Unmasking the Real Arthur: Separating History from Legend

Those who have completed the trilogy may be wondering: Where are the famous legends that I am familiar with? There are no knights of the roundtable in search of the holy grail, there is no Excalibur, no shining armor, no lady of the lake, no sword in the stone, and no impressive castles named Camelot. Arthur should have had one wife, not two, and why isn’t Lancelot in the story? And isn’t Mordered a bad guy?  

This story focuses on the conditions at the time when the historical Arthur lived, and not the literary figure we think we know. These legends where written down some 700 years later, and the elements of the story with which we are all familiar almost certainly did not happen in real life. Some of our most beloved characters were invented much later. For instance, Merlin was only mentioned by Sir Thomas Mallory in the 1200’s, and the character of Lancelot was an added by French authors at that time as well.  

So, who was the real Arthur, and what really did happen back then? The answer is, of course, we simply do not know. Only two contemporaneous accounts survive, and neither mentions him. The historical record in Britannia was a blank slate from the late 300’s until a Welsh monk named Nennius wrote his Historia Brittonum, written early in the ninth century.

Nennius’s account features Arthur prominently, but it is clearly a mix of facts and legends. Some professional scholars feel Arthur was a legendary figure only, and not a real person. Other respected scholars disagree, and I, though no professional historian, put myself in the ranks of those who believe that Arthur was a real person. 

I believe there someone with a name that sounded like Arthur who existed around 500 A.D., and this person did some amazing things, uniting the Romano-British to fight back against barbarian invaders. But the stories we think of concerning King Arthur are certainly far different than the reality. For instance, he was probably a general, not a king. He wore no shining armor, and lived in a crude daub and wattle hut, not a shining city. The walls of his fortress were turf and wooden palisades, nothing like the Camelot of our imagination. His armor was probably made of boiled leather, his language was a variant of modern Welsh, and he may not have been a Christian.  

In my own story he was a short and skinny guy skilled with a sling, and that was almost certainly not the case. A successful warrior from that time period, in addition to having charisma, must have been a big guy who was also good with a sword. The real Arthur must have been a tough fighter to be considered a leader of a war band. He may have been a truly remarkable person for his legends to live on, but we certainly do not know any details.  

Unlike this trilogy, no one named Cerdic is associated with Arthurian legend. He was documented some three hundred years later by Alfred the Great as the first king of the West Saxons, and he could have been a contemporary to Arthur. Though alive at an approximately the same time, whether they ever met is unlikely, as they were probably enemies. 

We have the same problem regarding Saint Brigid. No one with her name is even remotely associated with Arthurian legend, and as far as we know, she never left Ireland. Furthermore, the person who became Saint Brigid of Kildare was probably on the scene a generation or two earlier. Her association with Arthur was entirely my invention. 

There are several mentions of a person named Caradoc associated with the Arthurian legends, but the details vary wildly depending on the source, and certainly a person with that name was mentioned as the first Christian king of Gwent. That king may have been contemporaneous to Arthur, but we have no records to be sure, nor do we know if they actually met. So, what do we know?  

Well…. More to come in blogs to follow. 

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— John Fitz