99 Fun Facts About King Arthur

In Le Morte d'Arthur, which woman traps Arthur's wizard beneath a rock?

Nimue: she kept him close until she had learned all she wanted from him, then shut him in for good.

Which composer wrote the music for John Dryden's 1691 semi-opera King Arthur?

Henry Purcell: in his preface Dryden admitted he had altered his first design so as not to offend the government of the day.

Who is King Arthur's wife?

Guinevere: one of the earliest tales about her, the Life of Gildas, has her carried off by a king called Melwas.

Who is King Arthur's father?

Uther Pendragon: in one telling he took his name after a star with a dragon-shaped ball of fire foretold his reign.

Which knight's affair with Arthur's queen was introduced in The Knight of the Cart?

Lancelot: the poem retold an older tale of the queen's abduction and made Lancelot both her rescuer and her lover.

Against whom does Arthur fight his final battle?

Mordred: in the 12th-century histories he is Arthur's nephew, who crowns himself king while Arthur campaigns abroad.

Arthur's final battle is fought at which place?

Camlann: one Welsh triad says the battle happened because of a blow struck in a quarrel between two sisters.

Which Arthurian knight's name became a byword for a man of great purity and nobility?

Galahad: 13th-century writers created him as a new, spiritually pure hero for the quest, replacing Perceval.

Arthur is conceived at which Cornish castle?

Tintagel: digs in 2016 and 2017 uncovered a 5th or 6th-century palace with goods from the eastern Mediterranean, so the headland was probably a royal seat.

What is the name of Gorlois's wife, with whom Arthur's disguised father conceives him?

Igraine: in one later telling her husband had been dead for hours that night, so Arthur could not be called a bastard.

Geoffrey of Monmouth's history says a wizard helped move which famous prehistoric monument from Ireland to Britain?

Stonehenge: Geoffrey calls it the Giant's Dance, fetched as a memorial, and its smaller bluestones really did travel far, from Wales.

Who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, the great 15th-century English retelling of the whole legend?

Thomas Malory calls himself a 'knight prisoner' and asks readers to pray that God sends him 'good deliverance', so he probably wrote it in jail.

Le Morte d'Arthur was first printed in 1485 by which pioneering English printer?

William Caxton, who set up England's first printing press, divided the text into 21 books and wrote his own chapter summaries.

Which famous Arthurian object first appears in Wace's Roman de Brut, finished in 1155?

The Round Table: Wace says Arthur had it made so that none of his proud barons could claim a higher seat than the others.

Tennyson dedicated his Arthurian poem cycle to which late royal, who had held its poems dear?

Prince Albert: Tennyson's dedication suggests the prince loved the poems because he found in them 'some image of himself'.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, Arthur holds his great Pentecost court in which Welsh town?

Caerleon drew Tennyson too: he lodged at an inn there in 1856 while working on his Arthurian poems.

Which sorceress, Arthur's half-sister, rules the isle to which he is carried after his last battle?

Morgan le Fay first appears as a great healer leading nine magical sisters, with no family tie to Arthur at all.

In the French prose romances, Arthur's treacherous son is born of incest with which half-sister?

Morgause: her baby was foretold to destroy the kingdom, so in one telling Arthur set every child born on May Day adrift in a ship that sank.

Arthur's wizard is traditionally said to be the son of a mortal woman and what?

An incubus: being fatherless nearly got him killed, because a king's magicians wanted a fatherless boy's blood to make a crumbling tower stand.

Which actor played the young wizard in the BBC's 2008–2012 fantasy series Merlin?

Colin Morgan's young wizard has to hide his powers, because the king has outlawed magic in the realm.

In Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963), what is the wizard's talking pet Archimedes?

An owl: Archimedes shares the wizard's cottage, where the boy's lessons come from being turned into a fish, a bird and a squirrel.

In Disney's The Sword in the Stone, what is young Arthur's nickname?

Wart is an orphan who only wants to help his foster brother Kay become a knight, and he ends up king instead.

In Disney's The Sword in the Stone, the sword is lodged in what object sitting on top of the stone?

