The Celtic Origins Of The Mythical King Arthur | The Legend | Real Royalty With Foxy Games

[Music] of all the ancient tales of the island of britain one set of stories takes pride of place [Music] the stories of king arthur arthur the perfect king a warrior hero whose exploits have thrilled generation after generation a century after century fearless and flawless he's the king of a fabulous court with a queen of enchanting beauty [Music] arthur champion of honour and self-sacrifice his knights of the round table paragons of chivalry and romance [Music] their daring quests burnish the glory of their king and they fight for justice on his behalf arthur's genesis may be lost in the mists of time but his values still speak to us today his ideals have inspired presidents and protesters democrats and dictators all around the modern world even the manner of his passing seems to comfort the defeated and downtrodden one day if the myth can be believed all that they hope for may come again [Music] but what are the facts about this mystical king archaeologists have scoured britain to try to pinpoint the location of his fabled court camelot historians have searched every surviving ancient manuscript for scraps of evidence about the real arthur romantics have sought to follow his quest for the holy grail but have they all been looking in the wrong direction this is the true story of king arthur the legend [Music] britain at the end of the middle ages an island torn apart by civil war desperately hoping for a hero off the coast of wales a young nobleman is sailing back from exile in france to the land of his fathers his mission to capture the crown of england on the way his sailors have hoisted a homemade flag the fire-breathing red dragon of whales set against green and white the family colors of a dynasty the tudors henry tudor is coming home to do battle with king richard at bosworth it's the culmination of a bloody struggle for the english crown between two power hungry clans york against lancaster the wars of the roses and henry comes proclaiming his welsh blood and asking his fellow countrymen to take up arms with him he claims the mantle of the son of destiny the long prophesied redeemer who comes to restore the fortunes of the welsh [Applause] henry's progress is full of symbolism symbolism that was echoed again and again in a book published in that very same year 1485. the book also had a young hero who would emerge from civil war to claim his destiny as king it was one of the first volumes ever to be printed and sold widely in britain it came from the printing press of william caxton the first english printer le morte arthur the death of arthur by sir thomas mallory tells the whole story of the king and his knights of the round table it's the legend that we remember to this day like henry tudor arthur becomes king of all england like henry tudor significant chapters of his story are written in france but like henry tudor arthur's roots are in fact welsh in the earliest welsh stories he isn't a king or at least he isn't a historical figure he's a legendary one often he's a giant a giant and giant slayer frequently he's a trickster he behaves in ways that mallory would never have allowed him to behave what we have is a typical legendary hero figure by 1485 this shape-shifting legend is ready to emerge from the celtic twilight to dazzle tudor england mallory is writing at the height of the wars of the roses and in the story he reflects this you get rival kings fighting for the position vacated by uther pendragon who was the chief chief king and mallory actually says words to the effect would that the kings of today had the nobles of yesteryear he's looking back at this wonderful british world which he sees as the best place to have been in mallory's story each pretender to the throne is given the chance to draw the true king's sword from an anvil in which it's embedded only the boy arthur succeeds no one not even the boy himself knows that arthur is uther pendragon's true son and heir uther pendragon falls in love with someone else's wife and he makes a pact with merlin the wizard merlin and merlin changes his appearance so he makes love to this woman and she doesn't realize what has happened and this child who is a child of deceit and adultery is arthur and this child is given to merlin and he's schooled by [Music] maryland and now this unlooked for son passes the magical test reclaims the royal sword and succeeds his dead father [Music] from now on through all history he will be known as king arthur his court camelot becomes famous far and wide there the greatest knights in christendom gather in a circle of fellowship they commit themselves to fight for honor free the oppressed defend the powerless always defying evil and braving peril they pursue a mystic search for the holy grail the communion cup of the last supper said to have received christ's blood at his crucifixion [Music] no knight is more courageous than lancelot his sword serves the king but his heart belongs to arthur's queen guinevere queen of here is involved in this adulterous relationship she's never condemned as such i mean i think there's this sense that you know this is what women are like which is perhaps not so much to modern taste and it's interesting that contemporary novels are going to be a depicted very very different she's a lot a lot more verbal apart from anything else but she is very interesting because she comes straight out of welsh tradition so far as we can tell the earliest elements of welsh tradition [Music] she develops first justice queen in consort then as this figure of conflict [Music] and then finally