Geoffrey of Monmouth says that the 15-year-old Arthur was crowned king by hereditary right anyway, but later authors surmise that the succession would not have been so simple if Arthur had not been the rightful heir to Otter. This is why we get the Sword in the Stone story, where whoever pulls the sword out of the stone is the rightful successor to Otter, first told in the late 1200s.y French Century Poem Merlinby Robert de Boron.
Arthur also has a number of half-siblings, nephews, and occasionally a son. The exact number, their names, their ages, and their exact relationship to Arthur tend to vary a lot between different versions of the story. In Mallory’s version, Arthur has three sisters, all children of Igraine and her first husband, the Duke of Tintagel. The two younger ones are the witch Morgan le Fay and Elaine, who doesn’t do much. The eldest of them is Morgause, who is married to King Lot, who is an enemy of Arthur. Morgause, who has been spying on Arthur for her husband, sleeps with Arthur without either realizing they are brother and sister, and becomes pregnant with Mordred, who is thus Arthur’s nephew and illegitimate son.
Mallory seems to have introduced the idea of incest, but Mordred is usually Arthur’s nephew, son, son-in-law, or some combination of these three. More consistently, from Geoffrey of Monmouth onwards, Mordred rebels against Arthur and they are both killed in the final battle between their armies.
Winter King He fiddles with the family relationships a bit, but keeps them fairly similar to the more popular traditions. In this version, Uther views Arthur for being promiscuous and calls him a “son of a bitch”, suggesting a slightly different backstory, as Uther traditionally did not blame Igraine for sleeping with him when she thought she was her husband. Cornwell’s book followed tradition in making the child Mordred Arthur a nephew, the son of another Mordred, who is the legitimate son of Aether who is killed at the beginning of the story. In the TV version, however, there is a time jump between the death of Mordred the Elder and the birth of the child Mordred, who is Uther’s own legitimate son in this version, making him Arthur’s half-brother, although the age difference preserves Arthur’s role as his own relative and protector. We also meet Arthur’s half-sister Morgan, but instead of being the legitimate daughter of Arthur’s mother Igraine and first husband, in this version, Morgan is another illegitimate child of Aether.
Merlin, Nemo and Morgan
One or two major characters from the Arthurian legend are excluded from Cornwell’s version Winter KingMost notably, the tyrannical British King Vortigern, who was often an early enemy. However, most of the key players are here, or will come later. Early episodes introduce us to three particularly important and often enigmatic characters; Merlin, Nemo and Morgan.
Merlin, or Myrddin (pronounced “Mir-thin” not as Stargate SG-1 In other words, “Mer Dan”) is a prophet and wizard who first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey seems to have confused Welsh Myrddin with the role Ambrosius (another Roman) plays in Nennius as a young advisor to Vortigern, and then added a little more material. early 13y French horn poem Merlinby Robert de Boron, making Merlin more explicitly Christian (as well as adding the Sword in the Stone story). about 20y Century scholars believed that if there was a historical Merlin, he might have been a priest and advisor to kings, somewhat like a shaman. This is how it was more or less portrayed Winter Kingexcept that he also rules over his own region of Avalon.