Is the King Arthur tale all fiction?
The reality is that some time after the Romans left a British, that is Celtic, King invited some Saxons in to help him with some dynastic struggle or other. We remember him in the legends as Vortigern. The Saxons invited their friends and relatives over and before anyone knew it they were taking land and ports from the British. Now around 500 CE there were a series of battles in which the Celts beat the Saxons, the most amazing of which was the Battle of Badon Hill, which happened about 500 CE. The only near-contemporary author we have who described this, as it was the start of the Dark Ages, is Gildas, whose On the Ruin of Britain is a polemic, not a history. It does not appear to mention Arthur, but does use a simile when describing one of the people who fought there which could be interpreted as “like a bear” or “like Arthur”. Badon Hill, we are told, set back the Saxon invasion by about a century and in later accounts Arthur is said to have killed over 900 Saxons on that day. He su
Well, in fact many of the Arthurian characters (including Arthur himself) are believed by some accredited historians to have actually existed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur… Camelot certainly did, as did many of the other castles and locations mentioned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot Also, it is clear that Mallory was an eye witness to jousts, and that he recorded what he actually saw regarding such things as armor, weapon usage, horse riding by armored knights, etc. – so all of those descriptions have a very authentic feel to them (because they are authentic descriptions). However, things would likely have been quite different in the time that those legendary figures actually lived. Mallory was projecting current culture into the past, known as “anachronism”.
The story of knights in shining armor and stone castles date from the Old French era, when courtly love was popular. If Guinevere and Lancelot had been lovers, they both would have been killed. But they do appear to have some basis in fact. In about 500 A.D., which is when the Arthur legend is set, war lords and kings of sections of Britain would have worn leather armor and lived in wooden structures. Also, the Old French hated the British, and took every opportunity to make fun of them or make their history appear outlandish. The Celtic word for “table” also translates into “building,” so Arthur could well have met with his knights in a round building–there were several such bee-hived shaped buildings across Britain. And the word for “bed” also translates to “altar,” so Guinevere could very well have been a Pictish warrior priestess, and Lancelot could have been her follower. Animal sacrifice was still practiced, so a bloody altar would have been possible. Arthur was supposed to run
