The King Arthur Quest

Who was King Arthur? A man or a myth? Was he a living, breathing figure in medieval history, or is he merely a timeless literary character in a beloved fairy tale? King Arthur is a monumental figure as we know him—but will the search for the real King Arthur prove the legend, or will it undermine his majesty?

The King Arthur Quest takes a deep look into discovering the true person behind the great legend of King Arthur—and whether the man really existed at all. Author Clayton Donoghue investigates a number of sources of the stories behind the man, and it turns out that the legendary king was real all right but that he may not be as exciting as what some people like Geoffrey Monmouth have made the king out to be. Nevertheless, the real King Arthur lived in the Dark Ages when Briton was being overrun by the Irish, the Picts and the Anglo-Saxons, and these were desperate times of survival completely void of knights in shining armour—yet from this turbulence, clerics and scribes managed to keep records that survive today, revealing Arthur’s true identity.

King Arthur may not have been part of the age of chivalry—or even a king at all. Yet tracing his legacy in both history and in fiction can tell us something about who he was and why he was important, both for the people arising out of the Dark Ages and for us today.