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KING ARTHUR – EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE LEGEND
King Arthur - fact or fiction? Unlike the modern British Royal Familythere is some debate over whether King Arthur actually existed at all, but there’s no question that the Arthurian legend has been the inspiration for countless works of literature, art and even films over the course of thousands of years.
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Was King Arthur real?
The story of King Arthur takes place in medieval times, during which he was the ruler of the fictional kingdom of Camelot, and the leader of the fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table. While there may never have been a real King Arthur as we know him today, some schools of thought propose that the myth was based upon a British military leader associated with the Romans, and that he valiantly fought back a Saxon invasion of Britain at some point during the 5th or 6th century.
Who inspired the Arthurian legend?
The person who was based on Arthurian legend - if there is indeed one such individual - remains shrouded in mystery. Although some contend that he was based on a British warrior on the Roman side against the Saxon invasion mentioned above, the Celtic monk Gildas made no mention of a warrior by the name of Arthur in his historical work The Ruin and Conquest of Britain.
One of the earliest known mentions of the character, potentially, appears in the Welsh poem Y Goddodin by Aneirin, which takes the form of a series of elegies in honour of heroes who died in battle against insurmountably huge armies - with Arthur one of those being mentioned. The poem was originally shared orally, however, so it’s unclear whether Arthur was always part of the story, and historians today date the work as having been created any time between the 7th and 11th centuries.
Other historians believe that the name Arthur may actually be a reference to the Celtic bear god Artaois - due to the similarity of their names - and that King Arthur was a mythical homage to this deity.
The development of Arthurian legend
The story of Arthur grew more detailed and complex over the course of several centuries. In the 9th century, the Welsh monk Nennius produced History of the Britains, which recounted dozens of battles in which King Arthur had supposedly participated - although the chronology and geography of said battles in fact meant there was no way that Arthur could possibly have fought in all of them. All the same, the legend of King Arthur’s bravery grew, cementing his reputation as a heroic mythical figure.
The Arthurian legend as we know it today began to come into focus in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century Latin work Historia Regum Britannae (The History of the Kings of Britain). These chronicles told, for the first time, the life story of King Arthur, providing him with an origin story and an arc to his life, while introducing cultural touchstones like Merlin the wizard and Excalibur, Arthur’s legendary sword.
The increased influence of Europe on Britain also had an impact on the development of the Arthurian legend into a more intricate tale, introducing elements like the kingdom of Camelot (first appearing in the 12th century French romances by Chrétien de Troyes), Queen Guinevere (and her affair with Lancelot), the Knights of the Round Table and their search for the Holy Grail. You can find out more about the development of this story in The Legends of King Arthur on True Royalty TV.
King Arthur: a literary phenomenon
As the myths evolved into ever more complex stories, along with the technological advancements for recording such stories, the Arthurian legend started to find its way into book form. The first appearance of King Arthur in an English language book occurred in 1485, in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur - reworking all the existing King Arthur legends into a life story that spanned his birth to his death.
The legend lost none of its potency over the centuries, and in 1859 Alfred Tennyson recounted the legend of King Arthur in an epic poem entitled Idylls of the King, tragically ending with Arthur’s failure to create a perfect kingdom and his death by the hand of the traitorous Mordred. Today, the legend is continually re-written - not just as adult prose, but as children’s books and graphic novels as well.
King Arthur in the modern age
With King Arthur’s legend already firmly established in literature, it was inevitable that the Arthurian legend would eventually make its way to stage and screen. In the 1960s, King Arthur was played by Richard Burton in the musical Camelot. Faithful retellings of the tale appear with regularity in cinemas, from 1981’s Excalibur featuring Helen Mirren, 2004’s King Arthur with Clive Owen in the title role, and most recently Charlie Hunnam’s portrayal in 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
So ubiquitous is the legend of King Arthur that it has proved fertile ground for homage and parody too, perhaps most famously in 1975’s raucous Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its stage adaptation of Spamalot. Somewhat more reverently, Disney also adapted the legend for 1963’s Sword in the Stone, while British filmmaker Joe Cornish updated the story to the modern day with children in the key roles for 2019’s The Kid Who Would Be King.
So ubiquitous is the legend of King Arthur that it has proved fertile ground for homage and parody too, perhaps most famously in 1975’s raucous Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its stage adaptation of Spamalot. Somewhat more reverently, Disney also adapted the legend for 1963’s Sword in the Stone, while British filmmaker Joe Cornish updated the story to the modern day with children in the key roles for 2019’s The Kid Who Would Be King.
The story of King Arthur is one that spans almost all of recorded history in Britain, and which has grown and developed with each retelling - a process which shows no sign of slowing down. Who knows perhaps the royals of today will still be talked about thousands of years from now: the legend of Prince Louis perhaps.
