After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Myths of King Arthur: Origins, Creepy Sex & Magic Swords

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

King Arthur. Merlin. The Knights of the Round Table and the Sword in the Stone. We think we know these stories but they've changed a lot since they were first told... In this episode, Maddy and Anthony are joined by History Hit's very own Dr. Eleanor Janega, host of the Gone Medieval podcast, to tell us about the rather creepy origins of the Arthurian legend.Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthly

Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Hi everyone, Maddy here. I'm just jumping in to let you know that in this episode, we are going to be talking about historic infanticide. Well, hello and welcome to this week's episode of After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. My name is Dr. Anthony Delaney. And I'm Dr. Maddy Pelling. And today we are joined by Dr. Eleanor Jarnaga, who is a medieval historian, author and broadcaster.

You may have heard her on our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. author and broadcaster. You may have heard her on our sister podcast Gone Medieval, and she focuses on gender and sexuality in the medieval era, apocalyptic thought, propaganda and the urban experience in the late medieval period. Eleanor, welcome to After Dark. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk about magic. So Eleanor, tell us a little bit about what we can expect from this episode before we get into the nuts and bolts. I think the number one thing that people are going to get out of this is that King Arthur is in many ways a choose your own adventure. And it is an entire genre. It's not just like, oh, there's King Arthur and here's his story. Because like,

well, what does that mean? Because, you know, King Arthur from, you know, stories that we have that sort of survive from sixth century Wales is very different to King Arthur as he shows up in 15th century French stories, you know, and it's different again to, you know, the King Arthur stories that we tell as well now. So there is a kind of rotating cast of characters. And the way that I say you kind of need to think about arthuriana is a it's kind of like the mcu or something like that where it's like you know here's another hero who comes in and he's got his standalone stories over there and there are constant reboots yeah it's an extended universe and all of it is canon it's just added to constantly yeah it's it's a very ongoing process of yes and you know and you you might not like one particular part of something. So you strip it out, you can put another one in. And, you know, people will just start over, over and over and over again.

form of literature. But actually, people in Germany are writing about this. People in France are writing about this. So, you know, everyone's kind of getting involved. It isn't like very specific to one region or place. See, that's very interesting to me, because I would think of Arthur and his knights as being quite English and tied to ideas of national identity, sometimes for worse as well as better, and that he kind of shapeshifts according to the times that he's needed in. But it's interesting that he has this kind of broader geographical reach. Isn't he Welsh?

Yeah. Okay, well, there we go. Isn't that interesting, though, that that's my perspective on it, that he does shapeshift for different people? Yeah, and you know, you're bang on here because it's like, so our very, very, very first Arthur stories come from Wales, and they come from the 6th century, and we imagine that there must have been some kind of oral tradition that we are not exactly privy to.

that and the original king arthur stories are so funny in comparison to the really rich literature that we have later in the medieval period or you know when the victorians get their hands on it again because they're like so sparse they're all rhymes arthur kind of shows up the first time as like a certain king's cousin or something like that they're like oh yeah i went over to my cousin arthur's place and there he is and they he's not the main character to begin with. No. But we know him now as the main character and a sort of ensemble cast around him. Yeah. So can we just establish some of those other characters? So we've got Arthur eventually. At what point does he become the main character?

Fairly quickly. So, you know, at first he's somebody's cousin. And then people say, oh, well, this is a cool guy to go with. We'll go with Arthur. Yeah, sure. Fine. You know, then we have some that uh people might not have heard of uh kind of earlier on so you get um bedivere kind of shows up around from about the

10th century or so bedivere bedivere okay i mean he first shows up to like take excalibur and give excalibur to the lady in the lake oh that's pretty formative in terms of the legend yeah yeah yeah mordred yes heard of mordred yeah we know mordred and he's like one of the very very earliest um he shows up in like a historical work the annals cambria in about 970 or so arthur's bastard son morgos shows up pretty early on yeah it's like so morgos is an interesting one because um the fact that arthur has a bastard son comes in pretty early on the fact that like he is eventually going to help cause the fall of camelot that comes in a lot later gwayne yes you know your friend and mine uh he kind of

shows up around for the first time in the 11th century um and that's in kukwik and olwin um and like olwin or owen like he shows up at the same time then um then there's eric uh from eric and anine eric eric it's like what's eric doing jim yeah it's like i love it that there's like a guy called eric because it's all like tristan and benavir eric your boy eric you know him um and that's one of the earliest poems and it's really interesting because it's a long meditation on whether or not you should love your wife which is very funny because they're like this guy got married and he's having a nice time with his wife and he doesn't adventure anymore.

