We've had to decide where in history to put Artoria Pendragon, our very own Saber. From the legends, there are two periods which fit the most: the High Middle Ages, a time of crusaders and chivalry, and sub-Roman Britain, a break in the historical record which can accommodate legendary figures among native Britons.
We're going with the earlier time period, 407-577 AD, largely because it offers some of the other elements of the story -- roughly Welsh/Cornish/Brythonic sounding names, an invasion of pagans taking on the Christian people of Britain (i.e. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who would later win... and then later convert to Christianity), and a more blank slate into which to write. Romans withdrew their last soldiers from Britain in 407, after the Groans of the Britons, circa 450, they disappear from the historical record completely. Historian and archaeologists are currently on the peaceful immigration meme, just as they supported the tribal conquest meme before 1950, so it's hard to know what really happened.
This thread is about that time, which I don't think people really have a sense of. So what is our Artoria older than?
Just on the topic of of women as rulers, I think there's enough evidence that a female!Arthur as a "king" is at least plausible, historically. Besides Jadwiga, others included precursor Pharoahs like Nefertiti and Cleopatra VI. Matilda of Tuscany was an enormously powerful margravine of the Holy Roman Empire in the late eleventh century, and was crowned "Vice-Queen" of Italy in 1111. It's hard to tell what title Boudica had, given all of our sources are Roman, but she would have ruled in her own right had the Romans not contested the will. Boudica is closer in time to our Artoria than Jadwiga, though!
Yes, this is a relatively short list of women in power, but it's much more possible than a female Empress of Japan (though there were many powerful Dowager Queens in Korea and the Ottoman Empire). And much, much, much more plausible than a female Leonardo da Vinci, as suggested in the later Fate works. There's a tradition of feminist reinterpretations of King Arthur, but not so much of randomly genderswapping people with mountains of written documents about their lives for fanservice.
We're going with the earlier time period, 407-577 AD, largely because it offers some of the other elements of the story -- roughly Welsh/Cornish/Brythonic sounding names, an invasion of pagans taking on the Christian people of Britain (i.e. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who would later win... and then later convert to Christianity), and a more blank slate into which to write. Romans withdrew their last soldiers from Britain in 407, after the Groans of the Britons, circa 450, they disappear from the historical record completely. Historian and archaeologists are currently on the peaceful immigration meme, just as they supported the tribal conquest meme before 1950, so it's hard to know what really happened.
This thread is about that time, which I don't think people really have a sense of. So what is our Artoria older than?
- Chivalry - it's not hard to see why later writers would want to add deeds of chivalry, because the lost kingdom idea is very good romantic literature. But the idea of a code of knightly ethics largely evolved in the aftermath of Charlemagne's empire, which leads us to...
- Charlemagne, Karl the Great - his being crowned emperor happened in 800, which is centuries too late. She may have lived at the same time as Clovis, the first of the Merovingian dynasty, but certainly not alongside a Carolean.
- Crusades - The First Crusade started in 1096! Crusading was roughly as close in time to her as we are to Columbus' first voyage of discovery.
- Islam - And why would you need to crusade, because Mohammed had not yet begun to preach? (He does so in 613 AD.) The whole of the Mediterranean world was Christian, at least officially.
- Turks living in Turkey - outside of perhaps a few merchants, Anatolia was thoroughly Greek, having been ruled by Greeks and Greek Romans for a millennium
- The East-West Schism - The Christian church was not divided to Roman and Orthodox -- but there were other sects like Arianism which were very dominant in Western Europe, via the Vandal and Ostrogoth, and early Lombard kings
- Hungarians living in Hungary - The Great Migration was in full swing at this period, with the above mentioned people and the Visigoths invading old Roman lands, but the Hungarians didn't come to Europe until the ninth century.
- Formal/informal distinction in Latin languages - this seems to have emerged in the Middle Ages from the imperial "royal we" getting extended to more and more petty nobles, finally becoming the tu/vous distinction.
- Venice - The most serene city did not yet exist, being founded later (c. 700) by Roman refugees from Lombard invaders, with many leaving from Aquileia on the land). Nearby Ravenna did exist, and has very lovely mosaics from the same period as our Arthur/Artoria.
- Nationalism - This one is obvious, but just a reminder that there was no concept of a British nation back then, or a nation of all of the Gaelic-speaking peoples -- in fact invaders from the north were just as feared as Germanic people from across the seas. Religious identity played a much larger role (on the Christian side anyway; pagans were rarely concerned with orthodoxy).
- Jadwiga of Poland - Okay, this one is pretty distant, but in 1382 Hedwig was crowned King of Poland, because there wasn't a rule in the student handbook that women can't be kings. She was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1997, but is an early example of women ruling as a king.
Just on the topic of of women as rulers, I think there's enough evidence that a female!Arthur as a "king" is at least plausible, historically. Besides Jadwiga, others included precursor Pharoahs like Nefertiti and Cleopatra VI. Matilda of Tuscany was an enormously powerful margravine of the Holy Roman Empire in the late eleventh century, and was crowned "Vice-Queen" of Italy in 1111. It's hard to tell what title Boudica had, given all of our sources are Roman, but she would have ruled in her own right had the Romans not contested the will. Boudica is closer in time to our Artoria than Jadwiga, though!
Yes, this is a relatively short list of women in power, but it's much more possible than a female Empress of Japan (though there were many powerful Dowager Queens in Korea and the Ottoman Empire). And much, much, much more plausible than a female Leonardo da Vinci, as suggested in the later Fate works. There's a tradition of feminist reinterpretations of King Arthur, but not so much of randomly genderswapping people with mountains of written documents about their lives for fanservice.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
