(knights yelling)
(dramatic fanfare)
(man groaning)
I am King Arthur.
(dramatic music)
(men yelling)
Well, okay. I'm Richard Harris,
but I did play Arthur over 30 years ago
in the Hollywood musical "Camelot".
-(horses neighing) -(armor clattering)
The author of stage screen, lived in the Middle Ages,
the Age of Chivalry, which began in the 12th century
and lasted 300 years.
He was an English king through and through,
and he ruled from Camelot
with his knights of the round table.
But that's just a fantasy
and not at all what the original Arthur was like.
To find the real man,
we must go back to the ancient Britain of the Dark Ages.
Only there can we understand the true story
of this legendary king.
(dramatic fanfare)
The tale of King Arthur was first popularized in the 12th
century chronicle called
"The History of the Kings of Britain",
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welch cleric.
It was probably based on folk tales
that had circulated orally for some 700 years.
They came down to him from the fifth century, the Dark Ages,
when an actual Arthur might have lived, plenty of time
for the story to get jumbled and exaggerated.
If Geoffrey of Monmouth was writing about a real life fifth
century king, then our whole picture
of a medieval Arthur is wrong.
We need to start again.
We have to leave the world of medieval stone castles
and penetrate the mysterious Dark Ages.
For one thing, this was the fifth century
and there was as yet, no England.
Therefore, Arthur could not have been an English king.
This was Britannia
and the only people living here were the Britains.
A Celtic people who would one day become the Irish,
the Welsh, and the Scots.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Arthur must have been a Britain,
and as a Dark Age king would've been far less refined
and probably far less good looking
than the medieval king I played in "Camelot".
Of course, he wouldn't have had shining armor
'cause there wasn't any shining armor
in the fifth century AD.
He'd have probably looked pretty grubby.
And I think it's a good idea to try
and see King Arthur if he ever existed,
for what he was, a British warlord
who rallied people against a threat from outside,
and he was probably, I suspect, a pretty unpleasant bit
of work like most warlords are.
But can we trust Geoffrey of Monmouth?
Did he base his story on a real dark age king?
(dramatic music)
Fifth century Britannia was a land in turmoil.
The Roman empire was collapsing
and its legions had abandoned this remote outpost
after 300 years of occupation.
With the Romans gone,
the Britains came onto threat from the Anglo-Saxons,
a Germanic people who had newly immigrated
from northern Europe.
The island called Britannia was a battleground.
The Celtic Britains versus the Germanic Anglo-Saxons.
Slowly the Anglo-Saxons fought their way across the British
landscape, seizing control from the Native Britains
as they pushed further west.
Then eventually something
or someone stopped them dead in their tracks.
Could it have been a real fifth century warrior king?
There is evidence for this on a hill on the outskirts
of Salisbury in Wilshire in the south of England.
This used to be an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.
According to John Hines,
an archeologist from Cardiff University.
Graves are the best way of plotting
how far the Anglo-Saxons advanced
because their burial practices are so distinctive.
The line of graves keeps moving westward,
until it suddenly stops.
Something stood in their path,
a line in the sand that seriously delayed
the Anglo-Saxon onslaught.
It comes up to a line in which runs just
outside Salisbury, which suggests
that at this point the Anglo-Saxons really had come
to some sort of boundary, some sort of geographical line,
which they weren't able to cross at that point.
So someone, somehow,
brought those invaders to their knees,
but who inspired and led the resistance?
Who saved the Britains?
If the tales of Arthur had never been written,
it seems you'd have to invent him to make sense
of the period and its archeology.
So the question is, not did a warrior leader exist,
but could this dark age hero's life be the true story
upon which the fabulous legend of King Arthur was based?
(dramatic Celtic music)
To find out, we start at the beginning of Monmouth's tale,
on the north coast of the British county
of Cornwall in Tintagel.
It's where Arthur came into the world.
As fantastical as his life was, so was his beginning.
His tale begins nearby In the castle of the Duke of Cornwall
and his beautiful wife, Igraine.
Igraine had a passion
for another nobleman, Uther Pendragon.
The feeling was clearly mutual.
The Duke felt he had to act to save his marriage,
so he locked Igraine up in his summer residence.
The jealous Duke sent his wife away to the safety
of the fortress of Tintagel, hoping that
that would stop them consummating their love.