That's not right. I know that's not right. Interesting though, right? Because we're talking about relationships between men there. Yes. How their relationships with women can cause attention in those kind of homosocial. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because that central Arthurian story, right? That Guinevere, the queen, becomes a problem answer me this just going through some of the names there mordred morgos we've got morgana as well who will get on today why are all the baddies in arthurian legends as someone whose name begins with an m why are they all m letters is this some kind of medieval linguistic it's always bothered me. So one of the things that I will say here is we need to step back because, you know,

Morgana or Morgan, sometimes Morgan Le Fay, sometimes she's a baddie and sometimes she's a goodie. Icon. I take it back. Icon. I mean, she is, for me, like, it's all about, I want to see, like, the Morgan extended universe because she's really smart.

She kind of gets things done um she is in a lot of times a protector so for example um by the time we get to the big stories about the fall of camelot and everything um she's the one who kind of saves arthur so you know arthur is wounded but we never see arthur die and she takes arthur to the isle of avalon right and like that's where he is. Sometimes she's good and sometimes she's bad. But that happens with like a lot of the women characters. I mean, we see this in long running TV shows, right?

Where after a while, the characters have to change their characterization because the plot isn't moving forward. Well, exactly. And, you know, we see this in general with the men as well sometimes too. And, you know, we see this in general with the men as well sometimes too. So if you look at the really super early Welsh Arthurian legends, one of the guys that shows up all the time is a Kay or Kai or Key. You know, it's the same guy, different ways of saying it. And he initially is like, that's Arthur's bestie. And he's like the greatest guy. And he's like, and, you know, we're just hanging out. By the time you get to the later medieval things, he's like the greatest guy and he's like and you know oh we're just hanging out by the time you get to the later medieval things he's an antagonist he's a bad guy he like is uh making

fun of percival for no particular reason yeah i know like percival the nerd the nerd one uh you know and poor percival um you know so and then you have uh gawain is really really good and everyone goes oh gawain's the best knight he's like he's you know this is gawain of green knight fame yeah you know dev patel in my head always oh dev patel's in everyone's head all the time right is that you know this is taking a turn just well just one moment for a dev call me um so if you want to come on the podcast at any point you you have Gwaine then become like the superhero knight, like the Superman version of things. Then that gets handed over to Lancelot and suddenly Lancelot's the best knight. But then when you get into the kind of more romantic poems, like Lancelot gets his own kind of series like Lancelot and the Knight of the Cart and things like this.

And this is when he falls in love with Guinevere and suddenly he's shagging the boss's wife and then it's like oh now there's this new moral tension which always happens with medieval romance literature and more specifically medieval courtly love literature has this tension right okay so what we mean by romance literature or courtly love literature is that it is a genre of literature that is specifically about hooking up with married ladies. And it's a sort of moral test for the men, right? That it's part of their quest. Yeah. And it's like partially what you're supposed to be doing is you're supposed to be spurred to greatness by these women that you're in love with.

And then question mark, you know, you're supposed to gain their love. And there's an understanding that's fine because, you know, who gets married for love? Nobody gets married for love, which is part of like one of the tensions in Eric and Enid. Because they're like, oh, you love your this guy loves his wife. You know, like that's weird. You know, like that seems strange. And, you know, sometimes the knights of the roundtable do marry for love. And that's all very nice.

the round table do marry for love. And that's all very nice. But for the most part, it's reflecting a reality for rich people at court, which is that you marry for business reasons and you marry because that's who you got told you're going to get married to. Then you kind of like sit around all day in court with a bunch of other fancy rich people with time on your hands and you go, hey, hey, you know, and then you write poems poems and you know you they fall in love and there is all kinds of scandals so we have a very cool book about this which is called day amore by andreas capelanos sometimes also called the art of courtly love and it's all about how you two thirds maybe no 80 of this book is all about how this is how you seduce married women and like here you go and like and how like being married is no excuse for not like having extramarital affairs blah blah blah and the last 10 pages are like psych i just told you how to pick up on married ladies so you wouldn't do it be a good christian and that's kind

