Arthurian legends have fascinated us for centuries, beginning in medieval literature, and adapting to their current form in modern-day novels, films and art. My latest novel, Excalibur, is a tale of Arthur which takes place in a crumbling Britain. A country under a veil of darkness following the Roman departure in the first decade of the fifth century after four hundred years of rule. After so many years of Roman law, trade, taxation, military protection, roads and aqueducts, the country fell into anarchy. Gildas, a British monk and historian writing in the early sixth century, lays down a picture of abandoned cities, civil war and invasions by Saxon tribes. It is into this world that Arthur is born, a semi-mythical figure who is held up to this day as one of Britain’s greatest kings.
For the two centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in around 400 AD, only fragments of evidence survive to help paint a picture of those dark days, which must have seemed like an apocalypse to the people of the time. There are mentions of Arthur in early texts, such as a poem known as ‘Y Gododdin’, an elegy for warriors of the Gododdin tribe from a region in south-east Scotland. These early mentions of Arthur add credulity to his legends, and many of the characters in Excalibur are historical people, such as Ida, Octha, Theodric, Urien and Owain.
Arthur appears in a wealth of medieval literature, which helped Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes shape the legends into the stories more recognisable to modern readers. The surviving Arthurian Welsh prose tales were first edited and translated in 1838 by Charlotte Guest into a work she called the Mabinogion. That important work contains Arthurian stories such as ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ (where Llamrei is mentioned as Arthur’s horse), ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’, and ‘The Birth of Arthur’ (which contains the story of Kaletvwlch, or Excalibur, the sword in the stone). One of the greatest collections of Welsh verse is the Book of Taliesin, originally composed by a sixth-century bard named Taliesin, which is dedicated to Urien of Rheged and his son Owain and contains references to Arthur and his adventures.
Later writers, particularly the romantic Arthurian writers of the Middle Ages, give us many more Arthurian legends and add colourful characters such as Lancelot, Guinevere and Perceval and the story of the Holy Grail. We shall meet some of those characters in future novels in this series, but Guinevere can be traced back to the histories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, where the original Welsh form of her name was Gwynhyfar.
The world I have attempted to paint at the time of Arthur’s life is one of violence, extreme wealth, and extreme poverty, and any mistakes in the descriptions or telling are my own. Following the Roman departure, Britain fell into a lawless state where strongmen prevailed, carving out kingdoms for themselves using war and subjugation, and living in hilltop forts with earthwork defences. They were cruel men, living in the shadow of a literate church and the ghost of an ancient Celtic religion, with Roman-style commands of infantry and mounted warriors to protect towns and trade. The ruling elite fought for precious resources, and to gather the render due from the farmers within their kingdoms. This is Arthur’s world, and I hope you enjoy reading Excalibur.