The Regnal List

Part IV: The Regnal List

Part 4:  Many English historians became discouraged with the myths and mystification of the Arthurian literature.  And, only a specialist of medieval languages can read the manuscripts in their original form anyway, a task compounded in difficulty by the fact that one must figure out each writer’s idiosyncratic style and vocabulary.  There were neither grammar texts for Old French, nor dictionaries in the Middle Ages.  One was free to write as one liked – this of course complicates the reader’s task no end.

Confronted with swan knights, tyrants, giants, dragons, and sword bridges, and weary of imputations of incest, adultery, and treachery, many historians must have willingly handed both King Arthur and his supposed kingdom back to the Old French writers of romances. 

Therefore, a good knowledge of medieval French is essential to the understanding of the manuscripts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  This is when Old French was the official language of Britain.  It will prove to be the key that opens the doors to discovery and allow us to pierce not only the upper level of the texts but their hidden, secret language.  This is where someone like Dr. Goodrich steps in as her command of this language and interest in the relationship of language to Anthropology helps one see through the cryptic messages.

Another key lies in the approach.  I have positioned Arthur as living in Britain at a time for which there are virtually no extant records or chronology or annals.  Thus, when it comes time to seek his probable birthplace, the search will be not for ruins of a medieval castle but for a barely discernible castle mound of piled earth – a construction characteristic of the Dark Ages.  I think of Arthur being not in those territories which he could not have conquered but in those which the Saxons failed to overrun.  This is why, with Goodrich’s help I will forgo looking for him in Cornwall, or in England for that matter, or modern Wales, where his name does not appear in the regnal lists. 

Regnal chronology is, specifically, the study of king lists or more generally put: sequences of governance in the history of a state, and the organizing of such data.