of what's going on with arthuriana as well there's a bit of titillation and then bam the moral yeah don't do it so it's like the whole time you're kind of supposed to be going go lancelot go guinevere you're in love shag shag shag and but then they do shag and then they're like oh now you can't find the holy grail because only the pure of heart can find the holy grail and then enter percival percival is then introduced he's lancelot's bastard son and sometimes like sometimes not like all they all have different origin stories whoever you need him to be at whatever time yeah it's like a telenovela like we've forgotten who is related to who at this point like it's yeah yeah and so like basically like uh then you have percival get

introduced and percival is very pure of heart and he does everything right and he's able to uh discover the holy grail oh and then he eventually ends up ascending bodily into heaven like it's very kaj yeah you know it's but it's also funny because like even the holy grail oh and then he eventually ends up ascending bodily into heaven like it's very kaj yeah you know it's but it's also funny because like even the holy grail changes and what it is so you know initially they're like oh yeah the holy grail and you're like what's that and they're like i don't know man it's it's like the philosopher's stone or something it's something that can treat aging or illness so it has magical properties yeah and then later on it becomes clear that it's you know like the cup that was used at the Last Supper. But this is something that gets added in way, way later.

And now we take that for granted when, you know, if we say Holy Grail, we're all imagining a cup. Yeah. But for them, even just these objects change all the time. You know, when you're talking about Welsh King Arthur, his court is just like somewhere like somewhere like camelot doesn't get introduced for hundreds of years like as a concept yeah yeah so these things change all the time and the meanings change but what is one of the things that we have to keep in mind of all of this that's quite interesting because especially when we know that these things go back to kind of the sixth century is when we're talking about arthuriana in the Ages, they're like, this is a story from the past. These are long ago and far away stories. They're not contemporaneous. I know when we think of them

now, we tend to go, oh, here's some medieval people. These guys are like, King Arthur lived, and there are histories about this. So we have Geoffrey of Monmouth, who's, this is like the boy who kind of invents a lot of arthur stuff because he he writes this book called the historia regum britannia so catchy yeah very good so it's like it's a it's supposedly a history of britain and he's the first guy who's like and arthur was real and he lived then right and he fixes this as a kind of time after the rom have left Britain, but before the Saxons show up. I'm thinking of the Clive Owen film with Keira Knightley here. Yeah, there you go.

Obviously, entirely historically accurate. Duh. Yeah. So it's like, the idea is that they're kind of living in, there's this idea of a kind of like nebulous Britishness. Sometimes it's Welsh, sometimes it's English, sometimes it's British. But it's before Saxons come over and introduce whatever is going on there. It's after Romans have left. So it's an idea of going back to a Britishness that's very vague and woolly and we can't, you know, it's hidden in the mists of time, but it's outside of the empires or the invasions of these different forces, whether it's the Romans or the Anglo-Saxons. Exactly. Yeah. So with this, you then also are meant to understand that Arthur is

Christian. So one of the things is these guys have kept the Christianity after the Romans have evacuated and they are set up in opposition to the Saxons who are still understood as being pagan. Okay. So it's also kind of like a call out to like, oh, yes, and British people are very, you know, Christian or whatever. So this is kind of happening in the mists of time. And then so when English or Welsh people are writing about this, this is about like an understanding of their own nationality, right? When French people and German people got into it and they do get into it, they're like,

for them, it's like, it's the Wild West. Pew, pew. You know, they're like, oh, yeah, what's going on up in England? Like, it's the edge of the world. It's chaos. It's chaos up there like for them it's like it's the wild west pew pew you know they're like oh yeah what's going on up in england like it's the edge of the world it's chaos it's chaos up there like it's crazy they got i don't know man story about a dragon under hill uh there's a lady in the lake um you know he's oh oops he shagged his half sister you know like things like this so it's for them it is like the edge of civilization, the edge of the Christian world. Who even knows what's happening in Britain? Are they people? I don't know. So you can tell these stories. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4.

Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour.

Anne of Cleves. Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. would it be fair to say that some of the elements that we find in these stories so i'm thinking about things like the lady in the lake or the dragon under a mountain you know these things about monsters on the periphery and obviously you see it as well in anglo-saxon poetry or beowulf and stuff it's not exclusive to author and legend but if there's something about how

people are understanding their landscape and telling those histories in those terms, but also I'm thinking about these magical objects, the Holy Grail, Excalibur, the sword. I'm sure there's lots of other, I'm thinking the Green Knight's head. There's these kind of magical objects. In a world when people are writing these stories down,

material objects are really worth a lot. You know, it's not every day you come across a well-made sword, for example. You know, weaponry is really important. It's really meaningful. Only certain people have access to like really high quality weapons and things. Is there something there that we can extract from these myths about how people understood the material world, the landscape, their world around them. Oh yeah, absolutely. So one of the big things that you see often with Arthuriana in general is that big, magical, huge adventures take place in the woods. Just the woods. The woods, you know,

the woods that are over there. And the woods for medieval people are really a fraught kind of place. And you've got to understand that for medieval people as well, you know, the relationship with nature is quite different. You know, it's a bit more antagonistic. You know, there is this kind of thing about we really need to tame it in order to make sure that we can just get enough food to eat. Yes. Yeah.

