Okay, so you probably know the basics
of the King Arthur story, right?
Noble British King, myself,
ushers in a golden age, and gets his magical sword from-
An equally magical lady, myself,
who lives in a lake.
Arthur's guided to her by a-
Magician. Who also, of course, provides guidance,
peers through time, shape shifts, easy stuff.
But his-
Strongest and most gallant knight ends up causing
a spot of trouble, usually of the... extramarital kind.
But do you know how all this got started?
Because the Arthur legend builds and changes
with every writer. Every generation.
We trace these characters back
to where they got their start,
whether in history or in myth,
or many times, a little of both.
Here are the secret origins-
Of four Arthurian characters.
You know, from your childhood.
And will definitely know again in Cursed.
Nimue in Cursed is a fairly big departure
from the traditional tale of Arthur.
I mean, not only is she the Wolf-Blood Witch-
Uh, that part wasn't in the 12th century poems...
But she also belongs to a persecuted magical minority,
the Fay.
But it makes sense.
Because more than any other character,
Nimue is never really the same.
First, she doesn't even always have the same name.
Sometimes, she shows up as Vivienne or Ninenne.
In fact, she's just one Lady of the Lake.
It's more of a title that passes between characters,
like, I don't know, the Duchess of York does.
Even the villainous Morgan le Fay is a Lady of the Lake
in some stories.
And she can be helpful to Arthur's cause
or, supremely unhelpful.
For instance,
she typically does deliver Excalibur to Arthur
from her watery abode,
and she helps ferry his wounded body
to the mystical isle of Avalon for healing.
But on the other hand,
she's quite famous for apprenticing with Merlin,
learning all the spells, and then,
sometimes out of cruelty,
sometimes because Merlin is a dirty old man,
magically entombing him inside a tree or under a stone
ensuring his demise.
While it's nice to
think that there were
magical female small business
owners distributing weaponry
from lakeside locations
in the Middle Ages,
the reality is that
Nimue is almost certainly
of entirely mythical origins.
Back then, there were a whole lot of water spirits
in this damp part of the world.
One kind of Welsh water fairy, say this with us:
Grr, Grrareck...
Gwar...
Goreg...
The Gurigeth...
An...
Pfft.
Grr-ol, Growren...
The Gurigeth...
The Gwragedd Annwn, were beautiful women
known to live in submerged villages and towns
beneath lakes, usually hidden by spells.
So they're actually known as "Lake Maidens."
But there may also be a clue to Nimue's origins
in her many names.
The name "Nimue" itself resembles the Greek or Roman "Mneme,"
one of the muses or water nymphs who bestowed a sword
on the hero Perseus.
Kind of like a certain once and future king?
Some also may find similarity between Nimue's alter ego,
"Vivian" or "Co-Vivianna," and Coventina,
a Celtic water Goddess whose followers paid tribute to her
by throwing objects in bodies of water, particularly wells.
It was usually coins,
but weapons were deposited underwater across Britain.
In Nimue's more modern interpretation in Cursed,
she's a magical healer that gets labeled a devilish witch,
and maybe it's hard to believe,
but that does have a little precedent in history.
In medieval Europe,
village "wise women" would use white magic, aided by herbs,
to heal wounds.
But over time,
authorities grew suspicious of anyone who claimed
they had magical powers.
They thought it was witchcraft enabled by the devil.
So the "wise women,"
plus many who never had any connection to magic at all,
were tried and sometimes executed.
It's a pretty grim origin.
But based on a Goddess?
That, I can work with.
My character in Cursed,
a lovable, singing sellsword named Arthur,
is just really trying to do the right thing.
Oh, God!
Uh, okay,
well at least the legendary Arthur generally wanted
to do the right thing.
Over the centuries, he becomes sort of a superhero,
the son of King Uther Pendragon,
unaware of his birthright until, at a nightly tournament,
he fulfills Merlin's prophecy and pulls a magical sword
from a stone.
By the way,
that's usually a separate sword from Excalibur
that grants cooler powers.
Confusing, I know.
After many adventures and noble deeds,
now-King Arthur sets up shop in Camelot
and establishes the Round Table,
like his version of The Avengers.
The table is symbolic,
preventing squabbling over rank between his knights,
unlike what often happened in actual Europe.
Of course, he dies a superhero's death,
fighting off a takeover from his evil,
illegitimate son, Mordred,
and sailing off into the sunset with the Ladies of the Lake.
Wait, wait, he dies?
But scholars still seriously debate
whether this noble character,
whose modern incarnation first appears
in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain,"
was actually based off of a real king or not.
There are several candidates,
most of whom aren't really kings, but whatever,
a tough fighter is close enough.
The earliest lived in the later parts of the 2nd century,
which is at least several centuries before
Arthur supposedly ruled.
His name was Lucius Artorius Castus,
and the middle name is significant because it's rare to find
"Arthurs" in Britain for a few centuries.
Artorius was a Roman commander that led
a Roman-British invasion into Brittany,
which matches certain Arthurian tales.
But most importantly, besides his name,
he commanded a tribe of warriors from central Asia
called Sarmatians,
who looked the part of the Knights of the Round Table.
They even had dragons as their banners.
And scholars have pointed out
that the folk tales of Sarmatia share some similarities
to Arthurian legend.
If you go into the 5th century
closer to when Arthur supposedly ruled, there's Riothamus.
We don't know much about him personally.
In fact, the name might be a title, meaning "Highest King."
But we do know that,
similar to Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's tale,
he was a British king that crossed into Gaul twice,
was betrayed by a close advisor,
and maybe passed through a town called Avalon
before vanishing.
