Was there a real King Arthur?
The starting point when looking for King Arthur in history is to admit that we do not know whether he existed.
No surviving document written during Arthur’s supposed lifetime names a king called Arthur. This does not prove that he never lived, because very few written records survive from fifth- and sixth-century Britain. However, it does mean that the familiar king of Camelot cannot be treated as an established historical figure.
If a real Arthur existed, he was probably very different from the king of medieval romance. He would not have lived in a stone castle surrounded by knights in shining armour. There would have been no grand Round Table, no tournaments and probably no code of chivalry in the later medieval sense.
He may instead have been a British military commander who fought during the troubled years following the end of Roman rule. The legend could have grown around one successful leader, several different warriors, or older heroic stories that were gradually attached to the name Arthur.
Britain after the Romans
Roman rule in Britain came to an end during the early fifth century. The year 410 is often given as the traditional date, when the Emperor Honorius told the cities of Britain to arrange their own defence.
The departure of Roman authority did not cause every part of Britain to collapse at once. Farms continued to produce food, Christianity survived and some communities maintained Roman customs. Nevertheless, the central government, regular army and taxation system that had supported Roman Britain gradually disappeared.
Local rulers competed for land and influence. Britain also faced attacks and settlement from peoples arriving from across the North Sea, including Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
This period used to be called the Dark Ages because so little was known about it. Historians now usually call it post-Roman or early medieval Britain. Archaeology shows that it was not simply an age of darkness and destruction. Communities continued to trade, farm and produce skilled metalwork, even while political control was changing.
The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was also more complicated than older history books suggested. There was certainly warfare and the seizure of territory, but there was also migration, settlement and intermarriage. Recent studies of ancient DNA have confirmed that large numbers of people came from northern Europe, particularly to eastern and southern England. It was therefore neither one violent invasion nor an entirely peaceful movement of traders.
Somewhere within this unsettled world, the earliest idea of Arthur began to develop.