King Brutus of Slaine

[The Legendary Shark]

I think there might be some relevant lectures on those SD cards. If I put them on there, "Famous Greeks" and "Famous Romans" are fantastic, given by a properly enthusiastic and engaging lecturer.

[kev67]

IIrc, there's a couple of  guys (Colin Wilson(?) And Barram Blackett(?)) who think they can prove that King Arthur was a real king (two real kings, in fact) who ruled much of south and mid England from Wales in the Long Ago.

How different the world might have been under the Welsh Empire.

Leslie Alcock, University College Cardiff, author of Arthur's Britain, and John Morris, University College, London, author of The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles 350 to 650, proved Arthur was real, and that he achieved most of what was attributed to him. This was a lot more than I thought. He beat the Saxons, Picts and Scots, but then he also conquered Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Gaul. So there was a Welsh empire. He set off to learn the Romans a thing or two, but then he heard Mordred was having it off with Guinevere, so turned back home. This is according to my book and I am not sure I believe it.

[The Legendary Shark]

I'll have to have a butcher's at that, thanks, Kev.

[AlexF]

I only recent stumbled across the idea that the recent Slaine arc was based not so much on truth as on a once-popular account of British/Brutish history. Fascinating.
Tordelback, make that in-development blog into a live blog immediately please, I don't care how busy you are. I shan't enjoy Slaine properly until you do!

Speaking as an Englishman (well actually I'm, half-German on my mother's side, but I was educated in English public schools so they beat the Hun out of me), I did get exposed to a fair bit of the classical Rome/Greece history stuff... but one thing I never learned at school was quite how much horror England visited upon Ireland and indeed Wales. (Not to mention various other colonies further afield)

[sheridan]

If you'll indulge me - I dredged up a chunk of this stuff for my eternally-in-development Sláine blog waaaay back when Brutus and New Troy first appeared back in Books of Invasion: Moloch.

My advice, as somebody who writes a blog with sometimes month-long (sometimes years-long) gaps in posts is to just get on and write a blog post, then release it in to the wild.

[kev67]

Assuming King Brutus is fictional, I wondered how far the line of succession went back before it became fictional. Cassivellaunus was king when Julius Ceasar invaded in 55 BC. Gwynne's book does not list every king going back to Brutus, just some who were king when something especially interesting happened. There is a gap in the Historia between 113 BC and 358 BC. Maybe that is when the succession became fictional. There do not seem to be any other gaps. How would they keep records back then? Is there any corroboration from other sources?

The last bit on the British kings blew my mind. Around 555 the Saxons called upon King Gormund, who had conquered Ireland with a huge fleet carrying African warriors. He invaded Britain with 160,000 Africans and routed King Keredic's forces and ravaged the entire country. Gormund then handed over most the country to the Saxons. The British retreated to Wales, Cornwall and Armorica (now Brittanny). The British did rally again in the 600s. King Cadwallo supposedly reconquered it with 10,000 soldiers from Armorica, but his son, king Cadwallader was the last of the British kings. There was civil war, famine and pestilence, and the country was so depopulated, the Saxons invited their Germanic kinsfolk to come across.

I'm 53 and I have never heard of Britain being invaded by 160,000 Africans before. Is there any corroboration for this?

[sheridan]

First time I've heard about this.  I won't dispute where the mercenaries came from but will point out that most troop estimates in historical accounts are exaggerated (sometimes wildly).