Geoffrey and Antoine: Construction of Arthurian Legend as History

Geoffrey of Monmouth was one of the original sources, really the first source of Arthurian legend, as he wrote down Arthurian stories and background as if they were historical fact. Antoine Fuqua, in his 2004 movie King Arthur, also sought to construct a film as a representation of history, despite his story also being completely false. Both men, although centuries apart, sought to accomplish something with their respective works, which was to construct a narrative that gave strength and glory to an often overlooked part of history (especially at Fuqua’s time). They also worked to make a false history, which in Geoffrey’s case convinced people for years after he first wrote his tale of King Arthur, while Fuqua sought more to create an entertaining film that was “based on a true story.” However, Geoffrey is more successful in his efforts to create a history while still constructing an enthralling story, while Fuqua fails to provide enough evidence and story in any of his characters to convince his audience of his knowledge of his subject and his storytelling abilities.

    Construction of myth of history is such a vital part to Arthurian legend, because no matter the author or format, an Arthurian tale draws upon history in order to create an ideological figure that never existed, but instead represents and reflects the hopes of generations. The modern audience knows on some level that Arthur and Camelot never existed, especially with all the magic and extravagances that characters like Merlin, but Arthurian tales rely on history to ground themselves. Through the construction of history in various Arthurian tales, most notably with Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthurian legend seeks to provide an idealized version of history. Later adaptations and media produced based off Arthurian myth also tends to be whitewashed (as with most Hollywood media), instead reducing the concept of race to the fantasy genre concept as race, that of those who are marked differently biologically (for example, the Muggle-borns in Harry Potter, species differences in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and even Chrétien de Troyes’ concept of race as being presented through dwarves). The legend of Arthur often perpetuates the whitewashed and white supremacist version of history, with very few exceptions. Despite the concept of race at the time being different than how we view race today, filmmakers and storytellers still often leave audiences with a false construction of a whitewashed history. In both Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writing and Fuqua’s film, both use a more fantastical concept of race rather than how we perceive race today, choosing to construct their histories in a manner that does not necessarily represent the diversity and reality of the real world, both at the time of Geoffrey and now.

In Geoffrey’s tale, he constructs one of the first Arthurian tales, as he has nothing to go off of except folktales and his own knowledge of Britain, so he uses figures such as the legendary Brutus of Troy and groups like Saxons in order to build a landscape of Arthurian legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth then moves into writing a linear development of time with light commentary of his own, breaking the literary fourth wall. Geoffrey does this most often in his description of places and events, such as “…Hoel took a good look round the side of the lock which I have described to you” (220) and “All these marched with a train of accoutrements, mules, and horses such as  find it hard to describe” (228). He mainly follows an almost Biblical approach to his construction of history, a linear one that follows patriarchal connections through time, and then draws from his own concept of history as someone living in the 1100s to make his story. Geoffrey was so convincing in his construction of Arthur that his account was taken as fact for centuries after he first wrote it, providing a basis for what many would consider as fact, and what many would base their own takes on Arthur upon. 

    It could be argued that it’s impossible to create history through film, as it clearly represents something fabricated on some level, but much like literature, true stories are often expanded upon or told for the first time through the mediums of film or literature. For example, films like The Blair Witch Project, which claims to be made up of real found footage, but instead is a complete fiction, and films and novels like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (and Richard Brooks’ film adaptation) take a true story and put fictional elements in it. Antoine Fuqua tried to do this “based on a true story” concept in order to tell a new tale of Arthur, one without magic, and one that conveniently kills off Lancelot so that his treasonous tryst with Guinevere never happens. He uses part of Geoffrey’s story and methods of constructing history, that of grounding it in distant fact to create a fantastical ideological world, but he ultimately fails at constructing this history. His historical construction is whitewashed (as the movie’s concept of race is between different groups such as the Welsh, the Picts, the Saxons, the Britons, etc.) to the point where it becomes wholly unconvincing as a representation of history. 

    Fuqua also continues to fail in both his storytelling abilities and building of history due to the lack of clarity and continuity in his film. He overdoes his representation of the Saxons as the ultimate evil, because while they are portrayed as having racist and eugenicist beliefs, the audience doesn’t really see how different they are from who we are supposed to be rooting for, aka Arthur and his Knights, because everyone is white. The film goes out of its way to paint white people blue in order to represent the “race” that exists within the Arthur legend Fuqua tells. His version of Arthur fails to capture the grandeur, chivalry, and tension Geoffrey constructs in his The History of the Knights of Britain. Fuqua also sought to create a new history, that of Arthurian history, and that of film history, and failed to do either. Geoffrey of Monmouth, while also whitewashing his version of history, was successful enough in crafting his tale to fool his audience for generations through how he wrote his storyline and characters, crafted the beginnings of a legend, and captured the spirit of a fictional grand kingdom of a time not often written about.