LogFAQs > #956675512

Blighboy posted...

They originated over a fairly wide span of time and not even exclusively from the British isles (I believe Lancelot was basically french fanfic).

The historical Arthur, if he existed, is typically considered to have been a Celtic or Roman (probably mixed race at that point) warlord from around ~500 who fought a war against invading Anglo-Saxons (German tribes) who later became the English ruling class (or part of the English ruling class, later mixed with Danish and Normans and all those other fun groups).

The King Arthur "bible" was written around 1000 years later as The Death of King Arthur, compiling all the popular stories that had originated in the previous millenium.

To add to this, a lot of the stories started as Welsh and Cornish folklore (because that's where the Romano-Britons got driven to when the Angles and the Saxons pushed into England), some of which managed to cross the channel back to Brittany via other British expatriots (hence the name), which in turn led to the growth of French infatuation with Arthur and which resulted in characters like Lancelot getting added in later.

Arthur tended to go in and out of fashion in England, and whenever there was a surge of interest the story would usually get reinterpreted into modern ideals (which is how full plate armor and chivalry found its way into stories that originated long before either of those two things existed). The Normans in particular loved the crap out of Arthur, and are probably the main reason why so much of the narrative has survived and been perpetuated all the way to the present day (and why his story is known as "The Matter of Britain" in the same way that Charlemagne and Roland and fighting the Moors are "The Matter of France".
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