What is known about the possibility of a "real King Arthur"?

Question

I once saw a documentary that discussed a discovered possible "round table" but wondered how "pie in the sky" this possibility was as well as just how much/how little evidence is there for any possibility of truth in the legend. My daughter is just beginning a study of the middle ages and we will be studying some of the legends in her related literature. I have done some research but feel as though I'm drowning in articles that seem too similar to each-other that are vague at best. I hoped for either a somewhat more knowledgeable answer to the question or a couple of ideas for good resources (or both). I know there isn't a lot of evidence, and if there is any truth to it, it is most likely that King Arthur is actually an amalgam of multiple men. If pure myth, how is that this character became such a symbolic force in history to be touted as something more?

Answer 1

In many respects, you're right: King Arthur is an amalgamation of many different individuals, and not just as a potentially historical figure. The Arthur legends are contradictory--there was no concept of fictional continuity as one might find in a modern fiction series or, say, Marvel Comics characters. Every story and author had their own take on Arthur, and out of that assortment we get this kind of pastiche figure. The Arthur in Geofferey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain" has very little detail about the person (but a lot to say about dragons). Thomas Malory's "The Death of Arthur" presents a noble and tragic figure, most in line with our modern conception of these stories. King Arthur in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a drunk party animal who is ready to chop first and ask questions never.

The Arthurian lore has such a rich history on both sides of the English Channel, it clearly tapped into aspects of these medieval cultures that was "real." The stories reflected the ideals that nobles in what is now Britan and France wanted to project to each other. So I never want to go as far as to say the whole thing is just made up. But uncovering any historical realities to King Arthur is tough, in large part because our written sources about Arthur come from around 600 years after the period when he would have lived.

That said, if there were a singular individual on whom the lore was based, here is what we could be pretty sure of:

1. He would have been a Romano-Briton warlord, part of the people who had been at least partially assimilated into the culture of the late Roman Empire, and he would have lived in around the 5th or 6th centuries, during the period in which the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were migrating over from the Continent.
2. He may have reached a level of status and power that the Saxons would later call a Bretwalda (wide-ruler or Britain-ruler), a kind of high king or ruler who had authority over other powerful warlords. When the Roman Empire retreated from Britain, it isn't like they whole country emptied out; plenty of people continued to live in the old cities and new individuals rose to power over whatever small territories they could maintain. These are the people whom the Saxons fought/settled among/married into to varying degrees. A historical Arthur would have competed with these Saxon newcomers for control of the best lands in Britain.
3. This figure does not much resemble the King Arthur of the stories, because those stories were written for a very different culture, centuries later. The Arthur stories told European nobles how to, among other things, behave in a world of endemic small-scale warfare and interpersonal violence. The specific cast of characters around Arthur, too, were much later creations and were the product of Norman, French, and Breton courts. Ironically, King Arthur owes much more to French cultures than he does English (Monty Python aside).