There's also another Roman-British general,
Ambrosius Aurelianus-
Remember this name.
And an Irish-Scottish warlord,
Artúr Mac Áedáin.
But maybe Arthur wasn't ever human.
Some thing the name Arthur,
which coincidentally resembles the Welsh for "bear" and "man,"
evolved from the stories of a Celtic bear god.
But there are holes in that theory too.
Like bear cults weren't as trendy in England
as they were on the Continent.
So, after all that, who was the real Arthur?
Maybe he's just a charming guy
with a fantastic singing voice.
Has anyone researched that?
So, you might know that in Cursed-
The sullen, homicidal Weeping Monk
turns out to be none other than the famous Lancelot.
It's a bit of a departure from the golden boy of legend,
but even in the books,
Lancelot does have a tendency to...
Wreck things.
Believe it or not,
he was raised by our very own Lady of the Lake,
who in some tales takes him in after his father,
King Bran, dies.
She hangs around and acts as a fairy godmother,
spoiling him with magical items,
and curing the occasional bout of insanity he suffers.
Sometimes he's even called Lancelot du Lac - "of the Lake."
In his adulthood, he's usually depicted as
the most skilled and chivalrous of Arthur's round table.
Like, in his first major appearance,
he jumps into a speeding cart to save Guinevere,
which was a much bigger deal than it sounds
because in those days only criminals rode in carts.
Lancelot's relationship with Guinevere, Arthur's wife,
sort of comes to define him.
Because the two can't resist their attraction
towards each other, Camelot ends up falling,
and everybody dies.
Right.
Lancelot wasn't initially in the Arthur saga
as imagined by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
He doesn't show up until French poet Chretien De Troyes
writes about him, about 40 years later.
So he probably was a De Troyes creation,
perhaps influenced by earlier medieval romances
like Tristan and Isolde.
That said, there are accounts of royal affairs.
In 1314, too late for De Troyes,
but not too late for other Arthur writers
like Thomas Malory,
scandal erupted in France when the daughters of the king
accused the daughters-in-law of the king
of having affairs in a Parisian tower
with knights named Sir Walter and Sir Philip, respectively.
Lancelot's a better name.
But there are some who think Lancelot has a connection
to the pagan gods, specifically an Irish god named Lugh.
If you strain Lugh's full name
through the colander of enough languages,
it begins to resemble Lancelot.
Appropriately enough,
while Lancelot of legend never goes on a
Fay-killing rampage like the Weeping Monk does in Cursed,
he does actually become a monk in many stories,
spending his time praying and repenting
after the fall of Camelot.
I too shall repent.
In Cursed, Merlin - wait, wait, wait,
just one minute...
I'm last?
No, Merlin is actually in stories before anyone else here.
Shouldn't this all be called,
I don't know, The Merlin Saga?
Mursed?
Okay, but really,
Merlin is probably the most famous wizard
in all of literature,
and his staying power in one form or another is remarkable.
The earliest appearance of the Merlin figure
was nearly 600 years before his modern makeover
in Geoffrey of Monmouth's writings.
In both Scottish and Welsh poems and legends
dating back to the 6th century,
a hairy wild man of the forest named either Lailoken
or, wait for it, Myrddin,
foretold the future for travelers and saints
who came to visit him.
He predicted a lot,
but one that has stuck with us
is how he knew he'd die three deaths.
And so he was pushed off a riverside cliff onto a stake
only to die later by drowning.
It's overkill.
But Lailoken/Myrddin may have some basis in truth,
at least in part.
The wild man was said to be the sole traumatized survivor
of the battle of Arfderydd,
which may have actually happened in the year 573
in Northern Britain.
There is actually a real town in Wales called Carmarthen,
or Merlin's Fortress.
It was indeed around when Myrddin might have existed,
but Myrddin's name may have come from it,
rather than it coming from Myrddin.
Regardless, they're very proud of the association.
Merlin's other potentially real forefather
was one of the Roman-British commanders
that's been tied to King Arthur too.
On this front, there's solid evidence
that Ambrosius Aurelianus was a real leader
that lived in the 5th century.
But some of his feats are embellished, shall we say.
He was, for instance, allegedly immaculately concepted.
Geoffrey of Monmouth took these two
semi-fictional characters and reimagined them
as Arthur's magic benefactor.
Even sometimes just swapping out Aurelianus's name
in some tales.
But Geoffrey was no fool.
He knew that the name Myrddin,
which sounds like sh*t in French, wouldn't cut it.
Thus, the character became Merlin Ambrosius,
and then just Merlin.
Over the next few hundred years,
Merlin's backstory grew and his powers multipled.
He became the son of the devil
who nevertheless did God's work.
He could tell the future, shapeshift,
and change the weather.
What, and that whole time I wasn't allowed
to do any magic?!
But as weird as this sounds,
being a court magician wasn't totally out there
in the 12th and 13th centuries
when a lot of the Arthur saga was being developed.
At the time, newly translated Greek and Arabic texts,
you can think of them as magical instruction manuals,
were trendy with the upper classes.
It was believed that with elaborate
rituals and incantations,
you could read the future, speak with the dead,
and make everything turn to gold.
So this, Merlin's lab in Cursed,
might not be far off from the historical reality.
In fact, with all the history in this show,
you can now think of Cursed as a period drama.
Merlin is coming for you, The Crown.
So the Arthur saga is more complex than your old books
could make it seem.
It's part history, it's part myth,
it's part historical myth.
So you know where these characters have been,
but now you'll find out where they go.
Have fun.
Watch Cursed.