, from where no one can see him. He tries to see what Baelor saw. Sometimes he sees. Mostly he doesn't.

(he sees it more when Dunk is parenting Egg, when he helps the servants with their duties, when he stops a visiting knight from beating one of the squires, the way he talks to the hunting dogs, and looks after his horses, and protects the maids from drunk visiting lords)

(he watches him a lot more than he'd ever be willing to admit)

(he sees Baelor in him, a little, but that doesn't stop him hating him)

Dunk can't help but watch Maekar in the training yard. Because Maekar is a force of fucking nature. He watches from the rampart, from the shadows where Maekar can't see him, and has to force the breath in and out of his chest as he watches Maekar pulverize his opponents. He's like a snowstorm. It's mesmerising to watch.

(Dunk remembers getting stuck in a snowstorm once with Sir Arlan the only time they went above the neck. He remembers the biting unforgiving cold, and the wind so harsh it burned your skin like the dornish sun, and the unrelenting neverending force of it. Maekar has always seamed like a snowstorm to him.)

(He thinks Baelor would have liked the north, the way the people there kept themselves to duty. He wonders if he ever went.)

(Maekar would know, but Dunk would never ask.)

He wonders if Baelor and Maekar fought the same. He wouldn't know, he didn't see it at Ashford. He was too busy just trying to stay alive.

He watches as Maekar beats down on any knight at arms brave enough to face him, and struggles to see anything of Baelor in it. He imagines Baelor as a more elegant fighter than either he or Maekar could manage. They're much more brute force in style than he could ever think of Baelor as being.

(Maekar remembers wresting in the mud with Baelor as boys, of being bruised from scalp to sole, and them both being scalded for it. He'd laugh if Dunk ever told him his thoughts, but of course he never would.)

(Dunk does see Baelor in Maekar in other ways. When he handles disputes of the local people, when he goes riding and is so gentle with his horse, Baelor's horse, when he parents his children, so harsh and yet so full of love he choked on it. His children adore him, so so much, and it makes Dunk feel ways he cannot understand.)

(It's easier to watch him fight than to deal with everything else.)

And when some visiting lord or knight takes a pot shot at Dunk, says something mocking and hurtful and a little foul, he would chokes on his tongue because the look Maekar gives him is dead eyed and cold, because that his hedge knight, Baelor's hedge knight, the only person allowed to talk shit about Dunk is him.

And the feeling is so so mutual because some other (or maybe the same for dramatic fic purposes) lord or knight makes a comment about Maekar while in the training yard, and Dunk beats the ever living shit out of him. Has to be pulled off of him. Because Maekar is Baelor's brother, and they loved eachother, and that grief is his and Maekar's to share, and everyone else better shut their fucking mouths, especially in Maekar's own home.