Arthurian Mythology List

Garlon is the invisible assassin of Arthurian legend, the knight who could vanish from sight at will and who used that power to murder his fellow warriors from behind. He is the brother of King Pellam, the Grail King whose castle housed the Holy Grail and the Spear of Longinus, the lance that had pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion. He is the man who killed Sir Herlews le Berbeus with a spear thrust while Herlews was riding under Balin's protection, and who murdered Sir Peryn in a churchyard before the eyes of a hermit. He is the dark-faced knight who sat at his brother's feast table, who noticed Balin watching him with hatred, and who walked over and smote the Savage Knight on the face with the back of his hand, daring him to do what he had come for. He is the man whose death triggered the greatest catastrophe in Arthurian romance, for when Balin struck off his head, King Pellam rose to avenge his brother, and the pursuit that followed led Balin to seize the sacred spear and deliver the Dolorous Stroke that laid three kingdoms waste. And he is the shadow behind the Grail Quest itself, the wicked kinsman whose cruelty set in motion the wound that only Galahad could heal.

Sir Gawain stands as one of the most ancient and transformed figures in Arthurian legend-a knight whose character evolved dramatically from his Welsh origins as Gwalchmei ap Gwyar to the celebrated but flawed hero of French and English romance. In Welsh tradition, Gwalchmei (meaning "Hawk of May," from gwalch "hawk" + mei possibly "May") was Arthur's nephew, son of Gwyar (meaning "gore" or "bloodshed," likely a matronym), and one of the greatest warriors of the British king's retinue. He appears in the early Welsh poem Pa Gur yv y Porthaur ("What man is the gatekeeper?") from the Black Book of Carmarthen as one of Arthur's companions, and in Culhwch and Olwen as a member of the warband seeking the giant's daughter. The Welsh Gwalchmei was noble, brave, and courteous-a paragon of knightly virtue whose grave was said to lie at Peryddon.

The transformation of Gwalchmei into the continental Gawain began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), where he appears as Gualguanus, Arthur's nephew and one of his most trusted commanders. Geoffrey established Gawain's reputation for courtesy and martial prowess that would persist throughout the medieval period. However, as the Arthurian legend passed into French hands and developed through Chrétien de Troyes and the Vulgate Cycle, Gawain's character underwent a fundamental shift. The French romances gradually diminished his stature: where he had been Arthur's greatest knight, he was increasingly surpassed by newcomers like Lancelot and Perceval. More significantly, his character accumulated flaws-he became associated with courtesy (gentillesse) rather than deep moral virtue, failed in the Grail Quest due to worldly sins, and his famous temper and vengefulness ultimately contributed to Camelot's fall.

Geoffrey of Monmouth is the cleric who conjured King Arthur out of the mists of Welsh legend and wrote him into the history of the world, the man whose quill created the most famous king who never lived. He is the chronicler who claimed to have translated a "very ancient book in the British tongue" given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a phantom manuscript that has never been found and may never have existed, but which became the foundation for the greatest legend in Western literature. He is the author of the Historia Regum Britanniae, the History of the Kings of Britain, composed around 1136, a work that traced Britain from the Trojan exile Brutus to the final British king Cadwallader, and which gave the world the first complete biography of Arthur: his miraculous conception, his conquest of Rome, his Round Table, his wife Guinevere, his treacherous son Mordred, and his departure to the Isle of Avalon. He is the poet who wrote the Prophetiae Merlini, the Prophecies of Merlin, around 1135, transforming a Welsh wild man into the boy-prophet who revealed the red and white dragons beneath Dinas Emrys, and who later composed the Vita Merlini, the Life of Merlin, in ornate Latin hexameters around 1150. And he is the bishop of St Asaph who was consecrated in 1152 but probably never set foot in his see, a man who spent his life in Oxford and the Welsh Marches, rubbing shoulders with earls and archdeacons, and who died in 1155 leaving behind a legacy that would shape the literature of Europe for a thousand years.

Geraint is the knight whose love for a woman nearly destroyed him and whose jealousy of that same woman saved him, the hero of one of the oldest and most human stories in Arthurian legend. He is the son of King Erbin of Dumnonia, the southwestern kingdom of Britain that would one day become Devon and Cornwall, and the brother of Ermid and Dywel. He is the warrior celebrated in a tenth-century Welsh poem as the bravest man at the Battle of Llongborth, where Arthur himself may have fought beside him. He is the knight who won Enid's hand by defeating Edern fab Nudd at a sparrowhawk tournament, who married her and fell so deeply into domestic bliss that he forgot every duty of chivalry. He is the husband who overheard his wife weeping that she was not a true wife for keeping him from his knightly calling, who misunderstood her words as a confession of adultery, and who dragged her onto a dangerous journey to test her fidelity. He is the fighter who proved his prowess against bandits, knights, and giants while Enid proved her love by disobeying his command of silence to warn him of danger. And he is the king who returned to rule Dumnonia in peace, a man who learned that love and honour need not be enemies.

