A bronze Arthur plate armour with

visor raised

1
King Arthur was a fabled British leader and a prominent
figure in Britain's legendary history. A real individual
may have been the inspiration of the legend, but any
core of history is deeply submerged in the later
fictional narratives of Arthur. In these he appears as
the ideal of kingship both in war and peace; even in
modern times he has been ranked as one of the 100
Greatest Britons of all time. Over time, the stories
of King Arthur have captured such widespread
interest that he is no longer identified as the
legendary hero of a single nation. Countless new
legends, stories, revisions, books, and films have been
produced in Europe and the United States that
unabashedly enlarge on and expand the fictional
accounts of King Arthur.

2
• The scarce historical background to Arthur is found in
the works of Nennius and Gildas and in the Annales
Cambriae. The legendary Arthur developed initially
through the pseudo-history of Geoffrey of Monmouth
and the Welsh collection of anonymous tales known as
the Mabinogion. Chrétien de Troyes began the literary
tradition of Arthurian romance, which subsequently
became one of the principal themes of medieval
literature. Medieval Arthurian writing reached its
conclusion in Thomas Mallory's comprehensive Morte
D'Arthur, published in 1485. Modern interest in
Arthur was revived by Alfred Tennyson in Idylls of
the King, and in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Key modern reworkings of the Arthurian legends
include Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court, T.H. White's The Once and Future
King and Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal.
3
The central themes of the Arthurian cycle vary
depending on which texts are examined. However,
they include the establishment of Arthur as king
through the sword in the stone episode, the advice of
the wizard Merlin, the establishment of the
fellowship of knights known as the Round Table and
the associated code of chivalry, the defence of
Britain against the Saxons, numerous magical
adventures associated with particular knights, notably
Kay, Gawain, Lancelot, Percival and Galahad, the
enmity of Arthur's half-sister Morgan le Fay, the
quest for the Holy Grail, the adultery of Lancelot and
Queen Guinevere, the final battle with Mordred, and
the legend of Arthur's future return. The magical
sword Excalibur, the castle Camelot and the Lady of
the Lake also play pivotal roles.

4
The historicity of the King Arthur legend has long been debated by scholars. One school
of thought, based on references in the Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae,
would see Arthur as a shadowy historical figure, a Romano-British leader fighting
against the invading Anglo-Saxons sometime in the late 5th to early 6th century.
The Historia Brittonum ("History of the Britons"), a 9th century Latin historical
compilation attributed to the Welsh cleric Nennius, gives a list of twelve battles
fought by Arthur, culminating in the Battle of Mons Badonicus, where he is said to
have single-handedly killed 960 men. The 10th century Annales Cambriae ("Welsh
Annals"), dates this battle to 516, and also mentions the Battle of Camlann, in which
Arthur and Medraut were both killed, dated to 537. Only the B text of circa 1300
refers to Arthur as a king. The early A text only uses his name, although this may
not be significant as they often name kings without mentioning their title. The latest
translation of the Annales Cambriae shows that the annals might have been started
in the late eighth century, over two hundred years after Arthur. Worse the earliest
version of the Annales which carry the Arthurian references, although possibly
compiled in the late tenth century, could have been written up in the their final form
as late as 1200 CE. The Arthurian references in the Annales Cambriae therefore
probably owe their provenance to Geoffrey of Monmouth after 1135 and not a lost
original document. The Historia Brittonum calls him dux bellorum or "dux
(commander) of battles".Historian John Morris went so far as to make the putative
reign of Arthur at the turn of the 5th century the organising principle of his history
of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur. Even so, he found little to say
of an historic Arthur, save as an example of the idea of kingship, one among such
contemporaries as Vortigern, Cunedda, Hengest and Coel. Morris argues that
Arthur's power base would have been in the Celtic areas of Wales, Cornwall and the
West Country, or the Brythonic "Old North" which covered modern Northern
England and southern Scotland.

5
• Another school of thought argues that Arthur had no historical existence.
Nowell Myres was prompted by the publication of Morris's Age of Arthur to
write "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more
of the historian's time". Gildas' 6th century polemic De Excidio Britanniae
("On the Ruin of Britain"), written within living memory of the Battle of Mons
Badonicus, mentions that battle but does not mention Arthur. Some argue
that he was originally a half-forgotten Celtic deity that devolved into a
personage, citing parallels with the supposed change of the sea-god Lir into
King Lear, the Kentish totemic horse-gods Hengest and Horsa, who were
historicised by the time of Bede's account and given an important role in the
5th century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain, the founder-figure of
Caer-fyrddin, Merlin (Welsh Myrddin), or the Norse demigod Sigurd or
Siegfried, who was historicised in the Nibelungenlied by associating him with
a famous historical 5th century battle between Huns and the Burgundians.
• Historical documents for the period are scarce, so a definitive answer to this
question is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as "Arthurian" since
the 12th century, but archaeology can reveal names only through inscriptions.
The so-called "Arthur stone" discovered in 1998 in securely dated 6th
century contexts among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, a secular,
high status settlement of Sub-Roman Britain, created a brief stir.There is no
other archaeological evidence for Arthur.
• Several identifiable historical figures have been suggested as the historical
basis for Arthur, ranging from Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who
served in Britain in the 2nd century; Roman usurper emperors like Magnus
Maximus; and sub-Roman British rulers like Riothamus, Ambrosius Aurelianus,
Owain Ddantgwyn and Athrwys ap Meurig.

