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Having just watched First Knight for another time I got to thinking

What was the true King Arthur Legend?

Why the enduring story?

cheers
B....OZ

wasnt lancelot shagging his wife?

You should buy "Excalibur" - the best King Arthur film to date.

There's a new Arthur film coming out this year.

> Having just watched First Knight for another time I got to thinking
> What was the true King Arthur Legend?

There was a Time Team special a few years ago when they looked
at the whole King Arthur legend.

See site below for an overview:


Basicaly it is a bit like Rogin Hood, based on real people but mostly
myth passed down through history.

I think the Victorians had a period of looking back through rose tinted
glasses at the medieval era, and the modern Arthur legend has stayed
with us from that.

Guilbert

It's strange that Arthur's legend has continued, and is reinvented by each succeeding generation. If he existed, he was probably some war chief in the dark ages, in the years after the Romans left Britain. Roman-educated Christian or pagan champion, he probably belonged to the Celtic people of the island and may have operated in Wales, the north-west of England and possibly the south-west of Scotland. Of the "knights" of the round table, only a few feature in the earlier legends (Kay/Cei, Bedivere/Bedwyr and Gawain/Gwalchmai), but Guinevere sounds a plausible name for such a time.

The Grail, Lancelot and the sense of chivalry were added by French minstrels in the middle ages, and added an epic aspect to a British hero. The legend has been claimed and added to by the various invaders to these islands---Angles, Saxons and in particular the Normans. Strange too that, even though he became a cuckold and was given an incest story and a Herod-like baby-murdering story, Arthur remainsa heroic figure.

Why the enduring story? All of it, the additions as well as the early fragments, is wonderful storytelling. After the Bible, one of the first books printed by Caxton was Mallory's Morte d'Arthur----a collection of tales put together by a dishonoured knight jailed for robbery and rape highlighting a seeming golden age of chivalry. In the end, no matter how much of it is true, it is an inspiring story.

Cheers, Alec.

Excalibur is indeed an excellent adaptation of King Arthur. Very gory and standing the test of time quite well.
First Knight on the other hand is total Hollywood shite

Gwenhwyfar is still used as a girl's name in Wales.
But, as any right thinking person knows, King Arthur was Welsh.

I once met Wilson and Blackett, they were complete nutters.

As has been said elsewhere, the roots of the story are somewhere in the early post-Roman period but the usual depiction, the armour etc. places it several centuries later.

Mart