An anvil: the boy pulls the sword out only because he forgot his foster brother's sword and found the inn locked.

In Disney's The Sword in the Stone, the wizard fights a shape-shifting duel with which witch?

Madam Mim cheats again and again in their duel of transformations, but the wizard wins by using his wits rather than strength.

Disney's The Sword in the Stone adapts the first part of which 1958 novel by T. H. White?

The Once and Future King opens with the young Arthur learning about power and war by being turned into fish, hawks, ants, geese and badgers.

In T. H. White's novel, what is odd about Arthur's tutor?

He lives backwards through time, so he already knows what will happen to Arthur and keeps getting muddled about the present.

Who wrote the 1889 satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

Mark Twain's Yankee secretly makes blasting powder and uses a lightning rod to blow up the court wizard's tower.

Alfred Tennyson's Arthurian cycle, first published in 1859, is titled what?

Idylls of the King ends with the dying Arthur telling his last knight that 'the old order changeth, yielding place to new'.

Which Tennyson poem's cursed heroine sees the world only in a mirror?

The Lady of Shalott dies singing as she drifts downriver, after she finally turns from the mirror to look at a passing knight.

Who plays the title role in the 2004 film King Arthur, directed by Antoine Fuqua?

Clive Owen's film was sold as the historical truth, but even its consultant called the story fiction built on historical facts.

The 2004 film King Arthur portrays Arthur's knights as belonging to which steppe people serving Rome?

Sarmatians: the film borrows a real officer who lived in the 2nd century and moves his story forward 300 years.

Who plays Arthur in Guy Ritchie's 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword?

Charlie Hunnam's film was meant to launch a whole series, but it flopped so badly that no sequel was made.

In Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Jude Law plays which villain, Arthur's usurping uncle?

Vortigern seizes the throne from his brother, then fears the one boy who can pull the sword from the stone.

In the original 1960 Broadway production of Lerner and Loewe's musical about Arthur's court, who played the king?

Richard Burton led the original cast, but it was newcomer Robert Goulet whose second-act ballad stopped the show on opening night.

What nickname, taken from a musical, did Jackie Kennedy give JFK's presidency?

Camelot: soon after the assassination, Jackie Kennedy told LIFE's Theodore H. White she kept thinking of a line from the President's favourite song in the show.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1983 retelling of the legend, told by its women, is titled what?

The Mists of Avalon is narrated by a woman older tales often made a villain, and it takes her side.

Mary Stewart's 1970 Arthurian novel narrated in the first person by the wizard is called what?

The Crystal Cave was Mary Stewart's jump from romantic thrillers to the legend, and it began a bestselling trilogy told from the wizard's side.

Arthur carries whose image on his shoulders at the battle of Guinnion?

Mary: the Historia Brittonum credits her power and Christ's for putting the Saxons to flight in the eighth of Arthur's twelve battles.

At which battle does the Historia Brittonum say Arthur single-handedly killed 960 men?

Badon: Gildas, who wrote within living memory of the fight, mentions the battle but never names Arthur.

The Historia Brittonum is attributed in some late manuscripts to which Welsh cleric?

Nennius, if he really compiled it, stitched it together from older texts, and historians warn that he cannot be entirely trusted.

Which T. S. Eliot poem borrows the legend of the wounded Fisher King of Arthurian legend?

The Waste Land: Eliot's own notes say its title, its plan and much of its symbolism came from Jessie Weston's book From Ritual to Romance.

Bede credits the Britons' first victory over the invaders to whom, never mentioning Arthur?

Ambrosius Aurelianus: Geoffrey of Monmouth later fused his boyhood legend with a Welsh prophet's to create Arthur's wizard.

Which Nobel-winning American novelist died leaving his modern retelling of Le Morte d'Arthur unfinished?

John Steinbeck rented a cottage in Somerset for most of 1959 while he worked on the book.

Rather than a king, what does the Historia Brittonum call Arthur?

Leader of wars: the Latin is dux bellorum, for a man who fought alongside the kings of the Britons, so its Arthur may not have been a king at all.