she finds her voice in the 20th and 21st century as people begin to say well you know what did women do in the arthurian legend guinevere and lancelot are drawn ever more intimately together [Music] their slow burning love ignites it will destroy this perfect kingdom when the lovers yield to their passion the king's embittered rival the evil mordred uncovers their adultery arthur's court is rocked to its foundations the king must condemn his queen to death the fellowship of the round table is shattered and lancelot is exiled from camelot when he returns to rescue bonivir chaos ensues [Music] madrid raises an army and seeks to batter the king into submission in a terrible battle the knights of the round table perish [Music] mortally wounded arthur is carried from the battlefield and transported to the mystic isle of avalon there he will sleep through time neither living nor dead until it is said he will awaken again as the son of destiny at the hour of his kingdom's greatest [Music] need in the real world of 1485 many welsh people believed that the ancient prophecy had finally come to life in defeating king richard on the field of bosworth henry tudor claimed the crown of england [Applause] to the welsh his very flag was a portent straight from the tales of king arthur the welsh banner the dragon banner this is the famous red and white dragons which merlin prophesies about that there's a battle between two dragons it looks as if the white one is going to win and just at the last minute the red one comes in duffs up the white one and you know he's victorious the red one is wales [Music] now while it's controversial just exactly how much of this stuff henry actually used his firstborn son whom he sends to leimster which is in the welsh marshes to rule as prince of wales and he gives him a very special name arthur clearly at the dawn of the tudor dynasty the stories of arthur were stories to be reckoned with but where did their power come from what was their origin and what is storytell truthfully in them in trying to answer these questions antiquarians and historians have looked back from henry tudor's day a whole millennium to the time when a british king like arthur might have lived and breathed in the centuries after the roman empire collapsed the native peoples of southern britain found themselves ringed about by hostile forces raids from british tribes from the north wore bands from the west sailing across the irish sea and from the east came powerful invaders from mainland europe the saxons [Music] [Applause] native warlords were forced to defend their lands and their peoples [Applause] [Music] out of this period emerges a number of battle leaders petty kings perhaps this is the period where people try to say that this king or that king must have been arthur and it just doesn't quite work but what does happen is this image of the battle leader generous fierce a leader of his people and it's the stories about these figures that eventually historicize the figure of arthur so that you get a king a specific king a mythical king who is the savior of his people so who was this hero figure who turned back the saxon tide what were his values his culture and what might his people have seen in him as a hero in order to understand any of this we need to go further back in time again much further back four thousand years ago a new people started to appear on the shows of britain smiths and sages possessed of a rare magic they brought with them the secrets of metal working and a culture we call celtic we know them as the beaker people from the fine pottery vessels they use in their everyday life and their rituals their beliefs are now lost in the mists of time we can guess at them only in tales of the old gods and myths of the birth of a wonder child but from generation to generation their customs and beliefs must have been passed on by the late iron age 2000 years ago their myths and legends had become part of the fabric of life in britain we have some tantalizing glimpses of who these people's heroes might have been written down centuries later the earliest celtic tales recall strange combinations of gods and humans using all kinds of magic and trickery champions engaged in quests and adventures forerunners of our king arthur stories of these ancient heroes must have been familiar to every iron age child suddenly this settled pattern of life was pulled apart in 43 a.d the romans invaded britain seeking mineral wealth and farmland and slaves and glory across lowell and britain they built massive army camps like the one at cair leon in south wales carleon is a place that will become enormously significant for the way the story of arthur is told it is the original model for his court and capital and what a vibrant place it must have been this imperial city as recent excavations have revealed what we can see here is a a new reconstruction that we've had done it's still in the development stage but it shows what this part of kalian might have been like at the end of the first century a.d as we imagine it around about 100 you can see a river ship coming up the usk from the seven estuary bringing men and materials into kalyan here we have the key side which we've been excavating here um where all the materials and the men would have been offloaded and then we have a fly-through of the roman buildings that we've been uncovering and it really gives a tremendous sense of how big some of these buildings were and how imposing and important they must have looked at the time so roman carleon was far more than a military barracks its trading links with the continent would change the lives and beliefs of britons