And so woods are experienced as this place that is inhuman, right? Because it is wild and it isn't a place that you can necessarily be making crops or things like that. And it's also experienced as very expressly, vaguely magical. You know, there are lots of worries in general with folk culture about there being monsters in the wood, about, you know, wizards being in the woods or people who can practice magic and they don't need to participate in society so they can just kind of go out into the woods and like do their thing there is this real worry about you know just even things like wolves a lot more scary for them you know things like that um there's also the tension there where a lot of the time when there are woods too they're

kind of like owned by the crown and you're not supposed to be in there because there's this kind of like worry about poaching yeah um and and there are places that maybe outlaws can escape to as well right i'm thinking later on of like robin hood you know obviously has presumably older roots well and you're bang on there too which is also something about weaponry um because there is a real uh worry about travel and these places where you don't have anyone kind of looking at things you know there's no such thing as police in the medieval period. There's no such thing as, you know, a law and order that isn't brought about by kind of lords. You know, there is common consent of communities that, you know, everybody wants to get along.

But if you are on a road or going through a woods, who knows what's in there? Who's in there and what are they going to do? And so this is a lot like weaponry because weapons are really tightly controlled in the medieval period. You can't just like go around having a sword if you are a commoner. And so this is a lot like weaponry because weapons are really tightly controlled in the medieval period. You can't just like go around having a sword if you are a commoner. Swords are a very specific shout out to the fact that you are noble. You are kind of like a knight or higher. You're allowed to have a sword because, you know, they're dangerous weapons. And, you know, there is a very express idea of who gets to wield violence.

And that's the nobility, right? They get to do violence now on the other hand you are allowed to have a sword if you're a common person and you're traveling like the one time that you can do it is yeah because they're like oh it is dangerous out there right yeah but so you usually have to then kind of like leave it when you get to a town or something like that and they'll kind of like hold it at the guardhouse or something like that and you can yeah take hold of it again most people still can't afford it yeah most people are going to have like a pike or a knife or something like that so you know all of this stuff about swords being magical we have to understand

you know like so the sword in the stone or excalibur the lady of the lake gives to arthur as these um signs that he is the king this is also about like well who gets to have a sword right so there's the magical aspect of it but it's also just like well who gets to have a sword right so there's the magical aspect of it but it's also just like well yeah and he's got a sword so there you go you know there's our boy and that's how you know he's king because he's got like an even better sword yeah the sword so speaking of swords then for anybody who maybe has heard of king arthur but is not necessarily aware of some of the stories can you give us some of the details of the sword in the stone? That's probably one of the more famous ones, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So the sword in the stone is a fun one because it introduces a lot of the characters that we've talked to, but then also your friend and mine, Merlin. So Merlin is largely invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who I've already talked about before, kind of in the 12th century. And he says that Merlin is a wizard. And more specifically, Merlin exists because a demon shagged his mother. And Merlin was going to maybe be a kind of antichrist figure. It's a classic origin story, isn't it for i'm thinking in greek mythology

you know this idea of like a god coming down or in this case a demon yeah and having sex with a mortal woman and creating a sort of hybrid person and indeed we see in christianity exactly and so this is what you know you kind of get that's how you get a merlin that's how you get someone who can wield magic because magic is it's a dicey area right you know it is kind of seen as somewhat suspect because you're attempting to like reorder God's universe, right? So, you know, he can wield magic because his dad's a demon.