Dev Patel plays which of Arthur's knights in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight?

Gawain accepts the Green Knight's Christmas challenge to trade axe blows, knowing he must take the return blow a year later.

In Shrek the Third, which pop star voices Artie, the teenage heir Shrek hopes will take the throne?

Justin Timberlake voices Artie, and Shrek tracks him down at school because the ogre is horrified to find he is next in line.

In 1191, monks announced the discovery of Arthur's tomb at which abbey?

Glastonbury's monks were short of money after a great fire in 1184, and historians now see the 'find' as a fundraising stunt.

A cast performance on which TV host's show rescued the struggling 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical about Arthur's court?

Ed Sullivan gave the cast about 20 minutes of his Sunday night show, and the ticket sales that followed kept the musical running.

In English versions, which knight returns Arthur's sword to the Lady of the Lake after the last battle?

Bedivere twice hides the sword instead of throwing it into the lake, and only on his third try does a hand rise to catch it.

In Culhwch and Olwen, Arthur's men hunt the enchanted Twrch Trwyth, which is what kind of animal?

A boar: hunting it is one of the impossible tasks a giant sets as the price of his daughter's hand.

Which tiny hero of English folk tales becomes a favourite at King Arthur's court?

Tom Thumb is knighted by King Arthur in many retellings, and 18th-century playwrights such as Henry Fielding put him on the stage.

In the 13th-century romances, Arthur's queen is the daughter of which king of Cameliard?

Leodegrance was under attack from King Rience of North Wales until Arthur rode to his rescue, and Arthur later married his daughter.

Which early Welsh poem of elegies praises a warrior who fed black ravens, though he was no Arthur?

Y Gododdin mourns the warriors who rode to Catraeth, and of their hundreds only a handful came home.

Which 12th-century French poet wrote The Knight of the Cart?

Chrétien de Troyes left his last romance, Perceval, unfinished, and later poets wrote long continuations to complete it.

Which comic strip, launched by Hal Foster in 1937, follows a young Nordic exile who becomes one of King Arthur's knights?

Prince Valiant's father is driven from the throne of Thule, in what is now Norway, so the family flees to the fens of Britain.

How were the Nine Worthies, the medieval heroes who included Arthur, divided?

Three pagan, three Jewish, three Christian: one 1485 preface argued that Arthur's place among these heroes proved he had really lived.

In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, what natural event saves the Yankee from being burned at the stake?

A solar eclipse: Hank remembers the date of a sixth-century eclipse and threatens to blot out the sun if he is executed.

Which 1975 film comedy sends King Arthur and his knights on a quest across Britain?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail was partly paid for by rock bands including Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

Which Star Trek captain plays the elderly wizard in Joe Cornish's 2019 film The Kid Who Would Be King?

Patrick Stewart shares the wizard with Angus Imrie, who plays him young, but the film flopped and was expected to lose about $50 million.

What name is given to the sword that the Lady of the Lake gives to King Arthur?

Excalibur, in the later romances, is Arthur's second sword: the blade he drew from the stone breaks in an early duel, and Merlin leads him to a lake for a better one.

In the earliest stories, King Arthur leads the Britons in battle against which invading people?

The Saxons were pressing into Britain after Rome's legions had gone; the Vikings and Normans many people picture came centuries after Arthur's supposed lifetime.

Which knight of Arthurian legend falls in love with Iseult after the two share a love potion?

Tristan was escorting Iseult from Ireland to marry his uncle, the king of Cornwall, when they drank the potion. Writers tied the tale ever more closely to Arthur's court over time.

Which Scottish city lies beneath Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano some link to the legendary king?

Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat tops out about 250 metres above sea level in Holyrood Park, but nobody is sure the name honours the king: old charters call the hill simply the Crag.

The name Arthur is usually said to come from the Welsh word arth, meaning which animal?

Bear is the usual explanation, making Arthur something like a bear-man, though rival theories trace the name to the Roman family name Artorius or to the star Arcturus.

