King Arthur: Series Research

Before researching my brains out for Enthroned, I thought that King Arthur ascended his throne the way the Disney movie, Sword in the Stone, shows it. I thought he pulled the sword from the stone, people wigged out, and BAM, he was king.

I thought wrong.

Britt’s story follows the original timeline of Arthur’s crowning. He did pull the sword on New Year’s Eve, but many people refused to recognize him as king so there were a number of other contests in which knights, princes, barons, and so on could try pulling the sword out too. Britt’s crowning on the day of Pentecost follows with typical Arthurian tradition, as does her war against King Lot, King Pellinore, King Urien, King Ryence, and the other unnamed kings and barons.

Additionally, before I started collecting King Arthur books and became an Arthur fanatic, I always assumed that King Arthur lived in the time of knights and castles and princesses.

Once again, I thought wrong.

There was a real Arthur. However, that Arthur was a great warrior and probably a general of some sort—not a king. Knights, castles, and even plate armor didn’t exist in his time yet as he was around when the Romans were still in Britain. When I started writing Enthroned I had a choice. My stories could follow history and the 500 words we know about the real Arthur, or they could be based off the legend that came about as a result of medieval writers who plunked Arthur down in a time that was relevant to their audience. I decided to go with the latter, mostly because it would give me more material to draw from.

There’s so much material, in fact, that many of the different legends counter what other Arthur stories and legends have to say. (As a preface, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle are essentially prose cycles of King Arthur stories. The writers of each cycle focused on different themes and different characters.)

Let’s take, for example, the Lady of the Lake. She was originally a villain of sorts. In the Lancelot-Grail Cycle the Lady of the Lake is called Viviane. She learns her magic from Merlin, who falls in love with her, and when she learns everything she can she gets sick of him and locks him in a tree, or beneath a stone depending on the story you’re reading.

It isn’t until the Post-Vulgate Cycle of King Arthur stories that writers started adding that she bestowed the legendary Excalibur on Arthur. In Le Morete d’Arthur the author, Thomas Malory, split the Lady of the Lake into two characters. Both are called the Lady of the Lake but the one who helps Arthur gets a name and is seen as a benefactor where as the one who traps Merlin remains more of a villain. Many writers followed in his footsteps by making the Lady of the Lake good.

In spite of her original character, I’ve never read a modern King Arthur story in which the Lady of the Lake was anything but good and beautiful. When I first started writing this series a few readers were upset with me because my Lady of the Lake is a bit of a bag, but she’s like that because I wanted to pay homage to the original Lady of the Lake—the nag who traps Merlin in a tree. (Don’t worry, I won’t be doing that to Merlin in my series.)

What’s the bottom line? There are more versions and legends of King Arthur lore than I could ever write about, but I do try to go the extra mile and include some of the earliest Arthurian lore in my stories. Hopefully you enjoy reading it.