He was going to maybe be an antichrist kind of figure. He was going to maybe kind of bring the destruction of the world, but then his mom names him Merlin after her father, and then it humanizes him. So Merlin is made very human, and then he uses his powers for good. And one of the things that he uses his powers to do

is kind of help out a young king arthur uh well and more specifically arthur's dad's okay get ready for a wild one so this is you're you're meant to understand that this is a good story but um arthur's dad is waging a war and simultaneously he falls in love with the wife of the guy that he's waging the war on is this uther pendragon yes yes merlin then magics a glamour on uther pendragon so that he looks like the guy whose war he's fighting and then he goes and shags his wife issues of consent there i would say you know it's huge in the medieval world. Yeah. I don't think it's great. I personally would call it not good. So anyway,

and then bada bing, bada boom, that's your Arthur. Are there issues in Arthurian lore then around the fact that Arthur is potentially arguably a product of rape? Is that an issue in his stories or, or does that not come up? No, this is played as romance.

Interesting. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It. Interesting. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, it's not like, isn't it great? And this happens over and over in varying Arthuriana stories. It'll be like you kill someone's husband

and then you show up and then like she shags you and then she's like, oh, I guess I got to marry you now and you killed my husband. You know, there are all these like really dicey relationships that happen all the time with this. So Arzo is kind of like growing up kind of as a bastard as like, you know, a few down the line. And here's where Kay comes into it as well. So Kay is often his older brother, but like his half brother, right? Because he's half a bastard or whatever.

And Kay is supposed to be preparing for a big tournament, but there is this sword in an anvil on a stone in a churchyard. And everybody knows that like, if you draw that sword out, which is Excalibur, there's like three Excaliburs, just so you know, that you become then the King of England. And Merlin has kind of made that sword show up.

And then Arthur is supposed to be going and getting Kay's sword because Kay forgot it back at the castle for this tournament. And he kind of goes by and goes, oh, well, I'll just get that one. And then it goes, out comes the sword really quickly. And then he's like, oh, actually, this probably won't do. Puts it back in and then goes and gets the sword. And partially Merlin is like, you've got to put it back because everyone needs to see that you've taken that out. And then Merlin has

him take it out. And then everyone realizes that Arthur is meant to be the king. So it's a really interesting one because he is kind of like this deus ex machina that is kind of setting everything up for Arthur to come into being and then to also be the king. But there's also this story of Excalibur. It's so confusing because there's so many stories, right? Like it's very much which one do you want? It's choose your own adventure. Do you want the sword and the stone? Or do you want the version where the Lady of the Lake gives Arthur Excalibur?

And the Lady of the Lake is one of these, again, you know, really difficult characters because sometimes she's Lancelot's foster mother. Sometimes she's like Merlin's girlfriend. Sometimes she's Merlin's persecutor. Sometimes she generally is that Merlin has these really difficult and very sexual relationships with women that come up over and over again. So, for example, some versions of stories will say that he's in love with Morgan. And then one of the reasons that Morgan becomes a really talented enchantress is that Merlin teaches her a lot of things. really talented enchantress is that Merlin teaches her a lot of things. But there's also this kind of like push and pull there where Merlin will teach women magic if they have sex with him. Yeah, not ideal. It's like it's very, very bad. Some of the stories about the lady in the lake and Merlin are kind of that Merlin has had this relationship with several women who he has taught, but he never teaches them everything and he has sex with them. And then he falls in love

with the lady of the lake and she says, all right, well, I want to learn things, but I do not put out until you teach me every single thing that you know., which says, the damsel was very wise for such a young woman. She perceived very well that he loved her. She was terrified by it because she feared he would dishonor her by enchantment or he would make love to her while she was asleep. When she heard that he would accompany her, she was very sorry about it because there was nothing she hated so much as she did him. And there was nothing in the world that she hated as much as Merlin, for she knew quite well that he wanted to rob her of her virginity. So it's this tension that gets set up with women, right? Where here are women who want to know things.

They want to kind of like climb a ladder of knowledge, but they understand that the kind of price for admission is that they've got to sleep with this guy that they don't care about. Well, there are two separate economies going on in Arthurian lore, aren't there? For the men, there's violence, there's weaponry, there's questing, there's monsters, there's all of that. And the throne and, you know, fighting for that. And for women, it's an economy of, it's a sort of exchange of knowledge and sex. Those are the only things open to them. Do they ever get involved in any of the violence and the questing,

or are they kind of trapped in that cycle that's the only thing available? I mean, they are pretty trapped, I would say so. You know, I'm kind of like thinking of all of the women. And like, you know, the women often are the cause of various quests. I mean, you know, like in Tristan and Isolt, it'll be things like, you know, the women often are the cause of various quests. You know, like in Tristan and Isolt, it'll be things like, you know, Isolt is a really talented healer, but she's married off to, you know, someone else entirely. And it's like her husband, like the guy she loves gets poisoned and like is going to get brought to her. But then like his new wife stops it from happening and like and he ends up dying. You know, there are all these terrible things that happen to these women and indeed like what is happening with the lady of the lake there's also

this really kind of gross internalized misogyny that happens where a lot of the other magic women hate the lady of the lake because sometimes she manages to get all of merlin's knowledge without having slept with him and they all had to And they all really resent that she got more knowledge and didn't also kind of like give up, you know, didn't give up this part of themselves. And what the Lady of the Lake then manages to do is cast a spell on Merlin. It depends.