In Le Morte d'Arthur, the sword in the stone appears one Christmas in a churchyard in which city?

London is where the lords gathered at Christmas to pray for a king, and the sword appeared outside its greatest church; the author admits his French source never says whether that was St Paul's.

After King Arthur's last battle, what rises from the lake to catch his sword when it is thrown back?

A hand rose from the water, caught the sword, shook it three times and vanished with it. The knight sent to throw it had hidden it twice first, unable to throw away so fine a weapon.

The boy Merlin reveals which creatures, one red and one white, fighting beneath a king's doomed tower?

Dragons, he explains, stand for two peoples: the red one for the Britons and the white for their invaders. A red dragon is the emblem on the flag of Wales.

Which Broadway comedy about King Arthur's quest won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical?

Spamalot's first Broadway King Arthur was Tim Curry, with David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria among his knights and Mike Nichols directing.

Which English fairy-tale hero, a Cornish farmer's son, has adventures set in King Arthur's reign?

Jack the Giant Killer even takes service with King Arthur's son in the old chapbooks, and wins a cap of knowledge, a cloak of invisibility and shoes of swiftness.

In Le Morte d'Arthur, whose forgotten sword sends the young Arthur to pull the blade from the stone?

Sir Kay, Arthur's foster brother, had left his sword at their lodging on the way to a New Year's Day tournament. He later serves as the king's seneschal, running the royal household.

Which German composer wrote operas on two Arthurian tales, one of doomed lovers and one of the Grail?

Richard Wagner's Grail opera was his last, first staged in 1882 at Bayreuth, the festival theatre he had built for his own works and whose acoustics he wrote it to suit.

Which English king named his first son Arthur to tie his new dynasty to the legendary king?

Henry VII wanted to stress his family's Welsh roots, but Prince Arthur died as a teenager and the crown passed to a younger brother, the future Henry VIII.

Which Gospel figure, who gave his own tomb for Jesus, is the Grail's first keeper in Arthurian romance?

Joseph of Arimathea enters the legend in Robert de Boron's poem, where he receives the Grail from a vision of Jesus and sends it west to Britain with his followers.

Saint Galgano's sword in the stone, Italy's answer to King Arthur's, stands in which region?

Tuscany's hill of Monte Siepi holds the blade, said to have slid into the rock when the knight Galgano Guidotti struck it to show that giving up his sins was impossible.

Which fantasy author's unfinished poem The Fall of Arthur was finally published in 2013?

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it in alliterative verse in the early 1930s, then dropped it, most likely when The Hobbit needed preparing for the press. His son Christopher edited the fragment.

Sir Dagonet is made a knight by King Arthur in Le Morte d'Arthur while holding which job at court?

Jester to the king, Dagonet earns his knighthood through loyalty and wit, and the other knights use him to play practical jokes on their rivals while keeping him from harm.

Merlin warns King Arthur that which item is worth ten of the sword he has just been given?

The scabbard keeps its wearer from losing any blood, however badly wounded. Arthur's half-sister later steals it, and in the best-known telling it is never found again.

Which knight raises the infant Arthur as his own son after Merlin carries the baby away?

Sir Ector kneels to the boy he raised once Arthur has drawn the sword in front of him, and asks only that his own son be made seneschal of all the new king's lands.

The medieval writer Gervase of Tilbury placed King Arthur's hidden kingdom beneath which volcano?

Mount Etna gained the tale from Breton storytellers who came to Sicily with the Normans: a lost horse strays into Arthur's underground kingdom, and the king returns it.

Which word, from the French for a horseman, names the code of honour that King Arthur's knights uphold?

Chivalry at first meant only horse soldiery, the mounted fighting men themselves, and came to mean their ideals later, helped along by romances of Arthur's court.

Which city's castle-shaped hotel, named after King Arthur's sword, opened in 1990 as the world's largest?

Las Vegas's medieval-themed resort opened with 4,032 rooms and held the size record until a nearby rival overtook it in 1993.

In which role is young Arthur serving his foster brother when he draws the sword from the stone?

