King Arthur: The Once & Future King (Part 1)

Dominic Sandbrook (0:30)

But rather, I would say, here in this world, he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon the tomb this, Hic Iacet Arthurus, Rexquandam Rexque Futurus.

Here lies Arthur, the once and future king. The most stirring, the most haunting epitaph in all of English literature, and arguably all of English history. So that comes at the end of the Mort D'Arthur, the great prose epic that was written by Sir Thomas Mallory during the Wars of the Roses. So in 15th century England was being torn apart by fighting for the crown. And Mallory's great work is talking about a mystery that has haunted the British imagination, not necessarily just the English imagination, but the imagination of all the people in these islands for a millennium or more.

And Mallory's epic, Tom, was called the Death of Arthur, the Mort D'Arthur, for a very good reason. It was mourning a golden age that had already passed into legend, wasn't it?

Tom Holland (1:39)

Yes, the golden age of the Round Table, a time when knights were at their boldest and ladies were at their fairest. And yet throughout Mallory's account of it, the knowledge that the Round Table is going to end up broken and its knights piled up as corpses shadows the entire story.

And it's the death of Arthur or is it a death after he's received a mortal wound from his son Mordred in the last battle that he will ever fight. This is what sets the seal on the tragedy. But to repeat, is Arthur actually dead? This is the great mystery. And Mallory's account of his fate, which you just read out, it's rich in tantalizing ambiguities. Because on what basis are men saying that he shall come again?

And why on his tomb does it have that kind of enigmatic phrase, Rex Futurus, a future king? And what does Mallory mean when he says that he personally believes that in this world, Arthur changed his life? I mean, does that mean that he thinks that he died? Or is he talking about Arthur's translation to some other mysterious dimension, some mysterious realm? And I think it is an incredible passage because Mallory isn't endorsing this really quite widespread hope that Arthur will come again, but nor is he rejecting it. And it's very eerie and very tantalizing. I think a huge part about why the mystique of Arthur endures to this day. I don't know whether you agree.

Dominic Sandbrook (3:26)

I completely agree. I fell in love with the stories of King Arthur when I was very, very young because I had a really basic children's version when I was probably five or six or something. King Arthur was my gateway drug into history.

My love of King Arthur and the stories of King Arthur predated any historical interests that I had. And of course, one of the things that people always love about King Arthur is precisely this idea that he's the once and future King, that he's sleeping and will come again to save the people of Britain in their hour of danger, in their darkest hour. But that's not unique to Arthur, is it? Lots of different cultures have stories like this. So for example, Barbarossa, Frederick Barbarossa, the German Emperor. Now we know he was real, which we don't necessarily know of Arthur. And Frederick Barbarossa, a third crusade, right?

Tom Holland (4:20)

Yeah, he drowns, I think in Northern Syria, swept away on a river. And he is said to lie asleep with his knights in this kind of mountain chain in Turingia.

And brilliant details about this legend that he sat at this stone table for so long that his red beard, so hence Barbarossa, has sprouted and grown and the tendrils of it have woven their way through the stone of the table. And there are ravens flying around the mountaintop in which he is sitting. And when these ravens stop flying, so the story goes, he will emerge and he will save Germany and restore her to her ancient greatness. And of course, we know who loved that story. It was the Nazis, because that's why they gave Operation Barbarossa the name that they created, this idea of reclaiming ancient greatness.

Dominic Sandbrook (5:17)

Indeed. But then there's the last Roman emperor, the last true emperor of Rome. So Constantine XI, so he falls in the siege of Constantinople, doesn't he? But he's also not dead, am I wrong?

Tom Holland (5:29)

His body is never found, so there's a bit of a mystery there. And so the story is that an angel appeared and turned him into marble and hid him in a cave under the Golden Gate, one of the great gates that leads into Constantinople.