Arthur Pendragon
462 - Arthur Pendragon is born the son of Uther Pendragon, and is orphaned when Merlin's plans to stop Etrigan's rise to power are undone by Uther's mortal weakness. He is raised as the ward of Sir Hector.
475 - 13-year-old Arthur Pendragon draws Excalibur from the strone, proclaiming his rite to the throne. He is taken in by Merlin, and becomes a warlord, beginning to build his armies as the lords of England flock to his banner, including King Leodegrance, father of Guinevere.
490 - 28-year-old Arthur Pendragon's revolt against the Saxons begins.
491 - 29-year-old Arthur Pendragon is joined in his campaign by the young former Druid of Cymru, Jason Blood.
496 - 34-year-old Arthur Pendragon knights Jason Blood.
500 - 38-year-old Arthur Pendragon drives the Saxons from England. He marries Lady Guinevere. Camelot is built with the help of Merlin, ushering in an age of promise for mankind.
501 - 39-year-old Arthur Pendragon invites foreign knight & tournament champion Lancelot Du Lac to join his royal court & the Round Table.
508 - 46-year-old Arthur Pendragon is unable to defend the honor of the queen when Lady Guinevere & Lancelot Du Lac are accused of adultery by Sir Kay. The duel is a draw. Lancelot no longer attends court, performing greats acts of bravery and chivalry all over England.
517 - 55-year-old Arthur Pendragon learns of the affair between Lady Guinevere & Lancelot Du Lac. Lost in despair, he is unable to repell the forces of Mordred. Camelot falls, but Mordred & Morgaine Le Fay are stopped when Merlin forges the 2nd Shadowpact. Wounded, Arthur survives, pushing Mordred's forces back until the last battle when he finally falls. He is found by Guinevere & Lancelot, and forgives them before he is born to Avalon by the Lady of the Lake, with Excalibur cast back into Lake Avalon.
The Arthurian Legend was already an oral tradition hundreds of years old when its oldest written versions started to appear. The study of the publication of Arthurian Legends is a hugely complex scholarly persuit where real life people spend lifetimes and earn doctorates doing a much bigger, grander version of exactly what we do here with DC comics. There are plenty of wildly important publications across multiple centuries, but the most important is understood to be Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur from 1485. If you're at all interested, I suggest you start there.
Of course, we're not just here to talk about 15th century prose, we're here to adapt those characters to our comic timeline...
Of course, we're not just here to talk about 15th century prose, we're here to adapt those characters to our comic timeline...
King Arthur's StoryKing Arthur is very likely one of the most prolificially appearing background characters across DC's history. There are plenty of characters whose stories continually return to Camelot, where of course King Arthur is one of the most important characters, but oddly, you very rarely see the actual story of King Arthur himself being depicted as the main storyline. Even for characters like the Shining Knight, who wind up interacting with Arthurian characters all the time, he interacts way more often with Merlin than Arthur himself.
The biggest exception, of course, is the non-canon miniseries Camelot 3000 by Mike W Barr & Brian Bolland. While generally the character designs at play here are a little too futuristic to be treated as the primary visual for the classic characters, Arthur is a different story. He doesn't have a particularly futuristic design (beyond his occasional use of a cool laser-gun). This is actually a totally fitting design for the classic hero, and in fact is the only actual Arthur images we're using here on this page. As for our version of Arthur's story, we're probably skewing closer to the classic version of Arthurian Legend here than anywhere else. It has to be adapted to make room for the DC versions of a lot of these associated characters, of course, and I'm sure we probably skewed a little bit closer to both Sword & the Stone and John Boorman's Excalibur than a real Arthurian Scholar would like, but this is still a very fun adaptation of one of the most fameous legends in the English language. |