The Giants of Mont-Saint-Michel represent some of the most savage and folkloric adversaries faced by King Arthur-a pair of monstrous humanoids whose slaying demonstrated both Arthur's heroic prowess as a giant-killer and the brutal reality of his continental campaigns. The story originates with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), the foundational text of Arthurian legend, which places the episode during Arthur's war against the Roman Emperor Lucius Hiberius. While preparing to march on Rome, Arthur received devastating news: a "giant of monstrous size" had emerged from Spain, kidnapped Helena-the niece of Duke Hoel of Brittany-and carried her to the summit of Mont-Saint-Michel, where he held her captive in a cave. The giant had already killed or captured numerous knights who attempted rescue, eating some alive, and spread such terror that the surrounding countryside lay deserted.

This giant of Mont-Saint-Michel is properly the second of two giants Arthur slew during his campaigns. Earlier in the Historia, Arthur had killed another giant (sometimes identified with the figure who became Ritho in later tradition) during his wars in the region. But the Helena kidnapping episode became the more famous narrative, elaborated by Wace, Layamon, and Malory into one of the most dramatic single-combat episodes in Arthurian literature. The giant's identification with Mont-Saint-Michel-a tidal island crowned by an eighth-century abbey that already possessed sacred associations with the archangel Michael-added layers of Christian resonance to a fundamentally folkloric tale of dragon-slaying and maiden-rescue transposed to a giant-killing context. Wace named the giant Dinabuc, while the Norse Tristrams Saga ok Ísöndar later placed Tristan's famous Hall of Statues in the giant's former cave.

Gildas is the monk who wrote the only surviving work from sixth-century Britain, a thunderous sermon called De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, "On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain," that condemned five kings as beasts of the Apocalypse and described the Battle of Mount Badon without once mentioning the name Arthur. He is the Romano-British historian born in the same year as the battle that halted the Saxon advance, educated by Illtud the educator of all Britain, who fled the strife of his homeland to become a hermit on an island in the Bristol Channel and later a teacher in Brittany whose most famous student was Taliesin, the greatest bard in Welsh legend. He is the son of Caw, one of twenty brothers, whose own brother Hueil was killed by King Arthur and whose forgiveness of the king became the foundation of a friendship that legend says saved Guinevere from the kidnapper Melwas of the Summer Country. He is the man whose body, laid in a boat upon a river after his death, drifted downstream for three months and was found intact by the monks of Rhuys, a miracle that confirmed his sainthood. And he is the most infuriating source in British history, the eyewitness who tells us everything about the age of Arthur except the one thing we most want to know, a monk whose silence about the greatest king has fuelled eight centuries of debate.

Gillomanius is the King of Ireland who lost his sacred stones to Merlin and his kingdom to Uther Pendragon, the Irish monarch whose two defeats bookend the brief reign of Aurelius Ambrosius and paved the way for the age of Arthur. He is the ruler who defended the Giant's Dance on Mount Killaraus, the circle of enormous stones that giants had brought from Africa and that Merlin declared possessed medicinal virtues beyond any other monument in the world. He is the king who marched against Uther Pendragon with a large army when the Britons came to steal those stones for a memorial to the victims of the Treachery of the Long Knives, and who was defeated and driven from the field while Merlin uprooted the megaliths with arts that no mortal craftsman could match. He is the ally who received Pascentius, the surviving son of the traitor Vortigern, after Pascentius's first invasion of Britain ended in disaster, and who joined his fleet to the Saxon's in a second attempt while Aurelius lay dying at Winchester. And he is the man who died on the battlefield before Menevia, killed by the very Britons he had tried to keep from his stones, his death confirming Merlin's prophecy that Uther would be king of all Britain.

Glastonbury is the town that claimed the Isle of Avalon and made the claim stick, the one place on earth where Arthurian legend keeps a permanent address. It is the site of the grave of King Arthur, dug up by the monks of its abbey in 1191 between two ancient pyramids, with a leaden cross naming the isle of Avalon as his resting place. It is the landing place of Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who caught Christ's blood in the cup of the Last Supper, and who was said to have brought that Holy Grail to Britain and planted his staff on Wearyall Hill, where it took root as the thorn that blossoms at Christmas. It is the mound of the Tor, the strange conical hill crowned by the ruined tower of St Michael, once an island in the winter floods and once the gate of the Celtic otherworld. It is the spring of the Chalice Well, running red with iron as if the earth itself remembered the Grail's blood. And it is the modern capital of every seeker of the old magic, where ley hunters, pilgrims, and the largest music festival on earth all pay their respects.

