King Arthur's existence?

Question

I had red few answers regarding this matter.

But I'm still confused..

If...

King Arthur doesn't really exist, what was the Round Table and its Twelve Knights was for?

I need your answers as soon as possible

This was our report in english..

I had a hard time regarding this matter

Answer 1

the stories of K.A are made up of a lot of difference  people  going all the way back to the 5th century, he was a roman general. the stories were written in the 14th century by a french writer...christen DE troyes ?..

Answer 2

King Arthur had 150 Knights of the Round Table, and Charlemagne had 12 Paladins. It's doubtful that Arthur really lived. There are several theories about this, but none are proven. He's not in histories until centuries after he supposedly lived. He and Charlemagne were favorite subjects for troubadours. Each invented his own tales about them. Sir Thomas Malory collected the tales about Arthur and wrote a book with a coherent account called "Le Morte d'Arthur" about 1450.

Answer 3

If Arthur doesn’t really exist, then obviously there was no Round Table or twelve knights connected with a non-existent Arthur.

That the Round Table had twelve knights appears in only one romance, known as the Romance of Perceval, or the Lesser Prose Perceval. Actually it had thirteen knights after Perceval sat in the forbidden seat. For a translation see http://everything2.com/e2node/Didot%2520... .

Robert de Boron's Merlin states that there were 50 knights at the Round Table. Most later romances state there were 150 knights in the Order of the Round Table when it was complete.

Asking what the Round Table was for, if Arthur was fictional, is equivalent to asking what Batman’s utility belt is for, if Batman is fictional. Both utility belt and Round Table are for nothing in reality. They are for what the fiction says it is for if you look into the fiction.

Traditionally Celts (like Romans) did not eat at tables. Rather they ate in a circle, sitting on stools or chairs or just squatting, around a circular hearth. The Welsh word for table is “bwrd”, which was borrowed from Old English “bord” meaning “board”, referring originally to the board laid on trestles which comprised what we now call a table. Because they had no word of their own for “table”, the Welsh borrowed the English word when they began to adopt the custom of tables.

Accordingly, even if Arthur did exist, it is very unlikely that he had a Round Table. He likely did have a warband of about 100 warriors, as most chieftains had. (Perhaps historically he didn’t, but as the tales grew and changed tellers may have attributed a warband to him.)  A teller of Arthurian tales may have described Arthur and his warband dining in a circle around a hearth. Some of those who heard the tale may have thought that the presence of a table must be understood, and so the idea of the Round Table may have thus been invented.

Answer 4

He designed a form of Government where all men where equal.  The round table describes a small version of democracy.  

There are vague historical references to a story like this in English history from the 500s.  Really old stuff.

Answer 5

The legends of Arthur have their roots in the years following the pullout of Rome's legion from Britannia. After they left, the power normally wielded by the Roman governor was coveted by many different factions. This squabbling left the country weak and destabilized, and soon many different groups began invading southern England. It took one strong leader to forge alliances strong enough to stem the tide of foreigners, and he (or they)would have used the best arms and armour of the time, which was still Roman lorica, gladii, and the adopted spatha, or longsword. Combined with Roman tactics and the use of calvary, Arthur and his warband could have swept up and down the eastern coasts, repelling invaders and driving them back into the sea.

In the due course of time he was overwhelmed and his warband slain or dispersed, leaving the land open to the invaders.

Forget the Round Table and the idea of chivalrous knights in shining armor - those were additions to the legend in later years, although it is not impossible that the "Round Table" is a reference, long misunderstood, to the Roman habit of holding meetings in circular rooms with ascending seating, like miniature ampitheaters, where the speaker "had the floor" and any who were not speaking stayed seated.

Armor would have been iron lorica and chainmail, dark from a patina of oxidization and oil, or darkly oiled leather, perhaps Byzantine style scale armor. As for there being "Twelve Knights" - forget it. There would surely have been higher ranked officers, such as generals, subalterns, and centurions serving as Arthurs' command division, but in reality he probably had hundreds of warriors at his command, drawn from the native Celtic populations. Camelot surely existed, but would have been a wooden hillfort complete with palisade, moat or trench, and an interior layout of two to three concentric circles, with gates on opposing sides in order to force an enemy to walk around the whole circle several times while getting shot at from over the walls.

All the trappings of high romantic chivalry can be forgotten - Arthur lived in a brutal time where warfare and constant skirmishing was necessary just to protect the farmers who produced the food that kept you from starving during the harsh winters.