Arthur the Warlord

[bibliogramma]

The Warlord Chronicle, by Bernard Cornwell
The Winter Kingl
The Enemy of God
Excalibur

There are many variants of the modern Arthurian novel – the medieval fantasy, the Romano-Celtic fantasy, the more-or-less historical novel, the modern retelling, the translation of key themes to original modern fantasy or science fiction novel, and so on.

Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicle novels are mostly historical in nature, with a very serious attempt to recreate the era in which someone who might have been Arthur most probably lived – although of course, historians themselves vary to some degree in their interpretation of what’s known about that time period, so you can have two authors committed to their own sense of historical accuracy producing works as different as Cornwell's novel and those of Jack Whyte, even though both are quite clear about being set in a post-Roman Britain that retains strong Celtic elements, during the spread of Christianity, which faces the Saxon invasions.

Cornwell gives us some supernatural content, through the choice of a narrator who begins life as a Saxon child who survives being sacrificed by British druids, only to grow up in the household of Merlin, Druid to the Dumnonian king Uther, and ends his life as a Christian monk, writing the “truth” of the story of Arthur for a young queen whose lord rules in the days after Arthur has departed from human ken. Cornwell’s narrator, Derfel, was Arthur’s companion and sworn man and now, in his later years, at the prompting of a royal patron, is setting down his recollections of what happened from his perspective as a man close to, but not always in the middle of, the action.

The books are loosely structured around Nennius’ list of Arthur’s battles, but because there is such a wealth of detail of the daily lives of the main characters – quite a large cast – as well as the politics and religious debates of the time, the battles do not overwhelm the human story.

Cornwell makes use of some less common sources, and presents a set of interactions between characters that is rather different from the standard set familiar to most readers of works from Mallory onward. Here, Arthur is Uther’s bastard son, while Mordred is Uther’s legitimate grandson and heir, and Arthur is sworn on Uther’s death to hold the throne of Dumnonia for Mordred. Arthur must first fight against other kings to preserve his nephew's lands, and later try to forge them into one political unit under his leadership as warlord - Dux bellorum - to fold back the Saxons. In the end, after defending himself against repeated treachery from many quarters, he decides that Mordred does not deserve the throne and his loyalty, a decision which leads to the final battle of Camlann.

Competing religious beliefs have a great deal of influence on the unwinding of this version of the tale. Arthur is a follower of Mithras, but tries to balance pagan and Christian factions; he listens both to the advice of the Druid Merlin and of a moderate Christian bishop. Arthur’s sister Morgan begins as a student of Merlin and ends as the wife of one of the more fervent proponents of Christianity. Arthur’s wife, Guenevere, is a worshipper of Isis. Derfel, the story’s narrator, is raised by Merlin (and Morgan), becomes an initiate of Mithras, follows Merlin and his protégé Nimue in a quest for the 13 treasures of Britain, the most potent of which is a sacred cauldron, and finally becomes a Christian recluse under the authority of none other than Morgan’s Christian husband.

I enjoyed this telling of the tale – particularly because Cornwell, while bringing the latter-day interloper Lancelot into the story, makes of him a boastful, deceitful and manipulative coward who gains his glorious posthumous stature only through good press and being on the side that ultimately conquered – the Christians. In this way, and through Derfel’s comments in the frame about how the account he writes will no doubt be prettied up by his patron queen’s scribes because it’s not romantic and heroic enough, Cornwell reminds us that there are indeed many ways of viewing the tale of Arthur and acknowledges the ambiguity inherent in declaring any version as the historical truth.