Most of us know of King Arthur as a mythical monarch, involved in many fascinating tales of folklore and legend. Between getting his hands on Excalibur; to fighting off the forces of darkness; to heading the Knights of the Round Table; to dealing with Merlin the magician; to getting cuckolded by his best friend Lancelot, and many more thrilling accounts, King Arthur’s tale is nonstop Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em adventure and drama. It goes without saying that there never was a real life King Arthur. Nobody ever did all the stuff in the Arthurian legend. However, there was a real life leader whose deeds provided the foundation upon which the Arthurian mythology was built.
Troubled Britannia
The Western Roman Empire faced epically hard times in the fifth century AD. There was significant political instability under a series of weak and ineffectual emperors. Simultaneously, it came under massive pressure from barbarian invaders on multiple fronts. So the Romans withdrew forces from the far off province of Britannia, to use them to defend more vital territories. It is unclear if the pullback was intended as temporary, with plans to return once things settled down.
As it turned out, the legions never came back, and Britannia was left on its own. That was bad news for the Romano-Britons, who were beset by their own invaders. Most threatening of those were the Picts in Scotland, and Saxons from across the North Sea. Bad became worse when the locals, with the logic that it takes a thief to catch a thief, decided to hire Saxon mercenaries and settle them in Britain, to defend them from other Saxons and barbarians. As seen below, it backfired in spectacular fashion.
The Real War That Gave Rise to Arthurian Legend
Soon as the Saxons settled in Britain and got comfortable, they decided that they really liked their now home. Also, that they could do with more land. So they accused their hosts and employers of failure to meet their side of the deal. The Saxons alleged that they had been shortchanged on supplies they had been promised. The Romano-Britons sent their leaders to try and negotiate with the Saxons and reduce the tensions.
Unfortunately, the Saxons’ idea of negotiation was to suddenly pull out their daggers mid-meeting and massacre the native leaders in what became known as “The Night of the Long Knives”. Centuries, later, that became the name of yet another massacre, this one by Nazis of their political opponents in 1930s Germany. The Saxons spared just one Briton, a leader named Vortigern. They kept him alive as a puppet ruler in exchange for his promise to grant them more land.
The Saxons absorbed the lands extorted from the Romano-Britons through their puppet British ruler Vortigern, then sought more. They eventually launched a massive onslaught that was described by Saint Gildas, a British cleric who penned De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (“On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”), circa 510 – 530. From gradual expansion, the Saxons – eventually joined by fellow Germanic tribes the Jutes and Angles – set out on a war of conquest that sought to seize all of Britain. That conflict, as the Saxons and their allies steadily seized more and more territory, was the backdrop war against which the legend of King Arthur was painted, of a valiant British leader fighting off the invaders.
The Real Life Arthur, Camelot, and Round Table
As the invaders fought to displace the local Britons and replace them with Germanic settlers, the hard-pressed locals were fortunate to find an effective warlord to lead them. Subsequent legend morphed him into the King Arthur of folklore and mythology. The contemporary sources do not contain any reference to a King Arthur, but there is evidence that some British war leader, perhaps named Arthur or something close, was alive at the time. For example, a sixth century engraving was found in Cornwall, that bore the name of some important figure named “Artognu”.
Archaeologists on a dig at the reputed Camelot excavated what might have been Arthur’s real Round Table in 2010. Unlike the Camelot of Arthurian legend, this real life Camelot was not a purpose-built castle, but a repurposed Roman amphitheater in Chester. The Round Table was not a literal piece of furniture, but a vast wood and stone structure that could have allowed up to 1,000 of Arthur’s followers to gather. Scholars believe that noblemen would have sat in the front rows of a circular meeting place, while those of lower rank sat on stone benches further back.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Archaeology Magazine, September 23rd, 1998 – King Arthur Was Real?
History Halls – Folklore and Mythology: The Origins of Dragons
Storr, Jim – King Arthur’s Wars: The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of England (2016)
Telegraph, The, July 11th, 2010 – Historians Locate King Arthur’s Round Table
