The Dark Ages: King Arthur and Others

          

The Historical King Arthur

Did King Arthur exist? There is undoubtedly an historical person, a British warlord who held the Germanic invaders at bay in the early 500's of our era, on whom the legends are based. Who he was, or his rank (king, count, commander, dux bellorum?), is something we are not likely to find out because there is no contemporary documentation to speak of. But for an account of the period written by a British monk who lived at the appropriate time, go to the Gildas page. Many writers have tried their hand at creating the historical King Arthur. Here are some examples.

  • Novels
    • Rosemary Sutcliff: The Sword at Sunset. One of the earliest and best attempts to interpret the King Arthur legends in historical context. This blew my mind when I was about 15 years old and remains the standard of comparison. The military aspects are particularly well done. This really is still the best of the lot. *****
    • Catherine Christian: The Pendragon. Doesn't reach the heights of the Sutcliffe book, but it's pretty good.
    • Victor Canning: The Crimson Chalice. A spy novelist tries his hand at a 'historical' King Arthur book. I'm sure it engrossed me at the time, but I don't remember anything about it. Reread this May 1999. It is really quite good, although very few of the familiar names are present. A 'revisionist' approach with most of the traditional legend stripped away.
    • Jack Whyte: The Camulod Chronicles: The Skystone / The Singing Sword / The Eagle's Brood. First three volumes of a massive, rambling, multi-generational telling of the tale of Camelot starting with two Roman soldiers (Arthur's and Merlin's ancestors) with a vision for establishing an enclave against the barbarians; this is a good, reasonably historical 'what might have been', although it tends to be episodic. The later books are narrated by Merlin in his old age after everything has fallen apart. (It looks as though there are several more volumes in the works, starting with The Saxon Shore, then The Fort at River's Bend, which barely brings King Arthur into adulthood; this is getting rather tedious.) --Oh, Lordie, The Socreror: Metamorphosis is now out -- 500 pages that take us up through the 'sword in the stone' episode -- how many more volumes will be needed for the 'historical' version of the Round Table, Holy Grail, Mount Badon, and the Guenevere adultery/Mordred business? Something like 3000 pages published so far, and Arthur is only 18 years old!
    • Parke Godwin: Firelord / Beloved Exile / The Last Rainbow. King Arthur, Guenevere, and St. Patrick, respectively. Semi-historical, semi-romantic. Good reading.
    • Henry Treece: The Celtic Tetralogy. Pseudo-history, but well done: The Golden Strangers (Stone Age), The Dark Island (Bronze Age Druids), Red Queen, White Queen (Boadicea and the Romans), and The Great Captains (King Arthur and his contemporaries). These are very barbaric books, in the sense of a lot of bloodshed, cruelty, and superstition, and there is very little of 'Rome' in them. Life-style is squalid, on the edge of starvation most of the time, people old by the time they are thirty. A Hobbesian viewpoint of life in these times as being 'nasty, brutish, and short'. Maybe it was this way, but I hate to think it. Still, the author's main characters rise above this and show some sort of human dignity.
    • Bernard Cornwell: The Warlord Chronicles. By the author of the "Sharpe's Rifles" series about the Napoleonic Wars -- you know this will be good if you are into military/cultural/ripping yarn stuff (like Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin). A major trilogy -- vol 1 The Winter King (vols. 2 & 3 are Enemy of God and Excalibur). This falls into the 'realism' school, but runs the Romantic gamut by including Lancelot, Galahad, etc. The author justifies throwing in the French element with a wonderful mid-section over the fall of Ynes Trebes (later to be Mont St. Michel in France), under King Ban and his sons L & G, the first totally bad and the latter totally good. Arthur was under oath to defend Brittany, but because of trouble in Britain was not able to send more than a token force under his deputy (and the narrator of this series) Derfil*. Book starts off emphasizing the total squalor and barbarism of this degenerate Roman society, but then builds up to the Defenders against the Dark theme -- and that is especially well done with the Brittany episode. And Merlin comes back into it in one of his best portrayals as a character in the fiction of this subject. I have only finished the first two volumes (the third is still in hard cover), but this will be a classic. It's published by Penguin, but for some reason is not yet available in the US. [*Oddly enough, Derfil turns out to be the illegitimate son of the Saxon King Aelle, founder of Sussex.]

      The rendering of the tale of King Mark of Cornwall, his son Tristan, and Mark's child bride Iseult from Ireland is heartbreaking, a wonderful version of this story. Absolutely barbaric. And it really casts a bad light on our hero King Arthur. (But nobody now claims that he was perfect -- his friends turn away from him in disgust, still, he did what a "King" of those times, or any, had to do, politically expedient.)

      [Feb 2000: Finished the series -- bit of a let-down, but that's because you know how the story will turn out. The Battle of Badon is excellent, but Camlann is a disappointment. There's a lot of 'revisionist' characterization among all the traditional names.]

  • Histories
    • Nora Chadwick: The Celts. To understand the background for this Celtic twilight that King Arthur represents, both for the 'Welsh' and for the romanticists who dwell on the culture of Roman Britain, you should really read this book for a scholarly but capsulated view of that ethnic group (not necessarily a race), from its Stone Age Indo-European steppe origins up until about the year 1000 at its final gasp in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland [does NOT address the issues of modern Celts, e.g., Ulster, thank God]. Excellent.
    • Geoffrey Ashe: A Guidebook to Arthurian Britain. Very fine list of actual archeological sites from the period, with connections to the saga.
    • Geoffrey Ashe (editor): The Quest for Arthur's Britain. Wonderful collection of historical essays. *****
    • Leslie Alcock: Arthur's Britain. Pure archeology and the like, without any romance; great scholarly compendium if you are into that sort of thing. *****
    • Michael Wood: In Search of the Dark Ages. Nice, glib chapters about various aspects of this period (a typical 'in search of' or 'discovering' book).

The Northern Association: Camboglanna
(Birdoswald Roman Fort, possible site of Camlann).

Just to be fair, here is a link to the Spoilsports -- those who deny Arthur ever existed
Realistic King Arthur | Fantastic King Arthur | Other Historical Novels | Oddball Stuff | Commentary | Links and Web Rings

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