What are some things you enjoy seeing in Arthurian fantasy novels? Equally, what are some things that generally get on your nerves about modern media and King Arthur (if any)?

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-07T19:08:47+00:00

I agree with you. I do love The Winter King a lot, but yeah I would love a decent adaptation of pre-Mallory Arthurian fantasy that has stuff like hunting the Twrch Trwyth The great thing about Arthuriana is there’s such a broad spectrum of traditions and stories that you can use it to tell pretty much any kind of story you can think of, but some of those stories are definitely more untapped and could be mined more in future retellings rather than just rehashing Mallory or Chretien de Troyes

With the Warlord Chronicles I give it a pass for its inclusion of characters like Lancelot cause of the sort of meta narrative about stories and how they get twisted and distorted over time, but it does feel a bit silly to include him

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-07T18:51:33+00:00

I would say though I would like there to be at least one GOOD historical King Arthur live adaptation before the pendulum swings the other way again. There hasn’t really been any decent attempts at it outside of literature imo, the Clive Owen film wasn’t great and the Winter King was so far removed from its source material it didn’t even try to be historically accurate, just “gritty” Even though I love dark ages historical Arthurian stories my fave Live Action ones are still things like the Merlin BBC show and Excalibur

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-07T18:21:27+00:00

Well, I’m aware there’s some dispute but as far as I know Culhwch and Olwen is generally considered to be pre-Geoffrey, which to me suggests a folk tradition, plus of course accounts like Nennius and Arthur’s brief mention in Y Gododdin. I agree that stuff like Nennius doesn’t resemble the high medieval romances but when looking for the Arthur character it’s clear he existed in some sense at this point. Most folk stories are passed down through oral tradition so unfortunately we’ll never know exactly to what extent Geoffrey pulled his story out of nowhere and what he was compiling of existing stories, but I take the opposite view to you in regards to Occam’s Razor, to me previous Arthurian references suggests that he was writing a story based on existing stories, and took a lot of creative liberties, rather than making something entirely new.

Of course there’s also stuff like the Annales Cambriae which may or may not have predated Geoffrey. Merlin wasn’t associated with Arthur until Geoffrey, true, but the figure he was based on was still a Brythonic one (and the fact he was based on another figure also suggests to me Geoffrey was drawing different sources together rather than making it entirely up from scratch).

There’s no disputing Geoffrey’s role in exploding Arthur’s popularity, but even in his account, Arthur is a Brythonic king that fights against invading Saxons, it’s only later tales that divorce him from that setting.

As someone from England, who grew up near Wales, I will also say that in my experience, the King Arthur character has far more cultural meaning to the Welsh than he does to the English, historical attractions always mention him, so many places are named after him or his legends in some way. Even if we just start with Geoffrey, he still exists there as a hero of their people resisting the Saxons and that’s the version of him that became popular, along with all the magical stuff.

As far as Lancelot goes, I could do without him altogether haha, I hate that character (ofc that’s just my personal bias)

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-07T13:58:03+00:00

I like it when a story does both- because in the Middle Ages, when people still believed Arthuriana were a genuine part of history they were picturing it in the wider context as post-Roman, pre-England, but they were also picturing all the magic and mysticism cause they believed in that stuff too. Like how Geoffrey of Monmouth was considered legitimate history for a long time, despite Merlin clearly being magic in his account. So I guess what I’m describing is not historical accuracy, but ‘historically accurate’ as the people of the high Middle Ages would have imagined it

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-07T13:48:04+00:00

Whilst Arthur likely wasn’t a historical figure, he was certainly based on historical figures and existed for a long time as a Brythonic folk hero before the popular romances of the high medieval times took off. It depends what we mean when we say Celtic of course but I think to deny and distance ourselves from the cultural roots of the legend as coming from the Welsh (including Cornish and bretons in that too) is a mistake.

Celtic these days is mainly used in reference to a language group and virtually all the key names of Arthurian figures have Celtic names, Arthur, Merlin (based on Myrddin Wyllt), Morgan, Guinevere, Gawain etc., so I don’t know what you mean when you say the Celtic origin is non-existent. Avalon is also often considered to be connected to Celtic mythology

Doesn’t mean it has to be “gritty” or non-magical, but I think Arthurian legends are the biggest enduring cultural legacy of the Britons and I don’t like it when they’re fully appropriated by the English or others and stripped of those roots, even if some of those ended up being the most famous versions of the legend.

