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Arthur

the boy who became a man, 

who became a king, 

          who became a legend

So what has King Arthur got to do with a Blog Hop entitled The Wonder of Rome?
Nothing at all if you are thinking of the traditional Medieval tales of knights in armour and the turreted castle of Camelot, but a lot if you consider that Arthur - if he had truly existed - should rightly be placed in that 5th/6th century Dark Age period of British history between the going of the Romans and the coming of the Anglo Saxons (the English).

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Like most avid history book-a-holics my attention was drawn to the stories of King Arthur in my early days of reading anything and everything remotely historical. But I was never too keen on them. Lancelot seemed to be a bit of a show-off, Arthur was a drip and I had no patience with that silly woman, Guinevere. I quite liked the horses and the knights though. 

As my taste in reading matured I realised that the reason I had no time for the Round Table, Holy Grail and Merlin was because there was no historical accuracy in the stories. 

None at all. Not a jot. 

The Arthurian myths are just that – myths. 

Not that there is anything wrong in that, but I was interested in the reality of history and the Matter of Arthur came not remotely near. Until I read Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave and Hollow Hills. In her author’s note she mentioned that if Arthur had existed he was more likely to have lived in the post-Roman era, that highly turbulent time between the going of Rome from Britain and the arrival of the Anglo Saxons and the formation of England.

This is what I had been craving! The real Arthur, the true place of where and when he had lived, loved and fought – I was hooked. I devoured every history book I could lay hands on about this fifth/sixth century legend – but the more I discovered, the more I became dissatisfied. IF Arthur had existed he was not the ultimate chivalric King of All Britain. IF he had existed he was more likely to have been a small-time warlord of …. Well of somewhere in Britain. Maybe what is now Wales, or Scotland, or the West Country, or Somerset… for the crunch truth is, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Arthur was a real person. All the supposed and offered evidence doesn’t stand up in court; as with Robin Hood it seems that Arthur is a legend that over the centuries became more and more exaggerated.

My other frustration was that all the novels I read about Arthur (with the exception of Mary Stewart and Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword At Sunset) were even more annoying – I was forming my own opinion of what might have happened, and other novels did not fit what I had in mind. So I wrote my own.

It took me ten years to complete what eventually became the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy – the manuscript I submitted to an agent became book one, The Kingmaking and the first half of Pendragon’s Banner (the third book, Shadow of the King came after publication of book one).

There were three things I was determined to achieve in my interpretation of this Dark Age King:

• Arthur would not be the chivalric, god-fearing King apparently obsessed with Holy Relics  who appears in the Medieval Tales.

• Guinevere was not going to be a namby-pamby spoilt brat of a girl who screamed at spiders. Nor was she going to betray her lord King and husband.

• I would write the ‘what might have really happened’ tale – with a warts an’ all Arthur set in the earlier than usual era of 450-500 AD.

I researched Roman Britain in the fifth century to the best of my ability – and I do confess here that a good part of the knowledge I gained then is now out of date. Smoke holes, for instance. Twenty to thirty years ago it was believed that the British (Celtic/Iron Age) roundhouses with their almost conical thatched roofs had a central “smoke hole” as a chimney. We now know that, in fact, the smoke seeped out through the thatch – British Villages would not have had neatly interspersed columns of smoke drifting upwards from each house-place, but would have been enveloped within a general fug of smoke.

Nor is the old theory that the Saxons came, invaded, settled and drove the native Britons westward into what is now Wales and the West Country  true. (The word Welsh/ Wealas is an English [Saxon] word meaning 'foreigner.) Yes, there were a few battles, yes there were a few families who probably abandoned their farmsteads and went elsewhere, but on the whole the few Saxons who first migrated from Germany and Jutland settled along the coastline and rivers of what is now England in relative peace. The Englisc took British women for wives, the daughters married British men - and England and the English emerged.

It was only during my research that the truth about Roman saddles came to light. Thirty-odd years ago it was presumed that a Roman rode bareback or on a pad of some sort. (And I do use the word'Roman' in general – the ‘Roman’ army and cavalry was made up from many and varied creeds and cultures – most of whom were not Italian!)

Then a Roman saddle was found. The illustration shows what it looked like. 

The rider tucked his back and hips against the two rear pommel horns, and his thighs under and into the two front horns – giving a very secure seat, much as a modern side saddle does.