Squire to a brand-new knight, Arthur rides back for a weapon left behind, finds the lodging empty with everyone away at the jousts, and borrows the sword in the churchyard instead.

Which video-game mascot wields a talking sword in a 2009 Wii adventure set in King Arthur's world?

Sonic the Hedgehog is pulled into the legend by a wizard's granddaughter called Merlina, and by the end the sword that chooses kings has picked him.

The island where the dying King Arthur is taken has a name usually linked to which fruit?

Apples grow wild in its woods in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, where the fields need no plough and nine sisters rule; the name is traced to an old Welsh word for the tree.

Which popular modern girl's name began as the Cornish form of the name of King Arthur's queen?

Jennifer was rare outside Cornwall until 1906, when George Bernard Shaw gave it to the heroine of his play The Doctor's Dilemma, after which it spread across the English-speaking world.

Medieval writers set the tales of France and Rome beside those of King Arthur, known by which name?

The Matter of Britain got its label from the 12th-century French poet Jean Bodel, who set it beside the tales of Charlemagne and those of ancient Rome.

King Pellinore hunts which creature, whose belly sounds like thirty pairs of baying hounds?

The Questing Beast has a serpent's head, a leopard's body, a lion's hindquarters and a deer's feet, and some scholars think the description began as a garbled account of a giraffe.

In Arthurian legend, what is the Siege Perilous, which proves fatal to any unworthy knight who tries it?

A seat at Arthur's court, the Siege Perilous was set aside by Merlin for the one knight who would complete the Grail quest, and it is finally claimed at a Whitsun feast.

What kind of vessel, filled with weeping ladies in black hoods, carries the dying King Arthur away?

A barge waits at the water's edge with a queen among the mourners, and the one knight left at Arthur's side watches it out of sight, then wanders weeping through the forest all night.

Dozmary Pool, a lake said to have received King Arthur's sword, lies in which English upland?

Bodmin Moor's lonely pool was long believed to be bottomless, until in the 19th century it dried up completely.

Which land of Arthurian romance is said to lie drowned between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly?

Lyonesse was home to one of Arthur's greatest knights, who never inherited it: later tradition says the whole kingdom sank beneath the waves in a single night.

Which enchanted French forest is the legendary site of Merlin's imprisonment and tomb?

Brocéliande disappointed the poet Wace, who travelled to Brittany in the 1100s hunting for its marvels and wrote that he found none; it is usually identified with Paimpont forest.

Which Scottish islands are ruled by King Lot, father of several of King Arthur's best-known knights?

Orkney is paired with Lothian as Lot's realm in the romances, which make him father of four brothers at Arthur's court; earlier versions had him ruling Norway instead.

Rhitta, a mountain tyrant who clashes with King Arthur in Welsh legend, wears a cape made of what?

Kings' beards, cut from the rulers he had beaten, made up the cape, and he sent to Arthur demanding his own to patch it. The demand ends badly for him in every telling.

King Arthur fights a lake monster of Lausanne that began as which animal, caught in a fisherman's net?

A kitten, small and black, was the catch of a man who had sworn his first one to God and broke his word; he took it home, and it grew to monstrous size.

Which priest wrote the Brut, the first poem to tell the legends of King Arthur in English?

Layamon worked around 1200 from a French chronicle, yet his own English is strikingly native, almost free of the French loan words then entering the language.

Which German poet's Parzival turns the Grail from a vessel into a precious stone?

Wolfram von Eschenbach made it a gemstone, the refuge of the angels who took neither side when Lucifer rebelled, and claimed a probably invented Provençal source for the story.

What name do the romances give King Arthur's realm, taken from the Welsh word for England?

Logres comes from Lloegyr, the medieval Welsh name for the south and east of the island, roughly the lands the Britons held before the newcomers took them.

Which illustrator, famous for stark black ink drawings, took Le Morte d'Arthur as his first commission?

Aubrey Beardsley drew it for the publisher J. M. Dent in the early 1890s; tuberculosis killed him young, after only about six years of work.