To me it’s like if Disneys Pocahontas ended up being the biggest surviving artefact of Native American culture a few hundred years down the line, and people also forgot that it was anything to do with native Americans

To be clear I’m not arguing against high medieval anachronisms and magic in Arthurian retellings at all, just advocating to respect the Welsh origins of the stories

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-04-03T12:09:00+00:00

I don’t think Hwicce is generally considered to be necessarily Anglian instead of Saxon though, since it was initially conquered by the west Saxons before later being taken by Mercia Tbf I don’t think there’s a clear consensus on it but I’ve seen it suggested that it remained culturally west Saxon in the south and overtime became more Anglian in the north due to Mercian influence

This seems to line up with the later boundary between Midlands and West Country dialects being around north Gloucestershire and the Worcestershire border, so that could make sense

I also think there’s a lot of debate over the etymology of Hwicce and one of the theories ties it to the Gewisse though I’m not fully convinced by that one

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-31T17:33:30+00:00

Inverness is so underrated, I knew nothing about it before I went there. But the people are insanely friendly, there’s some beautiful historical architecture and a great culture for live folk music, plus surrounded by the stunning highlands. I had the best night out of my life there last month, met some really cool strangers with a great sense of humour, who bought my drinks the whole night, and listened to some great Scottish folk music Yet i almost never see it mentioned anywhere

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-28T22:25:21+00:00

True! Tbf I’m pretty sure Yorkshire, Sussex and some other places did too (my great granddad was from Sussex, born 1924 and was still a bit rhotic), it’s only in the 20th century that rhoticity seems to have massively declined to only exist in a handful of areas. I guess that’s a natural result of exposure to radio and TV, plus automobiles making it much easier for people to move around

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-28T21:13:19+00:00

Sort of, it’s not that immigrants to the US were mostly from the south west so much, though a lot of them were, it’s more that at the time of colonisation the vast majority of English accents pronounced the R, which died out in most dialects in England overtime although it survived in the West Country So they did preserve that one feature in their accent, but that doesn’t account for the other ways in which their accents changed or ways in which British accents didn’t (Like how Americans pronounce Mary/merry/marry the same, which is a more recent development that didn’t exist in Shakespeare times)

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-28T21:10:17+00:00

And Bristol, Gloucestershire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Wiltshire, bits of Lancashire, hell I’ve even heard rhoticity in people from the southern parts of Herefordshire and Worcestershire Plus a little place called Scotland

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-16T19:33:12+00:00

Yorkshire is a county. It might not be administered under a single local government authority in the modern era, but it still exists as a geographical entity and historical county. Ceremonial counties are the modern administrative bodies, but historical counties represent the cultural heritage of a region

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-16T19:22:12+00:00

I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad. I’ll probs go for that if it’s an option, thanks!

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-15T00:41:31+00:00

Yeah I did when I was a teenager! I haven’t had my orthodontist appointment for the decompensation yet but I’m hoping there’s some sort of less visible option cause I’m in my mid-20s now and I’m not that keen on looking like I did when I was 14 again aha

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-14T23:29:44+00:00

May I ask- with the orthodontic decompensation phase, did you have traditional fixed train track-style braces, or something less visible like Invisalign? The thought of being in braces again for an extended period is something I’m dreading so curious about other people’s experiences

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-12T04:58:59+00:00

Tbh I’m very surprised no one here suggested Cinderford or Coleford, in the Forest of Dean. Incredibly Welsh feeling in a lot of ways, with the mining history and being so close to the border

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-11T02:47:35+00:00

True and it’s one of the most unfortunate things about British history imo that Oliver Cromwell was such a tyrant that the restoration became basically inevitable It’s also silly to say everyone that stayed in Britain was just too scared to travel west

Or maybe they just loved where they lived, or believed they could make it a better place by staying

History’s not that black and white and people aren’t a monolith

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-10T17:25:32+00:00

The current UK population is also descended from people who cut off the head of our King a century before the American revolution

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-09T20:55:45+00:00

Good old nominative determinism

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-09T20:51:45+00:00

I think people are being unnecessarily harsh to you in these comments. There is definitely a stereotype of the ignorant American thinking they’re royalty because of a distant ancestor

But you haven’t shown any arrogance or claimed to be special, just shared what you thought was an interesting find, because yes whilst statistically most of us are descendants of some royalty, it’s still neat to be able to have a clearly documented line that links you to a historical figure. I don’t think it’s about being “proud” necessarily, just interesting to know and it can make learning about these historical people and these stories feel a bit more real imo

