Arthur
The king every author reinvented — war-leader, conqueror, elected boy, and finally a man who outlives his own kingdom.
Azure, three crowns or — the late-medieval armorials of the Round Table; other rolls give thirteen crowns
No figure in this canon changes more between authors, and it is worth being blunt about how far apart the versions are.
In Nennius he is not a king at all. He is a dux bellorum, a leader of battles, who fights twelve of them and kills nine hundred and forty men at Badon by himself. In the Welsh tales he is the head of a war-band — Culhwch does not petition him, he claims a boon as kin — surrounded by retainers whose abilities are more extraordinary than his own.
Geoffrey makes him a king and then an emperor: a dynastic conqueror in a line from Troy, who takes most of Europe and is marching on Rome when the news comes from home. This Arthur is competent, formidable and almost entirely exterior. He has no interior life because the book he is in does not deal in interiors.
Chrétien and the French put him in a chair. Once romance arrives, the interesting person is the knight on the quest, and Arthur becomes the court that the knight leaves and returns to — increasingly passive, occasionally foolish, the fixed point that gives the adventures their meaning.
Malory does something none of them do: he lets Arthur be young. The first books have a boy who does not know who he is, pulls a sword from a stone because his brother forgot his, weeps when he is told what he has done, sleeps with his half-sister without knowing it, and orders every child born on May Day put to sea to drown the one who will kill him. He is not blameless. He is not wise. By the end he is a man presiding over the wreck of everything he built, being told by his own knight that the queen must burn, and going to a battle he has been warned about since Book One.
And he is never quite allowed to die. Geoffrey has him borne thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds; Layamon sends him to the elf-queen Argante; Malory reports that many men say there is written on his tomb that he is the once and future king, and declines to say so himself.
He is warned about all of it. Merlin tells him Guinevere will love Lancelot before he marries her, and tells him the child born on May Day will destroy the realm before he tries to drown it. Arthur's tragedy is not ignorance; it is that knowing changed nothing.
Nennius's Arthur kills nine hundred men in a day. Chrétien's sits at a table while other men have adventures. Geoffrey's conquers Rome. Malory's cries. The name is doing an enormous amount of work.
Follow Arthur
Arthur’s arc in order — 9 stops, each linking to the story and straight into the primary text.
- 1
- 2
- 3Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake
given a second and better sword by the Lady of the Lake
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
Quoted
“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England”
Le Morte d'Arthur, I.v · read in place“charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy”
Le Morte d'Arthur, III.xv · read in place“ye have nigh slain me with the avow and promise that ye have made; for through you ye have bereft me the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of the world”
Le Morte d'Arthur, XIII.vii · read in place“many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus”
Le Morte d'Arthur, XXI.vii · read in place“the renowned King Arthur himself was wounded deadly, and was borne thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds”
The History of the Kings of Britain, Bk XI, ch. II“The twelfth was a most severe contest, when Arthur penetrated to the hill of Badon. In this engagement, nine hundred and forty fell by his hand alone, no one but the Lord affording him assistance”
Historia Brittonum, Nennius §56 · read in place