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Books > Biography > Royalty
Written in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Historia Regum
Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) purported to chronicle
the British monarchy from the arrival of the Trojan Brutus,
grandson of Aeneas, through to the seventh century AD. The Historia
was a medieval best-seller, and copies spread across the whole of
western Europe. It was the first work to outline the story of King
Arthur. The Historia has long been dismissed as an unreliable piece
of medieval propaganda. A new examination of the text, however,
shows that it is very much more than that. Miles Russell explains
how individual elements can be traced back to the first century BC,
a time when Britain was making first contact with Rome. Geoffrey of
Monmouth's skill was to weave these early traditions together with
material culled from post-Roman sources in order to create a
national epic. In doing so, he also created King Arthur, a
composite character whose real origins and context are explained
here. This important work establishes Geoffrey of Monmouth as no
mere peddler of historical fiction, but as the man who preserved
the earliest foundation myths of Britain. It is time to re-evaluate
the Historia Regum Britanniaeand shine a new light into the
so-called 'Dark Ages'.
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