A folkloric figure famed throughout Europe and beyond, King Arthur is renowned as a mighty ruler who wields the legendary blade Excalibur and commands the Knights of the Round Table. A lesser-known characteristic of the great hero, however, is his Welsh heritage.
Whichever way you slice it, the iconic Arthur character originated from Wales (or at least the part of the British isles that would eventually come to be known as “Wales”). Whether that’s as a fictional creation from the mind of the imaginative Welsh scribe, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the 12th century, or as a real-life medieval tribal leader who inspired the story.
As Professor Raluca Radulescu, Director of the Centre for Arthurian Studies at Bangor University, puts it, ‘You can credit Geoffrey for inventing King Arthur in some sort of way. But Geoffrey would never have made Arthur into a king if Arthur didn’t already have a foothold in Wales.’
What is the legend of King Arthur?
Tales of the amazing acts of the heroic Arthur have spread far and wide since their inception in the Middle Ages, with storytellers, such as the French writer Chrétien de Troyes and English poet Alfred Tennyson, making their own additions and alterations to the source tale to suit their audience. In fact, several of the tropes we associate with Arthur today, such as Arthur’s imposing fortress of Camelot and the eternal-youth-grantring Holy Grail, were inserted into the story much later.
In the most famous early version of the Arthur story, as it appears in Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) written by the Welsh monk Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century, the Arthur legend begins with a British king, Uther Pendragon, fathering a child with the wife of his great enemy. This child, Arthur, grows up to become a fearless ruler who vanquishes the Saxons (an enemy of Britons), then heads off overseas to fight the armies of Rome. However, while he’s away, Arthur’s nephew, Modred, usurps his throne and marries his wife, Guinevere. Understandably aggrieved by this, Arthur returns and kills Modred, but is badly wounded in the process. He is taken to the mystical isle of Avalon to be healed, and is never heard from again.
More modern iterations of the tale have focused on Arthur’s so-called Knights of the Round Table, notably his right-hand man Lancelot, who has an affair with Arthur’s wife Guinevere. Contemporary stories also tend to alter Arthur’s backstory, incorporating the idea of him being “chosen” for the role of king after pulling the sword Excalibur (“Caliburn” in Geoffrey’s text) from a magical anvil, a motif that’s the focus of the 1963 Arthurian-themed Disney movie, The Sword in the Stone (as well as its source text, Thomas Malory's 15th-century Le Morte Darthur).
When did the magician Merlin come along?
A figure strongly entwined in Arthurian legend, the character of Merlin was another that was popularised by Geoffrey in his Historia Regum Britanniae.
In the story, Merlin is first encountered as a young man by King Vortigern, brother of Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father. Merlin advises Vortigern that he will not succeed in building a castle on his chosen spot at Dinas Emrys (a hill near the modern-day village of Beddgelert in North Wales) because it stands atop an underground lake in which two dragons lie sleeping. Vortigern instructs his men to dig beneath the castle, waking the two dragons, one red and one white, who begin a ferocious battle – a story that has become a cornerstone of Welsh folklore, with the red dragon adopted as a symbol of Wales and appearing on the Welsh national flag.
Later, Merlin uses magic to help Uther Pendragon sneak into the chambers of his enemy’s wife on the night Arthur is conceived. In more recent editions of the tale, Merlin also takes on the role of mentor to the young king, though not in Geoffrey’s story.
Versions of the Merlin character appeared in stories predating Geoffrey’s work, where he also aids Vortigern in his attempts to build a castle, but goes by the name Ambrosius. When creating his iteration of Merlin, Geoffrey is thought to have also drawn inspiration from the legend of Myrddin Wyllt, a man who went mad at the sight of battle and lived as a hermit in the Caledonian Forest in North Wales.
So hang on, was Arthur a real person or not?
Geoffrey’s version of Arthur as the great king of Britain is purely fictional. But the idea that the character was inspired by a real-life historical counterpart is certainly plausible, according to Professor Raluca Radulescu, who is also Vice-President of the International Arthurian Society.
