King Arthur's genealogy ?

Question

This profile was brought to my attention by Vic who is working on the new Welsh project.

I am inclined to set these profiles as " questionable" or "mythological" ( Maybe make a " Legendary " template ) so it is quite clear that no genealogies connect to this group ?

Comments

I'll match your King Arthur with a Lancelot http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Esposyni-3 and I'm sure there must be a Guinevere somewhere around :)

Seriously though it is a problem, and I've been meaning to ask what to do with the profiles of those mythic Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies that start with Woden.   Technically they are not BCE profiles but I'm wondering if we treat them the same, refer them on to Wikipedia and then eventually get rid of them?

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http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/135282/king-arthurs-genealogy,, Had this posted to me , grains  of salt, have not studdied it completely

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I know it's a popular pastime for some, to rubbish most things, ( same folk who think Vikings had horns on their helmets ), but is it not true that every one of our ancestors are 'mythical', until they have been named and verified, with documentary proofs. We know they existed, otherwise we would not be here, but the proof is the catch. Even then, some things are questionable. I have seen members on Wikitree who claim descent from biblical figures, documented in a sense, but unproven just the same.

I would suggest that these characters be placed in a special catagory, ' Pending, awaiting verification ', not simply dismissed out of hand. Then, if a member can produce convincing evidence to support their claim, all well and good.

As historians, one thing we should have learned is that things called false or impossible by 'experts' in the past, have since had to be reviewed. Alternatively, we could bury our heads in the sand, and pretend that humanity did not exist before 1000.

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Tim, I do not think that Vikings had wings or horns on their helmets. I do not believe that the Iceni when they revolted against the new governing Romans in Eastern England had knives on the axle ends of their war chariots. I also recognise that there was a human world before 1000, even before 1000BC!

There are a few issues that I would discuss with you though. Historical figures are just that; they appear in the written documented record. The reason that the period following the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain and the eventual fall of Rome was known as the Dark Ages was not because mankind forgot to be creative or have some sort of civilization. It was because unlike the period that immediately preceded it was a period of literacy and highly developed administrative record keeping.

It is for that reason that the period before the Roman invasion in Britain is generally called pre-history. History is about recorded facts - although the early historians were as much story-tellers as anything else. I am saying all this because of the problems that arise in dealing with figures such as Arthur. There is no record of him, as such, before the twelvth century. The monk Gildas writing in Rhuys in France in the sixth century told the tale of Ambrosianus Aurelianus who many people associate with the Arthurian legend; but that is an association by later commentators of a person related by a sixth century monk with another person written about six hundred years later. That is not historical record, that is fiction.

The withdrawal of the legions from Britain was completed in or around 410AD, which is over a century before Gildas was writing. His writing incidentally, the renowned "De Excidis et conquesto Britaniae" was a round condemnation of the way that the new governing elites were going about their business, and a stark critique of the way that the church was behaving here.

You are, of course right, if you say that we have no evidence for Ambrosianus Aurelianus not being one and the same as King Arthur, but there is actually no real evidence that either existed. As an historian I spend a great deal of time in dusty old archives digging through documents looking for evidence. I can, of course, delight in the romantic but I cannot support any notion of any 'history' that cannot be substantiated by fact.

You rightly infer that as new technologies emerge we are able to determine things that have in the past been held to be falsehoods but turn out to be true. The reverse is also a truism. However, when it comes to identifying individuals from pre-history we have absolutely no chance. There is a pertinent example in the UK at present. The losing party at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 was the last Plantagenet king of England, Richard III. His body was accidentally rediscovered under what had become a car park in the city of Leicester.

This week his body will be processed and re-interred in the Anglican Cathedral at Leicester with use of Roman Catholic rites in the actual burial (since he was a Catholic). Why does this fifteenth century king have the right to have his DNA tested, his body positively identified and re-buried in a manner befitting his former station when the last Saxon King whose body may have been discovered in a small souther English village in 1954 was denied even the DNA sampling? It is simple, the Planatagenet family were well documented in the official record and easy to trace down to the present. The same does not apply to Harold II who died at the battle of Hastings in 1066. Yet there are almost certainly people alive today who share MtDNA with Harold Godwinson - its just that we do not know who they are.

