This blog is about my upcoming book: King Arthur - The Emperor's Son. I hope to generate interest in it in advance through this blog, along with a YouTube series I have been making for the past few months (see here). On this blog, I will produce written versions (though not transcripts) of the videos in the aforementioned series. In addition, I will use this medium to convey my views on an even wider range of topics.
King Arthur - The Emperor's Son is a work-in-progress which I hope many people will find interesting, if not wholly convincing. It presents my theory regarding the reality behind the legends of King Arthur. Of course, innumerable books have been written about this subject, and I have even read one which I found by-and-large compelling. However, the reason I felt so motivated to write my own book on the topic is because there is, I believe, one major aspect of the legends which has remained largely unexplained. This aspect has been left so untouched that, in the end, I was only able to find three relevant theories to discuss in one of the chapters.
The major aspect in question is the European campaign of King Arthur. While 'Arthur' as a warrior who fought the Saxons has been discussed and 'identified' more than most other legendary figures in the world, 'Arthur' as a mighty conqueror who invaded and killed the ruler of Gaul and warred against the Romans is a much more obscure subject. This is in spite of the fact that the first work to provide an extensive account of Arthur's life - that is, the Historia Regum Britanniae (HRB), written in c. 1137 by Geoffrey of Monmouth - spends about half the material covering this European campaign.
Several years ago, I read a very convincing theory regarding the origin of the stories of Arthur in an insular, sixth century setting. In the beginning of my book, I present the evidence for this theory, with many additional pieces of evidence and lines of reasoning gathered from my own independent research. The same source from which I found this theory also discussed the origin of the stories of Arthur's European conquest. The theory presented therein was not nearly as convincing as the theory explaining the insular Arthur. However, the basic identification that was made was, in my opinion, quite convincing for a few reasons. Therefore, it is my belief that the researchers had managed to identify the original figure behind that aspect of the Arthurian legends. What they had not done was actually provide a convincing case for how that figure explains the legends. In other words, I disagreed with how his real-life activities were supposed to match up with Arthur's legendary activities.
So while my book is heavily based on a pre-existing theory, it provides a unique explanation for the stories of the European campaign. I go through Geoffrey of Monmouth's account step by step and explain how each one came from the real activities of this historical figure.
In addition, my book provides a lengthy discussion of the only part of Geoffrey's HRB whose historicity is established much more firmly than any other part - the Roman era. The pre-Roman era, covering the kings from Brutus of Troy to Lud the brother of Cassivellaunus, is generally taken for granted as being fictional, but the fact is that we have virtually no way of establishing exactly what is and what isn't fictional in that part of the HRB. On the other hand, the post-Roman era is largely devoid of reliable sources (hence 'the dark ages'), so it would be fruitless to compare Geoffrey's account with the other sources regarding that era. Therefore, the only way of determining Geoffrey's general level of accuracy is to analyse his account of the Roman era.
This is exactly what my book does. This allows me to establish just what Geoffrey's demonstrable 'boundaries of accuracy' are. With this information in hand, it allows me to be better able to assess the validity of other theories regarding Arthur's European conquest; in particular, it allows me to demonstrate that my theory, and my theory alone, falls within these boundaries of accuracy.
Please feel free to post comments and offer any thoughts you may already have. As I said at the start, much of the material which I am going to write on this blog is already available, though not presented in the same way, on my YouTube series. Feel free to have a browse through those and tell me your thoughts on what I've said so far.
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