But Uther Pendragon says Geoffrey's tale, asked a sorcerer
to make him look like the Duke
so he could enter the fortress unchallenged.
That sorcerer was the wizard Merlin.
Merlin agreed to Luther Pendragon's request on condition
that any child born of the union be handed over to him.
Luther lustily agreed.
(thunder crackling)
One night disguised as the Duke of Cornwall,
Luther Pendragon entered Tintagel and seduced Igraine.
And Arthur was born.
(baby cooing)
On the face of it,
the story has no basis in history.
The ruins here belonged to a medieval castle built
after Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the legend.
Why then would Geoffrey locate Arthur's birthplace here?
Perhaps he knew
that Tintagel was a real settlement in the dark ages,
and remarkably, there are clues that it was.
-(seagulls cawing) -(waves crashing)
In 1998, archeologists were digging near
to the main ruins.
Chris Schneider, archeologist at Marymount University
followed the excavations closely.
During the recent excavations, they uncovered a slate
that was being used as a drain cover.
It was originally part of another structure.
When they turned it over, they found this wonderful
inscription, which is very exciting news for historians
and archeologists of the fifth and sixth century.
They were excited because the inscription was written in
fifth century Latin script.
It meant that Tintagel was in fact occupied
in the dark ages, at a time when Geoffrey says Arthur lived.
But could a future warrior King really have been born here?
The Latin slate is a revealing clue.
In the dark ages, very few people could write.
Those who could usually lived in a monastery or a palace.
Initially, the remoteness of Tintagel suggested a monastery,
but archeology showed it wasn't a monastery.
It was a palace.
To judge from the heaps of broken pottery found here,
most of it dating from the fifth century.
(dreamy music)
The broken pieces came from expensive jars
and glasses like these,
and were used to enjoy exalted luxuries such
as wine from the Mediterranean.
Someone with a taste
for the finer things in life lived here,
only someone wealthy
and powerful could have afforded to buy such luxuries.
A king, perhaps.
(objects crashing)
(dramatic music)
Tintagel, as it turns out, was a trading hub
and further excavations uncover the remains
of a fifth century harbor here.
(fanciful music)
The number of pottery found at Tintagel suggests
that this may have been a port where goods were
transported in large scale
from the Mediterranean and from France.
And such large scale suggests a king is exercising control
over this trade and redistributing these goods.
(dramatic music)
[Richard] They then found a moat defended by the sea.
Tintagel must have been a royal fortress,
but only used for part of the year.
(dramatic music)
British kings of the fifth
and sixth centuries appear to be itinerant kings
and they didn't have permanent courts,
but they moved from court to court,
sometimes holding court at sites like this,
remote, exposed to the weather.
Maybe they were only here seasonally, maybe only summer
occupation at Tintagel.
A fifth century royal stronghold like Tintagel
is just the kind of place where a future warrior
king might be conceived.
I'm sure many were.
(waves crashing)
So our Arthur is born
and is living in the far west
of Britain in the middle of the fifth century.
What he needs now are some magical swords to work with.
Where will he get them?
When we return, we'll find that the swords are even older
than King Arthur himself.
(dramatic music)
(hoof beats thudding)
It was Merlin, all the tales say,
who was the mentor of young Arthur.
He taught Arthur all the skills needed by a prince.
Riding, hunting, games, and most important, swordplay.
(eerie music)
When storytellers elaborate on Geoffrey's legend,
they're always harping on about swords
with astonishing magical powers.
(twinkly chiming)
Once upon a time, they say, a mighty gleaming sword was
thrust deep into a huge stone
and only one man was destined to pull it out.
That man would be the king of Britain.
The fiercest warlords
and the strongest soldiers tried in vain to free the blade.
Then young Arthur stepped forward
and pulled the sword out easily.
(solemn music)
Archeologist Francis Pryor doesn't think
that tale is a complete fantasy.
He believed that the story is the memory
of a very real craft practiced in ancient times.
Long before Arthur's time, swords were cast in bronze.
According to Francis Pryor,
it's this process that lies at the root of the legend.
A bronze sword was made in a two piece mold out of stone,
closely fitted together,
and the stone of the mold has to be heated up
to very nearly the same temperature
as the molten bronze going into it.
So you pour the molten bronze into the mold
and then you wait for a few minutes, let it to cool down,
and you remove some pins which hold the two
halves of the mold together.
