King Arthur is part legend and part history. The first mention of the historically possible Arthur is in the Mabinogian, a Welsh collection of quasi-historical events which not only gives a brief historical account of an early Welsh hero leading a defense against the invading Anglo-Saxons, but also gives him an entourage of soldier-helpers such as Kay, his seneschal. His fictional persona grew as English history tried to fill in the gap in time between the Roman invasion and the fall of the Roman Empire. Much of the modern vision of Arthur comes from French versions, mostly by Chretien de Troyes, who melded the French propensity for romance with the British sagas, thereby giving the Arthurian legend the stories of Guenevere, Lancelot, the Round Table, the Sword in the Stone, etc. Modern interpretations, such as The Once and Future King (detailing Arthur’s childhood and adolescence under the tutelage of Merlin) and the musical and movie rendition in Camelot, have left us with more French than English images of what had begun as a saga of the founding of Great Britain.
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