Who is king arthur

Camelot was the name of the place where King Arthur held court and was the location of the famous Round Table. Perhaps a clue to its possible location might be found in the sources we have for the legend of King Arthur.

Did he exist and if so, who was he? Was he perhaps a Romano-Celtic leader defending his lands from Anglo-Saxon invaders? The earliest reference to Arthur is in a poem dating from around AD Nearly all the Britons were killed and their lands absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

This is the earliest reference to Arthur. The Welsh are the direct descendants of the Romano-Britons of England and Wales, who were pushed back towards the west of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries.

Arthur is considered by many to have been a Romano-British leader fighting the Anglo-Saxon invaders. So the placing of Camelot in Wales at Caerleon could be quite plausible. The legend of Arthur and his knights also appears in The Mabinogion , a collection of eleven stories collated from early medieval Welsh manuscripts, intertwining pre-Christian Celtic mythology, folklore, tradition and history. Was Dracula a real person? Was Sherlock Holmes based on a real person? Was Jim Crow a Real Person?

Was Paul Bunyan a real person? The character of Mordred, the treacherous nephew, is based upon the first-century-BC king Mandubracius of the Trinovantes in Essex , a prince who betrayed his uncle to Julius Caesar. There is no equivalent of Lancelot in the earliest accounts of Arthur, his queen Ganhumara instead committing adultery with Mordred. Added in the late 12th century, the quest for the Holy Grail adds a greater sense of both chivalry and religious destiny to the story of Arthur.

There is no mention of a sword in the stone prophesy for Arthur in the earliest accounts of his life; Arthur simply inherits the kingdom from his father, Uther. Historian John Matthews explores six big questions about King Arthur and his legend, separating the myth from reality….

The Round Table is the centerpiece of the Arthurian world. According to the 13th-century poet Layamon, Arthur ordered the table to be built for him by a famous Cornish carpenter, who somehow made the table capable of seating 1, men clearly an exaggeration , yet easily portable to wherever Arthur set up his mobile base of operations. Some knights were said to have sat at the Round Table. When they had largely rid the land of monsters, dragons, and evil customs, the knights undertook their greatest task of all — the quest for the Holy Grail.

Many did not return. Many faery women thread together the stories of Arthur and his knights. However, by AD , such titles had become vague and 'King' was the customary designation of Celtic leaders.

When Roman rule faded on the island, the old kingly families of the tribes and regions re-emerged. From hints found in ancient records, we can glean a picture of Arthur as a warrior who was successful for a time, only to die tragically in a civil war after a mysterious Battle of Camlann in AD or thereabouts.

Arthur's father may have been Ambrosius Aurelianus, himself a Duke of Britain. The decades between Ambrosius' death, sometime after , and Arthur's own demise some 40 years later were a time of shifting fortune and wide-ranging struggles. This may explain the myriad of places in Britain that claim a connection to the legendary king. In the centuries that followed Arthur's death, fanciful histories fleshed out the few reliable facts about the 'King' with a whole body of literature that created an enduring legend.

Also in the 12th century, the monk Nennius, in his Historia Brittonum The History of the Britons listed Arthur's battles against Germanic invaders - the Saxons and the Angles - during the late 5th and early 6th centuries.

Later, in , the French writer Chretien de Troyes established King Arthur as a fashionable subject of romantic literature by introducing medieval chivalry and courtly romance into the tales. Not only did de Troyes create many of the knights, including Sir Lancelot, he also used the more lyrical sounding Guinevere as the name for Arthur's queen and chose Camelot for the name of his court.

Read more: Inside Balmoral Castle. In his Le Morte d'Arthur The Death of Arthur , printed in , he retold many of the tales that had first been circulated by word of mouth and were then written down. He dressed Arthur in the fashions of his own times, transforming him into a 15th-century hero. Malory's text transports the reader to a dreamland of castles and kingdoms in which the love of adventure was reason enough to wage battles. Though these adventures are as real as a boy's dream, they're as difficult to place in the latitude and longitude of today's world.

After being raised in secret, Arthur proves himself, king, by drawing a sword from a stone. He marries Guinevere, founds the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot and begets a son, Mordred, in unknowing incest. Following 12 years of prosperity, Arthur's knights commence a quest to discover the Holy Grail, during which time Lancelot, his chief knight, consummates an adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere.

Ultimately, the couple is discovered and Arthur pursues Lancelot into France, leaving Mordred behind as regent.

At the end of the story, Arthur discovers an attempt by Mordred to seize the throne and returns to quash the rebellion. In a final battle, Mordred dies and Arthur receives a mortal wound, after which he is transported by barge to the Vale of Avalon.

Following the battle, Sir Bedivere reluctantly returns Arthur's sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, while both Lancelot and Guinevere enter holy orders and live out their lives in peace. The British Isles abound with landmarks linked to the Arthurian legend.

To try to unravel the mystery surrounding him, I visited some of these places. The solid oak tabletop measures 18 feet in diameter and weighs approximately one and a quarter tons. It hangs on the wall, looking like an enormous dartboard with green and white segments painted onto it to indicate the places where the king and his knights once sat.

In Malory's day, many considered it to be the genuine article, and historians believed Winchester Castle to be the site of Arthur's fortress, Camelot. Read more: Queen's remains found in Winchester Cathedral. Unfortunately, the existing castle isn't nearly old enough to have been Arthur's. Tests prove Edward III constructed the table, probably in , when he conceived the notion of an order of chivalry based on the knights of the Round Table, as depicted in the popular romances.

It was possibly used for celebrating the popular Arthurian festivals in which noblemen indulged. A Tudor rose marks its centre. Legend says that Merlin, the magician, conjured the table for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. On Uther's death, Merlin gave the table to Arthur. The idea of a table where all were equal, where no man sat in state above his peers appealed to the romantic idealism which, especially in Victorian times, surrounded the knightly legend.

In reality, any leader of Arthur's time would have had to impose a fierce discipline or risk being deposed.