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3 days ago · King Arthur, legendary British king who appears in a cycle of medieval romances (known as the Matter of Britain) as the sovereign of a knightly fellowship of the Round Table. It is not certain how these legends originated or whether the figure of Arthur was based on a historical person. The legend possibly originated either in Wales or in those ...
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Brythonic languages, one of two groups of the modern Celtic...
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King Arthur married Guinevere and held court at Camelot. He...
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From Stories of King Arthur and the Round Table by Beatrice...
- Excalibur
Table of Contents Excalibur, in Arthurian legend, King...
- Historia Brittonum
In King Arthur. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum,...
- Round Table
This told of King Arthur’s having a round table made so that...
- Guinevere
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- Historia Regum Britanniae
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- HISTORY Vault: King Arthur: His Life and Legends
We’ve all heard stories about King Arthur of Camelot, who according to medieval legend led British forces (including his trusted Knights of the Round Table) in battle against Saxon invaders in the early sixth century. But was King Arthur actually a real person, or simply a hero of Celtic mythology?
Though debate has gone on for centuries, historians have been unable to confirm that Arthur really existed. He doesn’t appear in the only surviving contemporary source about the Saxon invasion, in which the Celtic monk Gildas wrote of a real-life battle at Mons Badonicus (Badon Hills) around 500 A.D. Several hundred years later, Arthur appears for the first time in the writings of a Welsh historian named Nennius, who gave a list of 12 battles the warrior king supposedly fought. All drawn from Welsh poetry, the battles took place in so many different times and places that it would have been impossible for one man to have participated in all of them.
The Myth of King Arthur
Later Welsh writers drew on Nennius’ work, and Arthur’s fame spread beyond Wales and the Celtic world, particularly after the Norman conquest of 1066 connected England to northern France. In the popular 12th-century book History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the first life story of Arthur, describing his magic sword Caliburn (later known as Excalibur), his trusted knight Lancelot, Queen Guinevere and the wizard Merlin. An irresistible blend of myth and fact, the book was supposedly based on a lost Celtic manuscript that only Geoffrey was able to examine.
He pulled Excalibur out of the stone, gathered knights at the Round Table and was trained by Merlin the Magician. Trace the myth and the legend of Camelot's King Arthur, who has inspired art and politics from medieval times to the age of Kennedy.
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Tapestry showing Arthur as one of the Nine Worthies, wearing a coat of arms often attributed to him, [ 1 ]c. 1385. King Arthur (Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur, French: Roi Arthur), according to legends, was a king of Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as ...
The earliest mention of a legendary British war leader comes from the only surviving contemporary source from the 6th Century, from a Welsh monk Gildas and his work, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. Yet Gildas seems to make no mention of a warrior called Arthur at all. However, in his account of the battle of Mount Badon where the Saxon ...
The stories of King Arthur and his realm experienced a resurgence in popularity in Victorian-era England, adding depth and breadth to the legend. Thanks to countless literary works and adaptations for theater, film, television, and other media, the legend remains familiar to this day — regardless of whether a real King Arthur ever existed.
In and around Tintagel, the legend of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthur continues to draw pilgrims to the king’s “realm.”. The Earl of Cornwall’s 13th-century stronghold receives 250,000 ...
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The historicity of King Arthur has been debated both by academics and popular writers. While there have been many claims that King Arthur was a real historical person, the current consensus among specialists on the period holds him to be a mythological or folkloric figure. [ 1 ][ 2 ] The first definite mention of Arthur appears circa 828 in the ...
