[LMB] OT: Arthurian novels

[B. Ross Ashley]

On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 05:21:00 -0700 (PDT), Raye Johnsen <raye_j at yahoo.com>
wrote:
--- Eric Oppen <technomad at intergate.com> wrote:


>> You know, there's one part of the Arthurian mythos
>> that, AFAIK, has never 
>> been touched much by novelists.
>> 
>> At the beginning of his career, the young king
>> Arthur ended up having to 
>> fight the "Dictator Lucius" of Rome, and ended up
>> becoming (more-or-less) 
>> Emperor of much of Europe.
>  
>

> And I read it in 'La Morte d'Arthur' and thought,
> 'Riiight, here's the obligatory
> Britain-is-the-greatest-nation-in-history propaganda
> bit.'

> Honestly?  I loved history as a kid, it's why I read
> Malory in the first place.  I *knew* Britain had no
> foreign possessions until well *after* the fall of the
> Roman Empire.  I mean, Hadrian's Wall?  The whole
> Lords of the Marches thing?  The wars that led to the
> naming of the Ruling Prince of Wales as the heir to
> the ruler of the United Kingdom, a tradition that
> remains to this day?  The whole 'Camelot against the
> Romans' excursion literally couldn't have happened.

> So it was propaganda, pure and simple.  Even the
> greatest empire the world has ever seen could not
> stand against the might of Britain's Once and Future
> King!  Rah rah isn't England WONDERFUL?!

> Um.  Yeah.  Let's just go on to the next chapter,
> shall we?

Well. That's one point of view, innit? On the other hand, there's Geoffrey Ashe, in _The Discovery of King Arthur_, whose argument is summed up fairly well here: http://verify.fastmail.us/alford/arthur.html 
There was in fact an interval between the two phases of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain, which might be explained by a resurgence under  a politico-military leader we could concieve of as "Arthur". There are historical references to a king Riotimus in Britain who went over to Gaul to help defend the place against the sort of German-speaking invaders whom he had defeated at home; Ashe traces this name to a variant of the British Celtic for "high king". The dates are even right. Arthur's defeat of the Romans and conquest of Gaul is reduced to an expedition into Gaul to aid in throwing back the Franks and Saxons. But it could have happened.



-- 
B. Ross Ashley
http://www.brashley46.livejournal.com
http://brashley46.no-ip.info
"It would be too painful to think that there are worlds somewhere
where I got everything right."  Sulien, in _The King's Name_, by Jo Walton
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