(dramatic music)
And it's that withdrawing from the center of the mold,
which I think lies at the root of Arthur
and the sword in the stone.
(dramatic music)
But the sword in the stone is only one
of two great swords in the story.
One day, when he was fully grown into a man,
Arthur needed a new sword.
(dramatic music)
Merlin told him where he could find a magical blade
fit for a king.
In a secret lake lived an underwater enchantress,
the Lady of the Lake.
She controls the most powerful sword of all, Excalibur.
(dramatic music)
Now there's a fantasy image,
but there may be an element of truth in it.
Archeologists in Britain have found countless
ancient sword blades.
Guess where? At the bottom of lakes and rivers.
I think actually placing swords in water
is part of a rite of passage.
When somebody died, let's say a powerful warrior,
the sword was placed in the water as perhaps a symbol of
that warrior's journey into the next world.
To go on a warrior's journey requires
first that you be a warrior.
Arthur was said to have earned his
reputation on the battlefield.
So it's here we must look for further evidence
of a real fifth century king.
(dramatic music)
The archeological record confirms
that the Anglo-Saxons conquered the eastern half
of the country, but for more than 50 years,
they were held at bay in the eastern half of Britain.
Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth writes that it was Arthur
who crushed the advancing Saxons in a series
of heroic battles all along the front line.
The mystery is how.
The big problem facing an Arthur-like warrior was this,
how to move his troops swiftly across the country.
Well, the Romans had left something
behind the would've helped the Britains.
The infrastructure of Britain was nothing
to boast about, was it ever.
But a warrior King could at least take advantage
of one key legacy of the Roman occupation.
(rocks crashing)
(triumphant music)
The Romans had built a vast network
of straight roads linking every corner of Britain,
for the very purpose of moving their legions around.
And although the Romans had left Britain a hundred years
earlier, the roads were still in working order.
(triumphant music)
A working knowledge of the Roman roads meant
that a warrior king could keep a step ahead
and ambush the Anglo-Saxon settler as it will.
-(men yelling) -(triumphant music)
Here, on the battlefields of Britain,
history and fiction begin to converge.
Many experts believe the Arthurian legend is a clear
indicator that one great king, perhaps called Arthur,
was responsible for these military successes.
Our great problem with Arthur is
that there must have been a lot
of other warriors around at his time.
Little though we know it, we need to know why it is
that he got picked out as the great hero everyone remembers.
I think that because he's associated with a list of battles,
which we can't credit to other leaders,
and because he's remembered first
and foremost as a war leader,
he probably was a real human being.
So what we've got now is a warlord
with a fearsome reputation
for keeping the Anglo-Saxon wolf at bay.
But what about his opulent lifestyle, his castles?
As we shall see, not all of that is pure fantasy.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth's medieval account
of Arthur's story,
the reward for all his victories is
to be crowned king of all the Britains.
And it's only in later medieval versions of the story,
we are told Arthur ruled from Camelot.
But is there any evidence for such a place?
This is the classic image of Camelot,
the romantic castle city at the heart
of the Arthurian legend, where the bloodied
but victorious author rules the land
with his beloved queen Guinevere
and his faithful knights at his side.
But stone castles like these date from the middle ages,
they're a far cry from the dark age earthen
stronghold of a real Arthur.
A fifth century Camelot would've been a hill fort,
identifying which one has proved a headache
for Arthurian sleuths.
Dark aged kings were always moving between forts.
But in another corner of southwest Britain in Somerset,
historians and archeologists have stumbled
upon remarkable leads.
The clues were first spotted as long ago as 1542
by John Leland, an Aquarian, fascinated by the legend
of Arthur and Camelot.
He found a River Camel, and two villages, West Camel
and Queen Camel in Somerset.
Their names had the same root as Camelot,
But there was no castle in sight
until he took a closer look at an imposing local landmark,
just four miles from the Camel villages, Cadbury Hill.
Today trees obscure much of the view.
But in the 16th century, Leland noticed
that the hill was surrounded by no fewer than four lines
of banks and ditches.
They were manmade, the telltale signs
of an ancient hill fort.
It wasn't the image of grandeur we associate with Camelot,
but in the fifth century, kings and warlords lived austere
and simple lives, and the fort was so close
to the Camel villages
that Leland believed he had found King Arthur's Camelot.
The trouble, of course, was that Leland did not have a shred
of archeological evidence to prove it.