Note how the leaping head and fixed head "pommels" of a side saddle
tuck over and into the rider's legs

We are also used to big horses today – that old image of a knight in armour being hoisted into the saddle is another nonsense myth (in fact knights were very agile in their armour, despite the weight).  I read one Arthurian novel that referred to Arthur riding on a great big horse with feathered (hairy) legs – clearly intending the Shire horse. Absolute nonsense. The Shire breed developed during the sixteenth century. War horses were not heavy horses (the Shire is known for being a placid ‘plodding’ breed – ideal as a draught horse, not agile enough to be used in battle.)

The Shire - about 18 hands high

In the years before the eleventh century horses were of a height that we would now call a pony (the term pony is also a relatively modern word!) The average height in the fifth century for a mount would have been about 13.2 – 14.00 hands (a ‘hand’ being the width of a man’s hand, about four inches)

As with the modern Native Breeds of Britain (Exmoor, Dartmoor, Welsh etc) these sturdy animals could easily carry a full grown man – here’s the proof of my own Exmoor pony with my son-in-law-to-be riding him.

This Exmoor pony is 12.1 hands high

I gave my King Arthur something a little flashier to ride – an Arabian breed, which were known here in Britain during the Roman period of occupation. The Arab is a breed of horse with its skeletal spinal frame slightly different to other horses – and bones of a distinctive Arabian-type horse were found near Hadrian’s Wall.

It is easy to imagine why Roman officers and men of wealth would want to own a horse of this kind – they are beautiful creatures. And if Romans could import lions, elephants and giraffes for use in the arena there is no reason why the Arab desert-Breed could not be transported overseas either.

The Arabian horse - Kathy is 5'7 the horse is 15.2 hands high

So my Arthur was a rough, tough, rugged warlord who had to fight hard to gain his kingdom, and even harder to keep it. His wife, Gwenhwyfar (as I named her) was equally as capable – she possessed a sword and knew how to use it. 

Following the early legends my Arthur and Gwenhwyfar had three sons, Llachue, Gwydre and Amr. One is referred to as the son of Arthur the soldier. Another died killed by his father, Arthur, another, was killed by a boar. 

Oh and Mordred? In the early references he is Medraut, and his demise is recorded as “Medraut who fell at the battle of Camlann”.

There is absolutely nothing to say, however, that he was killed fighting against Arthur.

For those reading this who are grumbling that I have things wrong – that the word King is an English term – I thought long and hard about the use of language in my novels. I use the Latinised place names (Londinium – London, Eboracum – York) because it seemed right to do so, but Dux Bellorum seemed clumsy. Everyone knows Arthur as a king. So I kept the term.

After all, if you are going to be really picky I should have written the entire thing in Latin or British (Welsh) so I regard the story as a “rough translation.”

And at the end of the day anything about King Arthur is just that, a story. Be he real or nothing more than a man of legend, long may he reign in the world of Imaginative Fiction.

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Competition to win a copy of the Kingmaking now closed. Winner announced shortly.
And the winner is (picked at random : Jacqueline Baird. Thank you to everyone who entered & congratulations Jacqueline.

Click HERE to read more of the Pendragon's Banner Trilogy and to where you can purchase the books

(available in paperback and as an e-book)

If you enjoyed this post - or even if you didn't LOL)- please travel onward to these other Blogs for more interesting articles by a variety of authors on the Wonder of Rome:

• David Pilling
• Elisabeth Storrs
• Gordon Doherty
• Scott Hunter Books
• Ruth Downie
• Manda Scott
• Fred Nath
• Eagle Has Fallen
• Live Journal
• Alison Morton
• Petrea Burchard
• Tim Hodkinson
• S.J.A. Turney's Books
• Mark Patton
• John Henry Clay
• David Blixt
• Helen Hollick

recommended reading: There is an excellent book about the facts & fiction of  King Arthur - the myths, legends, history, and what we can ever really know about him:
Worlds of Arthur by Guy Halsall 

The latest (favourable LOL)  Amazon.co.uk review for The Kingmaking:

"Spell-binding, magnificent, gutsy, heartbreaking, raw with bloodshed, triumphant! Helen Hollick's Arthurian trilogy quickly draws you into the world of legend. No genteel fairytale story of Camelot, this! Gutsy, sweaty, and real. The Dark Ages brought vividly, to life! This is the legend I want to believe in. Yes it is cruel in places, but they were cruel times. I want to read about them, but I'm glad not to have lived through them. Still, I feel as though, for a while, I was there - and it was breath-taking!"