Sometimes she just like cast an enchantment spell on him so he falls asleep. Sometimes she magics him inside a tree. But one way or another, like king arthur is kind of waiting until someday you know while he's trapped within these things so it is the one time when a woman kind of wins something but it's quite expressly understood to be bad i want uh talking of extended universes i want a feminist retelling of arthur if you google that right now i guarantee you you, I mean, I'm sure.

Someone's out there doing the good work. Let's finish then on one of the foremost, most famous women from Arthurian legend, that being Guinevere. Because my understanding

of Guinevere is that it can be quite a complex representation of womanhood in that you get this love, sometimes love, Lorne, sometimes someone who's not very faithful depending on the stories that you're reading but also she can be quite active and she can assert some agency again depending on what you're reading so color in guinevere's world for a little bit yes guinevere

is a really interesting one because yeah she is you know the queen of camelot she's king arthur's queen but also her love story is her love story with lancelot yeah you know and um and that is understood to be kind of naughty but fine everybody knows that this is going to cause problems everyone knows that they kind of got to keep it down and keep it a secret but it's also understood as almost an inevitability. You know, Lancelot is really handsome. You know, he is the best knight. He is all of these things. And Arthur is like much her senior. It makes sense within this.

What is all of this telling us then? All this made up things based on some facts or, you know, it's just such this big mishmash of fact and fiction, myth, basically. What is it trying to tell us about British history? Well, in the first place, it's trying to tell us that there are mythical spirits that kind of guard Britain, right? So there's this idea that Arthur is going to kind of come back, you know, he's at Avalon, he's sleeping, and you know, in Britain's hour of greatest need, he's going to come back. And there's an old legend that says that the Welsh believe this. So for example, some Anglo-Normans wrote about this in the description of England, and they say that the Welsh say that they openly go about

saying that in the end, they will have it all by means of Arthur. They will have it all back, and they will call it Britain again. I'm just Henry VII, firstborn male, Prince Arthur, doesn't make it to the throne. But with all of that in the background, what is Henry VII saying that this Tudor dynasty, the Welsh Tudor dynasty, is about to take Britain back, bring this glory? 100%. And he does that on purpose. You know, when he comes over to England, he brings a big red dragon flag, which is supposed to show, you know, the dragon of Britain is kind of taking over again. So it's playing on these ideas

about destiny and truth and providence. Now, very interestingly, we don't actually have any Welsh sources that say they believe that. But we just have a bunch of like Normans being like, oh, they totally believe this. And then that becomes eventually transmogrified, especially by Henry VII into, you know, this about england now yeah or this is about like a you know england leading britain so you know this is a real kind of desire to say that there is magic that is alive in britain and that might be on the part of british people who want to big up britain and it might be on the part of like french and german people who are like they're weird up there what are they like you know i think the idea of magic dormant in britain is a good place to end

and we'll never know if well i mean we may know arthur may come back in our lifetimes we'll see we'll see don't schedule anything around that though yeah i'm leaving my calendar open just in case elena thank you so so much for delving into some of the arthurian law and i think there's so much still to discuss. And I'm sure we could do many more hours on this. But that's a really nice taste of some of that world.

Before we go, Eleanor, you have a book that you'd like to give us the details. Yeah, it's called The Once and Future Sex Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society. So if you are as wound up as I am by, you know, the way women

get treated in Arthuriana, I've got a lot more to say about that. That's a great title. I will be reading. Thank you. Which is also in Arthuriana reference. Nice. Hey.

It all ties in. It's all happening, baby. And then, of course, also, if you want to hear more of my nonsense, you can check me out on Gone Medieval along with my co-host, Matt Lewis. So we are also a part of the beautiful History Hit family. And there's a lot more where this came from. Fantastic. If you've enjoyed this episode of After Dark,

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