But then in 1966, round about the time
I was filming "Camelot",
archeologists began to dig here on Cadbury Hill.
Would they prove Leland and right, or show once
and for all that this was not Camelot?
Two years into the dig, they had a breakthrough.
Right here in the southwest corner of the fort,
they unearthed the foundations of a gate tower.
(dramatic music)
The size and layout of the post holes allowed archeologists
to walk out what the gate tower would've looked like.
(dramatic fanfare)
On both sides of the tower,
they also found the remains of massive stone
and timber ramparts three quarters of a mile long.
Although only 6% of the site has been excavated,
this is clearly the kind
of place a warlord would've ruled from.
But was it in use in the fifth century where we are looking
for a real life Arthur?
The best way of dating a settlement is
through pottery remains.
One day, by the base of the gate tower,
the archeologists found just what they were looking for.
The remains of cracked
and worn out pots discarded by dark aged people
who traditionally threw their garbage outside the gates.
The pieces dated for the fifth century AD, Arthur's time.
The archeologist then made the most significant find of all.
This hill fort had been refortified during the second half
of the fifth century.
In its size and defensive structure,
it was unique in fifth century Britain.
This was a mighty fortress.
(dramatic music)
This appears to be the citadel of the king.
It has great commanding views of the area.
The Britains would've fled to places like this as places
of refuge with Anglo-Saxon war bands
and kings expanding their territories in this direction.
That would've taken over 800 men to defend the ramparts
of Cadbury Castle alone.
Now, given that the size of the average war band in this
period is well under a hundred men, this appears
to be the undertaking of a powerful figure
who could command enormous resources.
Could Cadbury be the real dark age Camelot?
Geoffrey of Monmouth doesn't mention Camelot,
but he does tell us how Arthur held court.
That is, he encircled himself with a brotherhood
of loyal knights, the Knights of the Round Table.
Is there evidence of such a round table?
(dramatic music)
The medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth,
celebrates Arthur's brotherhood of knights,
the Knights of the Round Table.
In fact, in time, stories of the knights
become more important than Arthur himself.
That round table is one of the strongest Arthurian images.
It conjures up a time of chivalry and refinement.
At first glance, it's hard to reconcile that medieval image
with the coarse life in a dark age hill fort.
But, archeological discoveries on Cadbury Hill
have raised intriguing possibilities.
(triumphant music)
The evidence came from the raised mound
in the center of the hill fort.
Along with hundreds of fragments of fifth century pottery,
archeologists found post holes laid out in a pattern.
The post holes and the shards of pottery told them that
they have found the remains of a dark aged timbered hall.
(dramatic fanfare)
The hall was 60 feet long by 30 feet wide, big enough
to host a gathering of warlords.
(dramatic fanfare)
But it was inside the hall
that archeologists unearthed some tantalizing links
to the legendary round table.
(dramatic fanfare)
Once again, it was pieces of pottery,
this time from broken wine jars.
-(men chattering) -(objects clattering)
It was obvious from the sheer quantity
of wine jars found in the hall
that the main activity here was drinking.
A sensible way to relax you might say,
after a hard day fighting the Saxons.
But a sixth century poem reveals how drinking
and the round table might be linked.
"The Gododdin" describes
how warrior nobles came together in feasting halls
to drink wine and meat.
The round table was likely nothing more than a metaphor
for male bonding, a draft of courage
before going out to die for your king.
There's a gem of truth there.
The idea of equality and brotherhood inside a body
of retainers and war band, professional warriors.
They are really quite extensive
by the standards of their day.
They have weapons to sometimes handed down for generations.
They drink epic quantities of high grade alcohol
and they're kept fed upon things like peppered chops,
given a really high, nowadays rockstar lifestyle in exchange
being prepared to die for their prince.
But what about the round table itself?
Well, perhaps we're taking the image too literally.
There may be nothing in archeology suggesting
that dark age warlords sat at round tables,
but they would have clustered around the central hearth
of their feasting halls.
So the legendary image
of Arthur having his knights in council needs
to be adjusted a bit.
It may not be as fantastic as it seems.
-(dramatic music) -(hoof beats thudding)
If Geoffrey of Momouth's medieval story
is based on a fifth century fact,
and there really was a warrior king
who led the Britains,
the great mystery is why his name is so scarce
in the documents of the time?
