The Arthurian Cycle: The Adventures of King Arthur from Birth to the Knights of the Round Table.King Arthur is a legendary figure of the 6th-7th century AD in southern Britain, the present-day countries of South West England and South Wales. Arthur is said to have resisted with his subjects, of Roman civilization, the Saxon invaders, and to have unified his country and founded the Order of the Knights of the Round Table, establishing a government in Camelot (Arthur’s palace has been identified by some scholars with the Neolithic fortress of Cadbury, on the border between Somerset and Dorset, by others with Greenan Castle, north of Glasgow).
The numerous adventures involving the Knights of the Round Table are difficult to frame because over time they have been modified by many authors who have added new events and different characters to the original tradition. It was the Englishman Geoffrey of Monmouth who started the process that would transform King Arthur from a “barbarian” monarch to a symbol of a Christian King and his knights into a perfect model for medieval chivalric institutions. Between 1130 and 1150, in the “Historia Regum Britanniae”, in the “Prophetiae Merlini” and in the “Vita Merlini”, Geoffrey traced a precise and imaginative genealogy of the sovereign, recovered and interpreted Merlin and the other supporting characters in a Christian (and no longer Celtic) key, and laid some cornerstones of the future cycle, baptizing, for example, “Avalon” the tomb from which Arthur would rise “when England would still have need of him”.
The Legend of King Arthur
Arthur was born, according to legend, following a spell by Merlin, thanks to which Uther Pendragon, the previous king of Britain, was able to sleep with the beautiful Igerna, with whom he had fallen in love, passing himself off as her husband.
Little Arthur was born, and was taken away by Merlin who raised him far from the kingdom of his natural father and in the bosom of another family. After a childhood spent in the house of Antor who he believed to be his father, he discovered that he was actually the son of the ruler of Britain Uther Pèndragon when, alone among two hundred and fifty knights, he extracted, by divine will, a magic sword stuck in the stone. Around the sword were engraved these words: “Whoever extracts this sword from the stone and from the stone will be the legitimate king of England”.
Solemnly consecrated king, he fought with the barons to consolidate the kingdom and extended his dominion over the northern territories, Scotland and Wales.
The Knights of the Round Table
It gathers around the Round Table the most valiant and courageous knights to establish a kingdom of justice and peace. Each knight of the Round Table must swear to defend Christ against the pagans, fight the bullies, take part only in noble missions, not kill without reason, not betray, never fight for unjust causes or for personal profit, remain pure of heart and spirit, faithfully love only one woman for life.
The knights’ main goal is to search for the Holy Grail, the chalice from which, according to tradition, Jesus drank during the Last Supper and where his blood was kept.
Merlin, a magician and advisor to Arthur, announces that the sacred relic is in a secret place in Brittany, so all the knights, except the king, set out in search of the precious relic.
The search lasts several years and is fragmented into a series of adventures.
Only three knights manage to get close to the Holy Grail: Perceval, Galahad, son of Lancelot, and Bohor.Arthur, however, witnesses the end of his reign, marred by mourning and ruin, triggered by losses and betrayals: his friend Lancelot abandons the Round Table because he is guilty of having loved Guinevere, the wife of his sovereign who in turn locks herself in a convent and Merlin falls victim to a spell.The Black Knight, Mordred, son of Arthur and Morgana the Fairy, claims his father’s power and lands and unleashes a war in which all the knights of the Round Table perish one by one.The Black Knight himself dies at the hands of his father but in turn mortally wounds him.
A ship as black as night carries the dying Arthur to the land of Avalon where, in a state of death that is not death, the great king awaits his moment among men.