The King Arthur Files
a blog for Merrie Haskell's King Arthur page
Friday, September 19, 2003 ::
A New Movie
To be called King Arthur: "Based on a more realistic portrayal of "Arthur" than has ever been presented onscreen. The film will focus on the history and politics of the period during which Arthur ruled -- when the Roman empire collapsed and skirmishes over power broke out in outlying countries -- as opposed to the mystical elements of the tale on which past Arthur films have focused."
Monday, June 23, 2003 ::
Definitive Comparison
I have just read the Mary Stewart Merlin Trilogy, in which she openly admits a liberal use of imagination, and not research. Is there a definitive comparison of the legends and the facts in any one book, or am I doomed to read numerous accounts of various legends and in the end still not know if there is a widely accepted version? --stormy8079
Given that very little exists in the way of facts about King Arthur, every version you read will have a healthy dose of imagination in it. This includes the "definitive" versions of the legends, such as Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur from the 1400's, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain of the 12th century. They are "definitive" only because they informed the way the legend has been interpreted so many times to this day, the difference being that Geoffrey of Monmouth's version is largely free of the influence of French courtly love on the legend, and Mallory's is not.
Unfortunately, just about everything written about King Arthur is based on speculation and imagination. The few facts we have are fairly suspect. The evidence is largely circumstantial; but as they say, enough circumstantial evidence strung together is fairly convincing.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003 ::
Arthur's Children
Who are King Arthur's illegitimate children? --susu0003
Great question, and one I've never gotten before.
Well, in the "traditional" story-- the story everyone knows, the story that was mostly created in medieval France during the time of courtly love (other courtly love links: Dr. Debora B. Schwartz's page and Larry D. Benson's article), in which Queen Guinevere betrays King Arthur with his knight, Sir Lancelot, an opposing love triangle is set up as well. This other triangle is where King Arthur betrays his wife with his own sister (or half-sister), Morgan le Fay. The product of their union was Mordred, who was not only illegitimate but also the child of incest.
In most early versions of the legend, Mordred is merely Arthur's nephew, and it is believed that he was not even in opposition to Arthur at any point in their lives, at least militarily. Many societies of the time highly valued the uncle-nephew relationship; after all, you couldn't necessarily know that your wife had given birth to your children, but you knew that you shared blood with your own sister's child. Many legends of the time, and many permutations of Arthurian stories (including Tristan and Isolde (and Tristan's uncle, Mark) include an uncle-nephew relationship.
Interestingly, older and British versions of the Arthurian legend (ones that were not influenced by France), list Arthur as having any number of children, illegitimate and otherwise, among them Amr (also called Anir and Amhar) and Llacheu (or Loholt).
Please look for further updates on this question soon.
Tuesday, January 07, 2003 ::
Request of the Week
hi. im a 12 year old boy doing a report on king arthur and would appreciate it if you did a section called "important events" and just did dates if you can and like how he got excalibur and how loncelot fell in love with guinevere and all that. -- Eduardo Bolivar
I think this is an excellent suggestion, and will try to implement this soon. I'm not going to include dates, per se, for which reason I will explain at the time.
Thursday, January 02, 2003 ::
Question of the Day
I was wondering if King Arthur and the Round Table was real or is it a myth??? Thanks for your help. Garlyn Wieck
I get this question so often, and there is no really very good clean-cut answer. People aren't satisfied with yes or no, anyway! And no one agrees...
Geoffrey Ashe once said that he believed that the Arthurian myth was firmly rooted in an Arthurian fact. I do too. The difficulty, of course, is knowing where the myth ends and the reality begins.
Everyone knows the Arthurian myth-- the basic story, as well as the many, many adaptations that have come forth over time, since the sixth century, on through the Middle Ages, and up to the present, when so many Arthurian-based novels and stories come out that it is not even possible to really track them all.
But how much of the myth was real?
Like I said, no one really knows. There are very few verifiable facts (some would say none). I recently read a very disturbing article in which a historian said, "I don't know why anyone bothers, it's widely accepted there was no King Arthur anyway." Naturally, I (and a lot of people, including many fine academics in his own field) disagree with him (as well as his cavalier attitude). But the truth of the matter is, it's all very, very sketchy.
But, as archaeologists like to say, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." Absence plays a large role, in fact, in exploring the reality of the Arthurian myth. There is a noted period in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of twenty years in which the Saxons did not push their colonization of Britain west. People attribute this halt in colonization to the military successes of a Celtic war-leader-- who could be our King Arthur. And it is often noted that prior to the "Arthurian era" (generally accepted to be somewhere between 475 AD to 525 AD, though no one agrees on exactly when), there is little to no evidence of anyone being named "Arthur"-- whereas after the Arthurian era, the name crops up on tombstones and in poems throughout Britain-- the modern equivalent of all those little boys and girls running around with the first name Jordan, when prior to Michael Jordan's career, "Jordan" wasn't considered appropriate for a first name at all.
So, with evidence like this, a case can be made for a "real" King Arthur.
But, it must be noted, that it was almost entirely not like First Knight, Camelot or Excalibur. It is very likely that a real King Arthur wouldn't have had a Round Table (though there are some fascinating theories about tabled rotundas that I'm planning to explore on the web-site soon), and his knights wouldn't even have been called knights, and probably didn't ride horses into battle, and certainly didn't have shiny armor. And Arthur probably wasn't even a King, not as we think of kings.
So, the answer to your question is: Arthur was very possibly real, and is most definitely also a myth.
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 ::
Thanks to SirMonkey, we have a really interesting link to a new take on an old theory about the Round Table... I have always liked the "tabled rotunda" theory (even though it's a chain in the link of the Scottish evidence), and I'm glad to see it getting some press!
