Was King Arthur Real?

The answer to this question depends on what you’re actually looking for. The evidence suggests that ‘An’ Arthur was most definitely real. Is it the man of Mallory’s story? No, probably not. The Romance of King Arthur was, as we know, a propaganda tool used by the Norman Kings to give themselves a sense of heritage in England after the invasion. It gathered pace with the concept of chivalry, which was a rather thinly veiled excuse to behave like a thug in the name of God. By the time we arrive at La Morte D’Arthur, the truth is lost in the mists of time. However, the Normans were not idiots. You can’t base a whole concept on a completely fictitious king and gain the sort of momentum that the Arthur myth has done.

Evidence

The evidence we have available today is very different to what they had available at the time. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who is largely responsible for giving the story momentum, spoke of a ‘very old book’ from which he had taken his information. Now, this could just be a device to try and justify his claims, but we do know that many documents and manuscripts have been lost. Nearly every piece of evidence we have about the Arthurian period is a copy, or even a copy of a copy. Many priceless documents were lost during the Viking raids, also in the reformation when Henry VIII tore down the monasteries and destroyed many of their archives. On the face of it, evidence of one man, one Arthur is slim. There are names like Art, Arthwys, Artorious and so on who appear at different times in history, some as early as the third century, others as late as the ninth. So what are we to make of this mess?

Would they really Invent him?

Well, if we step back for a second and think about it, we’re talking about inventing a king and devoting an entire movement to his memory. Not only that, but a totally fictitious life, fictitious knights, made up battles and places etc, etc. If we suggest that this is what they did, we are not doing these people justice. Just because the levels of literacy and education were very low at this time, it doesn’t mean that their traditions of word of mouth and history were any less powerful. At the time Geoffrey was writing, the man to which he was referring had only been dead for four hundred years or so. In that time there were many kings, many battles, invasions and huge cultural upheavals. However, the names of Ambrosius and Vortigern were remembered and their deeds didn’t match Arthurs. He didn’t have to be a king, all he had do to was keep the enemy at bay for around thirty years and this did happen during the early to mid sixth century. Whomever was responsible for this unusually long period of peacetime (and it was very unusual during the dark ages to have peace) they must have been a powerful general and master tactician commanding great loyalty at a time when loyalty was hard to come by. If there was an Arthur, a man worthy of such respect and honour as to form the basis of the medieval chivalry movement … this could well be the man. Was his name Arthur? Perhaps, or maybe they didn’t know his name, or maybe they confused his name. What matters is that someone, at that time, was one heck of a leader and that is why they were remembered.