This silence has puzzled Geoffrey Ash,
one of the world's leading Arthurian experts.
He embarked on a major investigation to try
and establish once and for all who the real Arthur might be.
He found a rare sixth century document, the gothic history.
It tells the story of the one king of the Britains
that everyone agrees existed in the fifth century.
Someone with close links to the Roman Empire at the time,
a warlord called Riothamus.
I decided to compare
what the gothic history writes about Riothamus
with what Geoffrey of Monmouth said about Arthur.
Both men are said to have been kings in the second
half of the fifth century.
One of Riothamus' campaigns is dated to be around 469 AD.
Amazingly, this is the very time when,
according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
King Arthur was winning his battles.
Indeed, the more Ash looked, the stronger
the parallels between Arthur
and Riothamus became.
Cadbury Hill fort, for example,
although there are no records of where Riothamus lived,
his dates precisely matched those
for the reification of the hill fort.
Riothamus was exactly at that time.
He was the only documented person who could have done it.
So he fitted in very well with the results of archeology.
But the most intriguing parallel concerned
their overseas campaigns.
Riothamus was asked
by the Roman emperor to lead an army into France
to repel the barbarian invaders there.
Geoffrey of Monmouth also had Arthur campaigning in France.
History is now helping
to fill the Arthur shaped hole at the heart
of fifth century Britain.
Still, why didn't Geoffrey of Monmouth call his king
Riothamus and not Arthur?
On the face of it, the name Riothamus sounds Roman
and appears to have nothing in common with the name Arthur.
But there is in fact a link.
Riothamus isn't a name as such.
It's a Latin word, meaning supreme or high king.
And that of course, is precisely what Arthur was.
So maybe the real Arthur was called Riothamus.
Perhaps we need to get rid of the grubby,
long-haired king we're used to.
This Arthur, well connected
to the Roman empire would've followed
the latest Roman fashions.
Both his beard and hair could have been worn short
and he probably would've sported
leather armor, especially toughened.
Of course, we cannot be absolutely sure
that Riothamus was the real King Arthur,
but we do know that Riothamus was a real king,
heavily influenced by the Romans.
Maybe the real king dressed like a Roman
or maybe his appearance was wilder,
more Celtic, Welsh or Irish.
But one thing's for certain,
the real King Arthur looked nothing like what we imagined.
(dramatic music)
It's time to abandon once and for all
the image of Arthur as a knight in shining armor.
-(dramatic fanfare) -(horse neighing)
(dramatic music)
Sometimes the strongest evidence for the existence
of a historical figure is
what the records say about his or her death.
We don't know how Riothamus died,
but according to the famous legend, Arthur died at the hand
of his nephew.
(dramatic music)
(men yelling)
Geoffrey's story says that the ambitious Mordred plotted
with other young knight to bring the old king down.
(men yelling)
The two sides had a bloody battle,
leaving only three knights alive.
Among them were Mordred Arthur.
Arthur was said to have surprised Mordred
with his speed of hand
and lanced him to death.
But before he fell,
Mordred managed to inflict on Arthur a terrible head wound.
Actually, it is not so much the way he died
through treachery that becomes Arthur most.
In fact, it's his afterlife,
his magical survival in the spirit world awaiting his
people's cry for help that defines him as a hero.
Heroes always return.
When we return, we shall see how.
After the battle it was said
that nine hooded maidens took the mortally wounded Arthur
to the Isle of Avalon where he died.
Maybe Avalon is a product
of Geoffrey of Monmouth's imagination.
Maybe not.
If we could find Avalon,
perhaps we could find the real King Arthur buried there.
No one's found evidence of the burial
of any fifth century warlord on any island
off Britain's coast.
Strangely, the most likely place for the Isle
of Avalon is not offshore at all.
In 1998, archeologist Richard Tabor was digging
on the lower slopes of Cadbury Hill
when he unearthed an ancient burial pit.
Inside was a skeleton, probably an ancient warrior.
Although it was dated to the Bronze Age,
centuries before the time of Arthur,
it had one special feature
When we excavated that we found it was in the remains
of a coffin as a black mineralized deposit
where the wood had decayed.
The coffin was made up of slats of wood,
and then we noticed it was of rather boat shape.
It's far longer than it needed to be.
The image of a warrior on a boat
evokes Arthur's final journey to Avalon.
So could Avalon be close by?
