By Matt Schwoebel (an amateur historical Arthur scholar/enthusiast)

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Friday, July 16, 2004

Good Historical Aspects of the Movie

 
There is one particularly good historical point to this movie.  King Arthur the film is based on a Dark Ages Arthur and not the medieval character of legend.  It did not have plate-armored knights on massive horses charging the enemy with lances or going to tournaments to joust.  The movie avoids the more mystical elements of the Arthurian legends.  It does not include the Holy Grail, the Lady of the Lake, or Merlin as a magician.  The love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, probably a medieval invention, is avoided.  Many of the costumes, weapons, suits of armor, and buildings are accurately portrayed in the film.  Although Anglo-Saxons carrying crossbows during this time period may be a stretch.  I didn’t pay close enough attention to see if horse trappings included spurs (inaccurate) or not (correct).  They had the Round Table as an actual table.  Since historians are still debating the significance of the Round Table, I cannot fault the producers for using a real table.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Theres a big difference between hunting crossbows (available to stone - agers) and the armor - penetrating sort (quite late, as was the heavy armor).
Fine Amour is very late (a part of the Arabic - Grecian Scholastic Golden Age) but the idea of Queen Guinivere being "false" is celtic, at least

December 3, 2006 at 12:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, the swords in this movie were quite innacurate, especially excaliber and tristan's distinctly chinese dao. Lancelot's dual swords were ridiciulous at best, posessing threaded hilt contruction and blade geometry never found anywhere in history.

February 28, 2008 at 6:39 PM  
Blogger AMELIANVS said...

There are actually no really realistic suits of armour in that movie .-).Crossbows were already known and used by the Romans-that should be noted,but we have no evidence for their wide use among Germanic tribes and it is also likely they were usually used by the Romans not for warfare but to predominantly hunting occassions only(although slight evidence for their limited use in combat also exist.

July 26, 2015 at 6:17 AM  

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