forever it's the first and only time that we in britain became part of a mediterranean world khaleen was a major access route so the wine that romans liked to drink all the olive oil that they'd like to put on their food for example came in amphere in large storage vessels and it's not just the material things but also the new gods that romans brought with them the new languages the new ways of dressing and thinking about the world these would also have been brought into western britain presumably at places like this the romans ruled britannia for four centuries they bring warm baths and writing and christianity it's a legacy which will shape the story of arthur but when their empire crumbles the romans march out of british history leaving a power vacuum in southern britain this is the territory on which native british kings were hurried into rearguard action against the new invaders it is the world of king arthur it's also the age of the saints religious leaders like wales's patron saint david the waterman stand for the christianity that the romans brought to britain they are on a mission to keep the stream of this new faith pure from the invading saxon infidels but this is a realm where water itself has always been sacred the old celtic gods remain close to the surface of people's lives it's this urban flow of christian and pagan roman and ancient british that we must get into focus if we to grasp the richness of the arthurian world but in the fog of war as the battles with the saxons intensify arthur's own identity is still veiled in mystery at the beginning of the sixth century you have a monk jildus who writes about the loss of britain and he sort of says you know this king and that king weren't up to the task he's describing a world which is fragmenting almost as he's looking at it he's actually writing within a generation of mountbatten and he mentions the battle and this is one of the really important battles in the arthurian legend but he doesn't mention arthur he's one of the great mysteries one of the great hurdles you have to get over when you're dealing particularly with the historical background of arthur is what is going on here is this monk who sort of says well you know you lost britain because you weren't living up to your ideal yet if you extrapolate what what gilda's is talking about what you have is the battle leader who is author whoever it is that leads the native british at the battle of mount baden victory there halts the saxon advance for a generation in this breathing space the legend of king arthur will bloom today this wooded hillside on the outskirts of the welsh capital cardiff hides its secrets well phil would now guess that it was once one of the power bases of the ancient british or that it has a very special place in the story of arthurian archaeology this little hellfort dates probably to the period round about 500. it's defended by three major banks and ditches which are really quite massive scale the fines indicate that this was occupied by people with power and status they have imported ceramics pottery from the mediterranean probably with wine and olive oil possibly from constantinople from the aegean some coming from north africa from the carthage area objects of status and power sparkling riches from an early date evidence perhaps that an opulent court like camelot might have been a reality the site was investigated by leslie alcock who was the lead archaeologist in cardiff university in the 1950s he dug it originally because he thought it was an iron age site and i think watched his amazement hit these very rich deposits of late fifth sixth seventh century date the wealth discovered here at dina's palace led alcock to investigate a site of similar age in the west of england so cadbury hill became associated in the popular mind as the site of arthur's coat in the 1950s and 60s historians were trying to work out whether there was a historical arthur camelot and the traditions of courtly love are clearly a much later medieval construction and so we were trying to understand the collapse of the the roman empire the emergence of of anglo-saxon kingdoms the the taking over of eastern britain by people speaking essentially a germanic language and that was the kind of context that alcock thought cadbury and an arthur figure could fit into it may not have led to camelot but archaeology on sites like this gives us a much clearer picture of the historical world from which arthur emerged there is no archaeological evidence for for arthur but when you see a little strongly built hill fort like this this does give you a sense of the kind of people who would have lived here round about it there's good soils and we think they would be exploiting the resources of the local farms they would be paying what we call food renders the equivalent of rents to the petty king who lived here this is the kind of figure that gildas denounces within the historical sources the kings of western britain who he sees as bad christians feeding their warriors and giving treasure to their poets [Music] petty kings or local heroes the native british leaders halt the saxon advance at the borders of the land we now call wales and now arthur finally enters the historical record the historia brutonum is one of the really interesting texts in the arthurian legend difficult to date about 9th century is the consensus at the moment but what it does is it actually presents us with a historical or seemingly historical arthur and it puts him in the vanguard of battles it lists all his battles it says what a great leader he was it calls him dux belorum it's using the sort of vocabulary of the roman