soldier who united the leaders of the small British kingdoms against the .
invading armies. It seems likely that he was a noble Celt. The first .
mention of his victory in battle was written down around 600 AD, in a .
set of church annals called the Annales Cambriae. He must have been a .
glimmer of hope to the Britons, and it is not surprising that he might .
have been thought of as a king. .
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Guinevere And The Court At Camelot .
In the earliest tales of Arthur, there is no mention of his queen, .
Guinevere; she was introduced by later writers, possibly to illustrate .
how the dream world of Camelot fell from grace. When Guinevere first .
appears in early Welsh stories, she is the daughter of a giant, but .
later she becomes the daughter of King Leodegrance of the West Country. .
In her original Welsh form of Gwenhwyfar, she was an folk figure before .
being connected to Arthur, and may originally have been a lesser .
goddess. .
Geoffery located Camelot at the very real Roman town of Caerleon in .
South Wales; Malory placed it at Winchester, which was the headquarters .
of the kings of Wessex and remained a royal seat after the Norman .
invasion. Other stories place it near Arthur's supposed birthplace at .
Tintagel. Cadbury Castle in Somerset has been named as another possible .
location of Camelot, which has been revealed during excavations to have .
been occupied during the time of Arthur and to have been the .
headquarters of a leader, if not a king. The real Arthur may have been .
buried at Glastonbury Abbey, which lays around twelve miles north-west .
of the castle. It is said to have been a secret burial, so the news of .
his death would not raise Saxon morale; the mystery may have given rise .
to the rumors that he still lived on. In 1190, the monks of Glastonbury .
Abbey reported that they had dug up a coffin made from a hollow log, and .
a lead cross inscribed with the name of Arthur, or Artos. Within were a .
man's bones, and a woman's skeleton and mass of yellow hair found in the .
