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england podcast hello and welcome for the queens of england podcast supplemental guinevere the queen

of camelon the queen of camelot Stories of King Arthur have abounded for about 1,500 years. The first stories that we can trace seem to have emerged in the 5th and 6th centuries, from England and Wales, of a native Celtic warlord fighting back against foreign invasions of Britain that had been abandoned by the declining Western Roman Empire.

Over the coming centuries, Arthur became the archetypal British king, against whom all kings were measured.

As we move into the second half of the Middle Ages,

these stories handed down through the generations through oral tradition suddenly start to get

written down. The person who I think can be considered the sort of Herodotus of Arthurian

legend is Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th century Welsh monk. Now, if you've been listening to the show for a while,

you may remember that Geoffrey is not my favourite guy on the world,

mainly because he was considered to have been a flagrant charlatan with the facts,

even by the standards of the time.

And part of that reputation comes from his chronicle Historia Regian Britannier,

or the History of the Kings of England,

which contains, amongst a lot of other fanciful stuff, a detailed account of a British ruler called King Arthur,

who was around after the Romans left in the fifth century.

After Geoffrey, we have the Norman poet Wace, who largely just straight copied from Geoffrey, but he did introduce a few things, including the notion of the round table, which we know and love today. So, kudos to him for that.

Then we have the first of the Arthurian romance writers, and someone whom I will be drawing on heavily for this show, Cretien de T'Ois.

We know very little about Cretien, other than the fact

that he probably came from Tois, a city in eastern France and the province of Champagne,

...