empire as well this is the basis on which arthur seems to be historical and it's very convincing uh it still sort of attracts people to say no no no there must be something historical there those controversies aside what you get from this is a figure who is beginning to change from being a folk tale figure someone who kind of duffs up the monsters to someone who leads men who can save his country who is noble and fierce but fights human battles rather than sort of supernatural ones the saxons and the welsh have fought to a standstill between them no man's land [Music] on the english side of the border the mercian king offer constructs one of the largest defensive earth works anywhere in dark age europe [Music] offers dyke over in wales arthur is being remembered more and more clearly as a hero defended christian britain against the infidels from the east the national library of wales in aberystwyth houses the wonderful manuscripts of the earliest arthurian tales the black book of kamadhan and the white book of rederch these stories track arthur's legendary progress around wales and record how he left his name on the landscape itself this rocky tour in pembrokeshire karen beaker overlooks an ancient ring of stones tests prove it's very ancient dating back to neolithic times but in welsh it's remembered as bathe arthur arthur's grave one of several places recorded by antiquity as his resting place nearby stands another feature associated with the king this is karen arthur or arthur stone one of the legion of places right across wales which have some sort of reference to the life of this king he must have ridden his horse very hard perhaps because there are not one but two places named after the place where his horse's hoof pressed into the earth and it seems as if this legendary maybe historical king has left his imprint right on the map of wales you could say this is just a lump of rock but give it a name and this lump of rock is baptized and i imagine people actually traversing what is often a very wild terrain trying to explain why this stone was placed here and maybe coming up with an explanation long before geologists could ever begin to explain how the ice melts and moves stones like this about and with their sense of description coupled with imagination they call this place karen arthur and whether or not arthur ever came here doesn't really matter because someone did think this place mattered enough to give it a name and through that give it some sort of permanence [Music] for all that his spirit seems to belong here and for all the prophecies that he will return one day arthur like the welsh seems to be retreating into the mountains a doomed hero figure destined to be remembered only by his own people but then our tale takes a strange twist [Music] in 1066 the normans crossed the english channel from france william the conqueror takes the crown of england the norman's grip is consolidated by the construction of hundreds of castles just a quarter of a century later they have built the great keep of chepstow castle the gateway to south wales now they can sweep westwards across the coastal strip building yet more castles [Music] is from this new territory that the normans now control martial walia or the welsh marches that a new telling of the legend of arthur emerges in the 1130s [Music] this will be the author who conquers the world the author takes these stories which are essentially british stories and he forges them into this beautiful coherent tale now the author himself was part norman and either part welsh or part bretton we're not quite sure but he's certainly a mixed figure so he kind of strides he bestrides these two worlds and so he's in a perfect position to kind of forge this new view of arthur as the king the leader the most noble of all men and this is geoffrey of monmouth jeffrey of mammoth clearweb close to roman carlion walking its ramparts much more substantial in his day he saw it as a great imperial city it describes arthur's coronation in the city of the legion attended by rulers from all over europe and thanks to jeffrey carleon is still welcoming visitors who are in search of king arthur this town now is half of what it would have been when the romans were here and then arthur would have come directly after the romans and he would have made use of this walled place with an amphitheatre that holds 5000 people so for me arthur is a welshman linked to rome and he would have said come here and meet me at my fortress we have people all over the world that come in particularly from the u.s actually who feel far more at home with owning arthur than we do they've come and they search out kaileon as a place where he would have been so for me completely killian embodies king arthur's magic killian is camelot whatever kaleon was for jeffrey of mammoth some say he was writing propaganda using the ancient british tales to legitimize the norman conquest noble and warlike the normans are the true heirs of britain's imperial past jeffrey's author is a great fierce battle leader he's not the kind of kindly king at the round table he is really very very aggressive so you can see how jeffrey is creating for the normans this idea that they had a right to the land the land never belonged to the anglo-saxons it never belonged to the conquering people it belongs to these britons who come ultimately from troy so he brings in the classical world as well give their name to the land of britain and in a sense their ownership is enshrined in this figure of arthur jeffrey's book becomes a medieval bestseller a big hit across continental europe soon writers in france are adding new strands to