Well, the team then began to take photos of the burial site.
As we went round and round photographing it in detail,
we eventually were looking from the feet towards the head.
[Richard] When they looked at the photos
they found the boat was aligned to a tor,
or hill, just 10 miles away.
Glastonbury Tor.
As in many ancient cultures, the boat was meant
to carry this man's soul to the afterlife.
Is it possible that centuries later,
Arthur's loyal followers wanted his body to make the spirit
to a journey to the same place?
The problem is that this is no island.
It's at least 15 miles from the sea.
But this wasn't always so.
Glastonbury is surrounded by floodplains.
Nowadays, canals drain away the excess waters.
But until modern times, floods here got much higher.
I mean, we'd be standing in water probably up
to our knees and behind me,
the tore would've been standing up through the water
and I think it must have looked like an island
and people considered that on the islands lived
if you like, the ancestors, that was the next world.
And I think it's extremely likely
that a really ambitious warlord would want
to get himself buried at the top of Glastonbury tor,
for the simple reason that he's right
up there with the gods.
Perhaps the Isle of Avalon
and Glastonbury are the same place,
and Arthur is buried there.
If so, where?
(dramatic music)
Until now, excavations have revealed no dark age burials
on the top of the tor.
Good Arthur supporters have
settled for the foot of the hill instead.
(dramatic music)
At the base of the tor today are the ruins
of Glastonbury Abbey.
The Abbey flourished during the Middle Ages around the time
that Geoffrey of Monmouth was writing about Arthur.
But Geoffrey never mentions Glastonbury.
In any case, Arthur's legend was then becoming
popular across Europe.
And some years later, after Geoffrey's death,
the Abbey suddenly hit the headlines.
The monks said they found the grave of King Arthur.
They also claimed they found a small cross
with an inscription in Latin, which read.
"Here lies the famous King Arthur at his queen Guinevere
in the aisle of Avalon".
Continuing to dig,
they burrowed away until they unearthed a hollowed out log
containing two bodies.
They claim that next to the skeleton of a woman was that
of a tall man with a badly damaged skull.
(dramatic music)
The monks then wrote that they took the bones out
and re-laid them inside the abbey just here,
in a specially made tomb.
Unfortunately, the tomb
and the bones were lost when the abbey was
destroyed by Henry VIII.
All that remains now is this plaque.
It marks the spot where the bones were said to be buried.
But can we believe all this?
You'd expect a sudden increase in the number of pilgrims
after such an astonishing announcement.
But there was no spike in the number
of pilgrims heading for Glastonbury.
Still, none of the other pilgrimage sites in England
registered a murmur of complaint
that Glastonbury was pulling a fast one.
So perhaps the Glastonbury monks were telling the truth.
(dramatic music)
The legendary Arthur is the ultimate romantic hero, a king
with magic on his side.
But the evidence suggests
that there was indeed a real warrior king
who successfully united the dark age tribes of Britain.
We can't be sure his name was Arthur.
But even so, it's possible
that Geoffrey was tapping into a folk memory
of some real king after all.
That memory was then embellished
by centuries of storytellers.
Some claim that Arthur never quite died
and that he's merely asleep somewhere in a cave.
The whereabouts of the cave is a mystery.
But the story goes that if you came along
at the right moment, a golden gate would open
and you could see Arthur asleep.
(dramatic fanfare)
Well, obviously that's just a tall story.
(dramatic music)
But staggeringly, it may well be the best clue yet
that there once was a great warrior king called Arthur.
There were quite a number of other stories
in various parts of Europe about an immortal king, emperor.
Frederick Barbarosa in a hill in Germany,
and various others who are supposed to be still alive
and asleep in a cave.
There doesn't seem to be any other instance
of this cave legend being told
of some fairytale figure or mythical figure.
It's always told of a real person.
So if you find it told of Arthur, that's in favor
of his being a real person.
(waves crashing)
So what does it all amount to,
this amalgam of history and legend called Arthur?
King Arthur's legend flourished for seven centuries
before Geoffrey of Monmouth chronicled his life.
And that tale has been hugely popular for 900 years.
We may never know the whole truth about the obscure monarch
called Arthur, but the myth has outlived the man.
But one thing we do know, everyone needs a hero to look up
to, and that is exactly what Arthur was.
-(dramatic music) -(sword blades clanging)
(dramatic music)