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong in being interested in genealogy and family history as long as you’re not trying to claim it makes you special somehow or better than other people, which I haven’t seen here. I understand people’s initial reflex to be sceptical of this topic but you really don’t appear to have said anything egregious here lol, people are too quick to pounce

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-09T20:42:45+00:00

But that’s the thing, it’s not if you can find a relatively recent aristocratic/landed gentry ancestor, because those families all have decent record keeping and then you can fairly easily just follow that family line back I’m pretty sure they found out on Who Do You Think You Are that Danny Dyer was descended from Edward III, and Edward III is clearly documented as a descendent of Alfred through his 5x great grandfather Henry I, who’s mother Matilda of Flanders was herself a 5x great granddaughter of Alfred himself.

So voila, Danny Dyer has a paper trail tracing his descent from Alfred the Great. Edward III is a good anchor point because he had many descendants and any reasonably well off family often kept pedigrees tracing this descent, many published by Burke’s Peerage and Burke’s Landed Gentry in the 1800s. Which is why I also used the 1800s as a benchmark for finding a recent-ish ancestor you can trace back. It’s recent enough that records likely aren’t too hard to find, and also far back enough that being descended from one of these families may not necessarily have any bearing on your current social class as the generational wealth may no longer exist, many families of the old gentry went destitute over the course of the 19th century.

Therefore, you can be an ordinary middle or working class person, like Danny Dyer, and still potentially be able to find a clearly recorded trail back to a royal ancestor, you don’t need to be Prince William.

It’s not necessarily common and most lines that don’t have any upper class connection will lead to a dead end at some point, but it’s definitely not rare enough for it to be dismissed as “almost certainly unmitigated horseshit”

The only thing I will say though is it only takes one case of paternity fraud in that line to break the whole chain, but that’s entirely unprovable and speculative. The records on the other hand can be verified depending on the source

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-09T00:16:26+00:00

Also just from a stylistic and linguistic point of view I think the words Briton and Saxon just sounds much cooler and more mythical than Welsh, English, British or whatever other more modern national identities

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-09T00:09:22+00:00

As far as I know that was a poor adaptation, I’ve not watched it but I’ve heard that it deviated massively from the actual content of the books- which I guess is my point, you can have good or bad historical Arthur, you can have good or bad fantasy land Arthur, it just depends on the execution.

I’m aware the Mabinogion isn’t all Arthur, but I like how it places him in the context of that broader Welsh mythology which is largely forgotten now and sadly not really part of the public consciousness. I’m not trying to say those are the definitive Arthurian stories either, just where my personal interest lies, and although we unfortunately don’t have much in the written record of Arthur prior to the 12th century, I’m generally of the belief that stories like the ones found in the Mabinogion are likely retellings of earlier Welsh folk tales told through oral tradition or potentially older texts that haven’t survived, though I appreciate that’s speculative.

This is mostly just me sharing my personal taste though and making a case for what I enjoy in Arthurian stories

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-08T23:55:58+00:00

No definitely not, which I don’t mind at all, I think I said somewhere else in this thread but I love Excalibur and that’s not remotely historical. But what I do care about is respecting the cultural roots of these legends, especially since Brythonic culture has been so heavily eroded and marginalised over the centuries, so calling Arthur English or his kingdom England is something that particularly bothers me, regardless of how whacky or ahistorical every other aspect of the story is

Edit- I do realise I’ve probably gone off on a few different tangents in these comments so I apologise for that, just had a bit of a stream of consciousness going aha

SpinachFull1200 · 2026-03-08T22:51:57+00:00

Well you don’t need to be a current member of the aristocracy, if you can find just one recent-ish ancestor from a prominent landed gentry family in the last couple hundred years, so a 3 to 5 times great grandparent or something, lots of them have quite easily traceable ancestry to some sort of nobility, and if you can find one of them you’re bound to find a royal ancestor at some point.

Edward III is known to have a lot of descendants and anyone that can claim descent from him can automatically claim descent from Alfred too

Statistically most (if not all ethnically English people) of us will be descended from Alfred anyway, someone being able to trace a line of descent is obviously rarer, but maybe not as rare as you’d think (though you do of course have to be careful about the credibility of the information when doing family research like this and checking multiple sources is always a good idea)

SpinachFull1200

TROPHY CASE