the legend reflecting the courtly culture of the royal castles of the loire which would define la vie francaise for centuries to come the most famous stories are clearly the stories in the romances and these were originally written in the 12th century by a man named cretian de trois he certainly wrote the lancelot story for marie de champagne who was the daughter of eleanor of aquitaine who became the wife of henry ii so you still have this arc between the normans on the continent and the normans in britain but he chooses these british stories these wonderful wonderful stories and he fits them actually into a hole that jeffrey leaves jeffrey does say at one point that in this period of peace the pucks of thuriana the best men in the world came to arthur's court and that's the period in which these wonderful romances are written region opens up arthur's world to embrace the rules of chivalry what a king should be what a night should be what courtly love should be the stage is set for lancelot's fatal romance he's author's right-hand man his best friend the best knight of the realm the bravest knight the fiercest knight but of course lancelot falls in love with gwenevere with arthur's queen and you get the kind of eternal triangle because in chivalry a knight was supposed to love a lady who was married and out of his reach but what is a practical problem if the queen falls in love with the night you know there's going to be conflict conflict 2 back in britain arthur's role in legitimizing the norman conquest is not complete the normans have yet to secure their grasp on the whole island of britain scotland and upland wales remain outside their direct control a new and vigorous king makes it his mission to change all that edward the first edward longshanks becomes known as the hammer of the scots and he embarks on the biggest program of castle building anywhere in medieval europe to crush the troublesome welsh [Music] it's said that edward proclaimed his own son as prince of wales in carnarvon castle in 1284 claiming for the conquerors the mantle of the son of destiny but even the hammer of the scots needed the help of king arthur the famous round table now displayed in winchester's great hall dates from the days of edward longshanks it shows how he sought to legitimize his claims on britain by associating his court with the court of king arthur long shanks's grandson who was edward iii was also interested in the cult of arthur and of course he takes this notion of the fellowship of the round table and eventually it becomes the order of the garter these specially selected knights the best of the best and of course he invests his son the black prince as the leader of this so these arthurian themes are being anglicized and they're being politicized but wales remained restless soon in its rebel leader owen glendur it seemed to have found its own son of destiny under glindur in the first decade of the 1400s the welsh took hold of a string of norman castles owen was crowned prince of wales at harlech and in his court here a new welsh camelot he laid plans for an independent country clindur's camelot lasted a decade but in the end his rebellion was crushed before he disappeared into the welsh mists leaving little but prophecies that he too like arthur would one day return to redeem his people but for the whole of the coming century britain remained driven by the wars of the roses it was a struggle focused on the legitimate right to succeed to the throne that's why the story of arthur became such a fruitful subject for sir thomas mallory one of the dominant themes in this legend is rulership and who should be king because in the medieval world it was extremely important to have a clear clean line and of course arthur doesn't actually have a legitimate son and in the arthurian legend part of the conflict part of the interest comes from the fact that it's not there in the real world of 1485 henry tudor ended the wars of the roses by force of arms but he still needed to legitimize his dynasty's claim to the crown when henry names his son arthur henry vii calls his eldest son arthur this isn't a boy who survives we end up with henry viii but it's very interesting how he is using this arthurian legend it's very controversial as to what exactly henry is doing but what we can see and we're going to see that we've seen it already and we're going to see it again is that whenever you use arthur he's kind of a way out of a sticky situation arthur always takes you to a glorious past claiming a link to this glorious past was important for henry's fellow countrymen too [Music] the welsh nobility kept ornate scrolls which traced their ancestry back to the native princes of wales and further back again to king arthur himself but as the generations passed arthur and his importance seem to recede further and further from mind until another great change in british life brought him back to center stage it wasn't a change that you'd have expected to breathe new life into an old legend the industrial revolution it heralded the birth of the modern world wales was one of its cradles [Music] in the new mechanical age notions of romance and chivalry seemed outdated but for some the squalor of the present was the very inspiration to reclaim the glories of the past [Music] in martha tidwell at the heart of the booming iron industry one privileged income was drawn back to the old welsh tales charlotte guest was an aristocratic lady who was brought up in the southeast of england she married at the age of 21 married john guest who was the owner of dow lice iron works but she fell in love with the tales of the mabinogion and set