The chances of discovering any provable link to a person alive in the early fifth century is hardly going to be easier! Consequently, any real historian would recognise the delight of the romance of the stories, but leave it at that. If a profile is allowed on WikiTree then we would ecpect it to be of an actual person. In this case we do not know that; indeed it is probable that if any of the stories are based in truth then they are an amalgam of people - we do not have profiles for multiple people! Let us leave it all well alone.

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John, I would agree with your comments, and yes, information written long after a person is supposed to have died has to be questioned. Let's face it, many folk today are not even sure who their grandparents were. However, my point was that whilst we cannot prove these reports, neither can we positively disprove them. What the courts of law call 'Reasonable Doubt', I believe.

It was for this reason I suggested a 'Pending, awaiting verification' catagory, placing the onus upon the claimant to furnish proof. The same principal, I understand, as employed by The Royal College Of Arms.

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Tim, I empathise with your point, but...

The Royal College of Arms would not suggest pending unless there were some probability of the existence of a person. In this case I would dispute reasonable doubt. There is no contemporary, nor even near contemporary evidence of any such person. At best the legend is based on an amalgam of people, at worst it is mere wishful thinking.

The period in question saw a great revival of the traditions of oral histories, but just like any tales told on dark nights with much ale flowing, they were rather more embellishment than fact. It did not help that some 'historians' of antiquity seem to have curried favour with the current ruling houses thereby linking their dubious genealogy to mythical or legendary figures of the Sagas or other sources.

I would have thought that these were things that we want to avoid in the profiles on these pages?

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All fables, myths, mysteries, and good fish tales all start with a grain of truth. The King Arthur we know from stories may not be real, but the man who inspired them probably is. Perhaps Arthur was not a "king" per say but a leader, history may be inaccurate; (similar to the Exodus & Egypt conundrum) the modern time line may be incorrect,  a city changed names, recorder made a mistake or added changes to suit their personal tastes. There are thousands of possibilities how the identity of the real King Arthur got lost to time. However, if we keep searching we may eventually find out who he really was.

Answer 1

There's a whole rack of these profiles that are more less left for dead. I think some actually clash with true historical figures. I tried to start untangling them a long while back ... but I wish anybody luck who takes it on!

Answer 2

Perhaps someone should create a mythic genealogy site. Unfortunately, mythological, legendary, and fantasical profiles don't belong here.

Comments

There is generally good historical documentation to support an Arthur who was in Britain on or about that timeframe - however, there is little support for his "King" title unless you believe that he claimed the title at some point in his lifetime.

So while I do agree that mythological creatures should not be on the site, I'm not convinced that Arthur falls into that category. I did a research paper on him once, and he was more of a warlord who united some of the other warlords into a semi-peaceful period - after which things fell apart and he disappeared from history.

The fantastical stories written since then have widely expanded this story and made him into a nearly super-powered King of all of England which is far from the truth, but I would support a historically accurate Arthur provided someone could document the relevant sources and his biography appropriately.

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There might also have been an Achilles for example, but that does not mean that we can categorize the genealogical information we have about Achilles as anything other than mythical. Arthur's story, however it started, has clearly passed a threshold where serious researchers can only say that it is now impossible to reconstruct any details confidently at all. Furthermore it seems to me questionable that we should have entries for anyone who can not ever be connected to the one big single family tree of all mankind which I conceive is the ultimate goal of this project.

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Scott, I would love to know what documented evidence that you found that was both reliable and contemporary.

Most of these tales are retellings by writers of the high mediaeval period of half-understood tales written six hundred or more years before, and these were themselves not contemporary.

Primary source material for this period is almost non-existent, indeed may be entirely non-existent. It is akin to me writing an account of a story written by a monk in the early fifteenth century about events that happened in the early fourteenth. Except that in both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the monks were usually literate and able to record facts and figures, so in this case there may be a modicum of fact within my tale. My account would not be primary source material, and nor would the tale told by the monk. It would be a fiction - even if endowed with some factual information.

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We do have the disputed person category and it's building up fast !

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Disputed_Existence

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So many good points! Maggie, thanks so much for pointing out the template to use for people whose existence is disputed. Is there a similar template for people who may have existed, but whose details are so obscure as to make connecting them to the tree problematic?

