Pagan Arthur

[bibliogramma]

The Pagan King, Edison Marshall

Edison Marshall is perhaps best known for his historical novel The Viking, which was made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas. The Pagan King is Marshall’s foray into another era where history and legend mingle, Britain after the departure of the Romans but before the invasion of the Saxons is complete – the time of Arthur.

In The Pagan King, Marshall starts with Arthurian material drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of Malmsbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, and various Welsh sources to produce his tale of Arthur, the protegé of Merlin, who battles and defeats Vortigern to become a king and war leader of several of the tribes of southern Britain fighting a long war against the Saxons. Readers steeped in the Arthurian romances may find the re-working of the roles and relationships of Arthur, Guinevere (Wander), Merlin, Mordred, Vivain, Elian (Elaine) and Llewelan (Lancelot) of the Lake and others somewhat surprising, and wonder at the absences of some of Arthur’s traditional companions.

The novel is well-written, well-researched and quite realistic in tone, and has an ending that is not only unusual in the lists of Arthurian novels, but perfectly fitting in its realistic way with the later legendary “rex quondam rexque futurus.”