about translating them into english she says in her introduction that we should claim wales as the cradle of arthurian romance that wales really is responsible for having introduced these tales to the wider world in england too there was an impulse to escape from the dark satanic mills back to the purer more honorable world represented by camelot england's poet laureate alfred lord tennyson woke arthur from his long sleep with a little help from charlotte guest she knew tennyson she tells us in her diary of how she took tea in little holland house with tennyson and how her translation influenced his idols of the king charlotte guest translation did appeal to the period and this is what's so interesting i think about arthur and about the arthurian tradition arthur is an away shape-shifter and the fact that we know so little about him as a historical character that it's been easy to push him into these various roles and for authors to use him i'd argue very strongly that behind um behind the author of mallory and tennyson geoffrey of monmouth there is a very welsh arthur and that is the original arthur now this welsh original goes global he appeals to all sides in the great ideological conflicts of the 20th century in nazi mythology the ss were the third reich's teutonic knights arthur's true heirs hitler's lieutenant heinrich himmler was obsessed with arthur he designed a camelot for his senior group and furious in the castle of wevelsberg in westphalia the focal point was a huge round table j.r.r tonkin took a different view in the lord of the rings arthurian figures wage war against fascism [Applause] there's a quest a fellowship the guiding hand of a wise wizard and the return of the king all to protect middle earth against an evil dictator but it was in the 1960s that the world's most charismatic leader became associated with king arthur camelot was a byword for the white house under president john fitzgerald kennedy a modern-day court of honor and idealism with a visionary leader ready to guide his people through the dark days of the cold war never have the nations of the world had so much to lose or so much to gain together we shall save our planet or together we shall perish in its flames it was his widow jackie who latched on to this image of the white house as camelot and promoted it in the grief-filled aftermath of kennedy's assassination american's very attracted to arthur because he's the good middle ages americans are slightly suspicious of of what what is happening in europe wars and kings and all kinds of things but this glorious past this fictional past they can deal with because here is might for right we ought to have good leaders and we ought to have people who support the good leaders and of course the kennedy era ends in a curious parallel to mallory and that kennedy was just so full of promise whether he would have fulfilled it or not we don't know and that's the point because he dies young and we kind of think what could have been [Music] a noble leader departing this life too soon leaving a grieving widow and a sense of destiny unfulfilled but the prophecy remains one day he may come again if arthur's greatest battles in ancient times were with the saxons one of his greatest legacies for us today may be the remarkable survival of welsh identity and culture in the modern world on match days in cardiff the capital of wales the red dragon is flown proudly it still has the power to overcome the old enemy and at least one of wales's former rugby heroes takes inspiration from his own given name i sometimes react flippantly and say of course i was named after the late king and wait for the reaction my first cap my first appearance for wales was against england there was a celtic arthurian mist that encircled the city and the stadium the english came as overwhelming favorites with their legions and happily on that day we won that whole history that whole tradition the occasion the atmosphere i felt 10 feet tall i felt like a king going into battle we've been next door to a much larger and more powerful nation for our entire history we need leaders and the name arthur invokes somewhere deep inside us a sense that we can produce great leaders powerful leaders that can inspire a nation achieve great things artheir as i would call him in welsh arthur in english arturo in italian and there are endless it seems variations around the world but to me he was is and always will be a great welsh warrior king and no one no historian or anybody else will ever convince me otherwise king arthur may be wales's greatest expert he has become a hero for the whole world and in a way that transcends the facts of history a legend for all time he is a mythical figure placed in history over and over again because of the power his story wields to shape that history he remains king arthur the legend who was he well he wasn't a historical figure he's a legendary figure who becomes historicized and he's perfect he's the legendary hero he's the fighter he's the trickster he's the giant slayer it's so easy to historicize that character and what makes arthur so powerful is that you can historicize him in different periods he can be a 6th century king fighting this accent he can be a medieval king he can be a victorian king he can be a 20th century king he's going to go into the 21st and 22nd century he's absolutely the perfect figure to project onto him all our ideas of nobility order good governance beauty and romance it is absolutely the perfect myth

Channel: Real Royalty

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Length: 49min 6sec (2946 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021