Who was King Arthur? No one knows. There has been far too much poetry and prose written about him in the last 1,000 years for anyone to tell for sure. There aren't any accurate records from the time when he supposedly lived.

The historical Arthur probably lived in the fifth, sixth, or seventh century CE, at a time when Roman rule in Britain was in decay and the Welsh and English kingdoms that replaced Roman government were still in the development stage. Various tribes fought one another and a group called the Saxons invaded much of Britain.

Arthur may have been a leader of the Britons, the native British people who tried to repulse the Saxon threat. He may have been a Welsh hero. Some people suggest he was a descendant of the occupying Romans. A popular explanation is that he was a British cavalry general named Arturius who fought the Saxons and defeated them in the battle of Badon Hill in 517.

Back in the twelfth century, people found a cross in Glastonbury Abbey with a Latin caption on it reading "Here lies buried the famous King Arthur, in the Island of Avalon." The cross was last seen in the eighteenth century, but drawings of it survive today. Was this Arthur's actual tomb or a publicity stunt by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey? No one knows.

No one can tell for sure who Arthur was or what he did, if he even existed. Does that matter? Not really. Instead of being a king out of history, King Arthur is a literary figure with a long and popular lifespan. Everyone loved tales of Arthur right from the very beginning (in medieval times, that is) and writers have yet to stop embellishing his story.