6
• Arthur's name
• The origin of the name Arthur is a matter of debate. Some suggest it is
derived from the Latin family name Artorius, meaning "ploughman" (the
variant "Arturius" is known from inscriptions). Others propose a
derivation from Welsh arth (earlier art), meaning "bear", suggesting
art-ur, "bear-man", is the original form. Arthur's name appears as
Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artorius, although it is
possible that Vulgar Latin forms of Artorius, pronounced in Celtic
languages, could have yielded both Arthur and Arturus.
• Toby D. Griffen of Southern Illinois University links the name Arthur
to Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa
Major or the Great Bear. The Classical Latin Arcturus would have
become Arturus in Vulgar Latin, and its brightness and position in the
sky led people to regard it as the "guardian of the bear" and the
"leader" of the other stars in Boötes. Griffin suggests that "Arthur"
was not a personal name, but a nom de guerre or an epithet borne by
the man who led the Britons against the Saxons, which both Latin and
Brythonic-speakers would associate with leadership and bear-like
ferocity. A variant of the nom de guerre theory has the name combining
the Welsh and Latin words for "bear", art and ursus.The name Arthur
and its variants were used as personal names by at least four leaders
who lived after the traditional dates of Arthur’s battles, suggesting to
Griffen and others that it only began to be used as a personal name
after "the" Arthur made it famous.

7
• Arthur's swords
– Main article: Excalibur
• In the early Welsh sources, Arthur's sword is called Caledfwlch and Kaledvoulc'h
in Breton, and is likely related to the phonetically similar Caladbolg a sword borne
by several figures from Irish mythology. The first two syllables of both derive
from Celtic *kaleto-, "hard". Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Arthur's sword
Caliburnus. In early French sources this becomes Escalibor, and finally the familiar
Excalibur.
• In Robert de Boron's Merlin, Arthur obtained the throne by pulling a sword from a
stone. In this account, this act could not be performed except by "the true king,"
meaning the divinely appointed king or true heir of Uther Pendragon. This sword is
thought by many to be the famous Excalibur and the identity is made explicit in the
later so-called Vulgate Merlin Continuation, part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle.
However, in what is sometimes called the Post-Vulgate Merlin, Excalibur was given
to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake sometime after he began to reign. According to
many sources, Arthur broke the sword pulled from the stone while fighting King
Pellinore, and thus Merlin took him to retrieve Excalibur from the lake (as cited in
many novels including Howard Pyle's King Arthur and His Knights, King Arthur and
the Legend of Camelot, and indeed most modern Arthurian literature). In this Post-
Vulgate version, the sword's blade could slice through anything, including steel, and
its sheath made the wearer invincible in that the wearer could not die so long as
they bore the scabbard.
• Some stories say that Arthur did indeed pull the sword from the stone (Excalibur),
giving him the right to be king, but accidentally killed a fellow knight with it and
cast it away. Merlin told him to undertake a quest to find another blade, and it was
then that Arthur received his sword from the hand in the water, and named it
Excalibur, after his original sword.
• The Alliterative Morte Arthure, a Middle English poem, gives mention of Clarent, a
sword of peace meant for knighting and ceremonies as opposed to battle, which is
stolen and then used to kill Arthur.
8
 King Arthur's constant
characteristics in various stories
• Many authors throughout history have written stories and poems
about the Arthurian legend. Each story builds on its predecessor,
and the overall image and character of King Arthur remains
consistent. The king of Camelot is the perfect example of a
chivalrous king and knight. He is also often shown as an equal to his
knights rather than a ruler. In Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Arthur
is depicted as the perfect king in his rule as well as his marriage.
Even when his wife, Guinevere, commits adultery with Arthur’s best
knight, Lancelot, and destroys his court, he is able to forgive her
for the sins she committed. Even as a young king in the story “Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight,” Arthur has the image of the perfect,
selfless king. During the feast, he refuses to eat until all of his
subjects have taken their fill. Also, when the Green Knight
confronts him and his court, Arthur accepts the deadly challenge
until Gawain insists he must bear it. At the end of Gawain’s quest,
Arthur and his knights decide to wear the green girdle, which for
Gawain represents his failure and weakness. Although he is their
king, he still sees himself an equal to his knights and wears the
girdle as a sign of their equality.
9