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Scott, your paper sounds like it was fascinating research. If you still have it I would love to read it. Message me here and we can swap email addresses. :-) MC

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I would need to dig through a number of boxes to find the paper, as it was written in High School, which was over 30 years ago. However, there were a number of books that relied heavily on archaelogical dig information as well as the scarce documented evidence from that period that showed an Arthur (or Roman Arturo) who lived in that time period.

While proving that he was King of the Britons would be virtually impossible without a time machine (and even less likely that this even occurred), the paper I did was based on proving his existence and documenting which historical deeds his name could be attributed to, which to a great extent, I feel is possible. As to establishing a family tree structure for him, setting even estimated dates for his birth and death, or even determining clearly his lineage, would be incredibly challenging and fraught with too many errors to note.

I would disagree that his existence is in question, but that his role in events and legendary status is highly in question. I'll see if I can't find some reference books that were used to prove his existence and note that key archaelogical evidence that was used for the proofs. Arthur the warlord who conquered other warlords is the more likely truth than King Arthur of Camelot and the Round Table.

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Scott, I think that we can agree that there was no 'King of the Britons'. Arturo is not a Romano-British name that I have ever come across, but I suppose it is possible that someone may have had that name. Why is it though that Gildas of Rhuys, writing a century after the events following the withdrawal of the legions only speaks of Ambrosianus Aurelianus (which other later 'historians' associated with the mythical king Arthur)?

Very few written texts have come down to us from the fifth or sixth century, primarily because of the lack of literacy. However, by the twelfth century there were far more literate people in England at least and the number of books in libraries had been growing for about three hundred years (their growth coincided with the growth of monastic orders). Yet it took until the twelfth centruy before we find written mention of this great figure. He did not appear in any of the sagas told by the Anglo-Saxons that passed down to be recorded, not even as an honoured enemy! Whereas Gildas speculates that Ambrosianus was a leading light at the battle of Mons Badonicus (which may also have taken place near my home town!) which was a mighty (for the day) battle between the indigenous Romano-British peoples and the incoming Gewisse, who became established as the West Saxons.

What was beginning to emerge in that twelfth century was the early burgeoning of knightly orders and travelling troubadors and minstrels. Arthur was at the beginning of his process of emergence as an ideal to be achieved in knightly endeavours fighting against the barbarian incomers. As far as the powers that be were concerned, especially in the late 1100s, the more heroic figures that could justify 'Christian' virtues over pagans the better. The Romans were Christianised when they left Britain, and were therefore acceptable, the pagan Anglo-Saxons were not - and more especially so because they were the 'enemy' in so many cases after the Norman conquest just a hundred years before. Richard, King of England (1189-1199) needed to raise taxes to support his years of crusading in the Holy Land. It is no mystery to me that this period prompted the emergence of a number of legendary figures, not least Robin Hood and his pals.

After graduating with my first degree in human geography I undertook some university based training in archaeology,to enable me to understand methodologies and interpret their reports from excavations rather than follow a career in the discipline. My chosen path and passion has been in historical geography. I know of no excavations or inhumations that have been able to identify any individual from that period, or any period for centuries later in the UK. The problem with the mythical Arthur is that he emerges in myths in England, in France and in other places too! Merlin too, he keeps cropping up in places where they claim he once lived, or where he died, or is buried. My own birth town is one example.

I look forward to hearing about the books in question.

Answer 3

I just posted another note asking for volunteers to identify all the characters who appear in the King Arthur stories and to add them to the category:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:King_Arthur_Legend

If the category writeup gets too long, it can be accompanied by a free space profile detailing the King Arthur Stories -- not to retell the many detailed stories, but to identify key people, and particularly any elements or names that are actually derived from history and then embellished, and which exist only in legend.  

As others have said, fiction has no place in genealogy, but many stories are based on some degree of reality which is important to sort out.  And it's important to account for the legends or else they get re-created on a site like WikiTree.  

Those people who truly never existed cannot have parents, spouses or children, so their profiles, while written up, need to be de-linked from those of real people, and thereby will not appear in anyone's family tree.  Before that happens, I'd like to include cross-links between their profiles and links to the category so that they can be found.  

Because a lot of these profiles were uploaded while pre-1500 Gedcoms were permitted, many contain no or conflicted information and it will take some time to sort out what the factual basis, if any, for many of these ancient profiles is.