‘Arthur wouldn’t have been fabricated out of thin air,’ says Raluca. ‘It wouldn’t have worked to have bardic poetry that talks about an Arthur if nobody thought that Arthur had been a somebody.’
The earliest text to mention an “Arthur” by name is the ninth-century Historia Brittonum written by the Welsh monk Nennius, which served as a key influence to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s later tome with a similar title. Nennius claims Arthur was not a king, but a great Welsh leader of men, who won many battles against the Saxons, including at the Battle of Badon. This battle is mentioned by an earlier Welsh scribe, Gildas, who is thought to have been alive shortly after the time of any historical Arthur – though frustratingly Gildas doesn’t state who won the battle.
Along with Nennius’s work, further mentions of Arthur as a great warrior appear in the 10th-century Latin chronicles Annales Cambriae, and the name is also used as a reference point for acts of valour in the seventh-century poem Y Gododdin by the Welsh bard Aneirin, in which a soldier is praised for his bravery, although ‘he was not Arthur’. Stories about the character also feature in the fantastical Mabinogion anthology, a collection of some of the earliest Welsh prose.
‘It is pretty clear that there are records about a historical Arthur, though they’re not very firmly, let’s say, verifiable,’ says Raluca. ‘But Arthur is never a king in the Welsh tradition and couldn’t have been a king in the sixth century, he would have been a tribal leader.’
How has the depiction of Arthur changed over time?
Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, may be one of the mightiest weapons in European folklore, but Arthur himself has been weaponized by writers throughout history to serve various political agendas and fulfil societal ideals.
In his initial incarnation, Arthur appeared as a valiant Welsh hero and figure of resistance against invading forces. This foundation was built upon by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wanted to elevate the character's status to make him a worthy ancestor for the Anglo Normans. To do this, Arthur had to become a monarch, acquiring a court and adopting a certain kingly dignity required for such a role.
‘What Geoffrey is doing is he’s trying to justify that Britain is part of the great classical tradition,’ says Raluca. ‘He is saying, “Britain is not on the edges of the Roman Empire, look we had Arthur. And this Arthur fought the emperor of Rome.” Which is, of course, his own invention.’
As the Arthur character grew in popularity following the spread of Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae, the ambiguous nature of Arthur’s fate, where he is not confirmed to have died (and therefore could one day return), caused anxieties for the English king Edward I. Edward, who was actively engaged in an attempted conquest of Wales, did not like the idea of a legendary hero of Welsh origin – a former literal embodiment of Welsh resistance – one day returning. To resolve this, the king promoted the idea that Arthur was conclusively dead and buried, even making a visit to Arthur’s supposed “tomb” at Glastonbury Abbey in 1278 (which had been conveniently “discovered” half a century earlier).
By the time the famed poet Alfred Tennyson began writing about Arthur in the 19th century, the character had morphed into a prim-and-proper, Victorian-era English ruler with an altered backstory. He was no longer born as part of a scandalous affair, but simply washed up on the British shoreline – any sense of sin, and almost all traces of his Welsh heritage, washed away by the waves.
What places in Wales are still connected with King Arthur today?
There are thought to be over 300 places in Wales with connections to King Arthur, ranging from landmarks that are part of well-established legends to towns that boast rather tenuous links to the fabled figure.
These sites include Maen Huail, a limestone block in the pretty town of Ruthin, on which Arthur is said to have beheaded the brother of Gildas, and the impressive Roman fortress at Caerleon, noted as the site of Arthur’s court by French writer Chrétien de Troyes.
Then, of course, there’s the ancient, weathered remains of the fortress that once stood on the hillside of Dinas Emrys in Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park, which is claimed to be the ruins of Vortigern’s continually-toppling tower. Unconvinced? Well, an excavation of Dinas Emrys in the 1940s did indicate evidence of an underground lake in the area – though no clear signs of any dragon battle.
Read more about places in Wales connected with King Arthur.