Glewlwyd is the first gatekeeper in Arthurian literature, the porter whose interrogation of heroes became the model for every guardian who would ever block a knight's path to adventure. He is Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr, "Mighty Grasp," a warrior of such size and ferocity that the Welsh Triads named him one of the Three Offensive Knights of Arthur's Court, a man so formidable that no one dared refuse him anything. He is the gatekeeper who barred Culhwch from Arthur's hall at Celliwig, who demanded to know the stranger's business, and who only relented when Arthur himself commanded the door be opened. He is the veteran who had ridden with Arthur to Caer Se and Asse, to Greater India and Lesser India, to the battle between the two Ynyrs when twelve hostages were brought from Norway. He is the captain who led his servants in the hunt for Twrch Trwyth, the enchanted boar, and who returned with only one man left alive. And he is the boundary between the ordinary world and the court of wonders, the figure who proves that in the oldest Arthurian tales, even the porter is a hero.

Goleuddydd is the mother whose death launched the oldest Arthurian quest, the queen whose madness, her dying command, and the briar that grew on her grave set in motion the events that would send her son to King Arthur's court and from there to the giant Ysbaddaden's lair. She is the daughter of Anlawdd Wledig, the shadowy king of Britain whose other daughter was Eigr, the mother of King Arthur himself, making Goleuddydd the aunt of the greatest king in British legend. She is the wife of Cilydd son of Celyddon Wledig, the king who desired a wife as well born as himself and who found her in the daughter of a wledig, a title that meant chief or protector. She is the woman who went mad during her pregnancy, who wandered the countryside and lived outdoors, who gave birth in a pig-run when frightened by a herd of swine, and who died naming her son Culhwch, a word that meant pig-run in Welsh and that would mark him forever as the boy born among the pigs. She is the dying queen who made her husband swear not to remarry until he saw a briar with two heads growing upon her grave, and who told her confessor to trim that grave every year so that nothing would grow upon it, a stratagem of such cunning that it held Cilydd to his promise for seven years before a single forgetful priest undid it all. And she is the absent mother whose death created the vacuum that a stepmother would fill, and that stepmother's curse would send Culhwch across Britain in search of Olwen, the white-tracked daughter of the chief of giants.

Goreu fab Custennin is the Best, the youngest son of a shepherd giant who survived the slaughter of his twenty-three brothers and became the giant-slayer who ended the reign of Ysbaddaden Bencawr. He is the son of Custennin the Shepherd, the giant herdsman who tended the flocks of Ysbaddaden Chief Giant, and the grandson of Amlawdd Wledig, the king whose daughters included Arthur's mother Eigyr and Culhwch's mother Goleuddydd, making Goreu cousin to both the greatest king and the greatest quester in Welsh legend. He is the boy who was hidden in a chest by his mother to save him from the giant who had murdered all his brothers, and who was taken under the wing of Cai, the magical knight of Arthur's court, and promised that he would not die unless Cai died with him. He is the youth who crossed three stone walls effortlessly to lead Arthur's men into Wrnach Gawr's fortress, earning the name Goreu, the Best, from the warriors who followed him. And he is the giant-slayer who dragged Ysbaddaden Bencawr to the mound by his hair, cut off his head, and placed it on a stake, avenging his brothers and claiming the giant's caer and territory as his own.

Gorlois is the Duke of Cornwall whose death set the entire Arthurian tragedy in motion, the loyal vassal who was betrayed by his own king, murdered in battle while Merlin's magic disguised Uther Pendragon in his likeness so that Uther could enter Tintagel and conceive Arthur upon Gorlois's wife Igraine. He is the warrior who fought beside Ambrosius Aurelianus against the Saxons at Conisbrough and Mount Damen, who proved his prowess in war only to be destroyed by the very king he had served. He is the husband who placed Igraine in the impregnable fortress of Tintagel while he rode to defend Dimilioc, the second castle, never knowing that the enemy besieging him was the least of his dangers. He is the father of Morgause, Elaine, and Morgan le Fay, the three daughters whose fates would shape the doom of the Round Table, from Morgan's hatred of Arthur to Morgause's adultery with the king that produced Mordred. And he is the wronged lord whose ghost, in Thomas Hughes's Elizabethan tragedy The Misfortunes of Arthur, rose from the grave to condemn the son of Uther and declare that Mordred would be the hammer of his hate, the instrument of revenge that would bring down the kingdom born from treachery.