So after watching the History Channel for a while after getting home from work last night, I was able to learn a little bit about the history of Arthurian legend and refresh my memories of England. This was particularly interesting to me as I had a conversation with Al and a female friend of his Monday night at the bar about the new King Arthur movie. Don’t get me wrong the movie does look good, but I don’t know how true to form, and what that form should be. A few of the key things that I picked up on was the time frame that the Arthurian legends speak of. Contrary to my thoughts on the time, it actually represents a time between the 5th and 6th centuries, at the same time as the fall of the Roman Empire. I always figured his time to have come a bit later in the middle ages somewhere in the more romantic era.

Obviously I was mistaken. I was also very intrigued to learn a bit about how the legends grew and brought this potentially idealistic representation of the medieval hero to life. Part of me was so deeply enraptured in the show, some of me was thinking to Video games, and how all of the legends of Arthur and Tolkien’s worlds all merge with some added imagination to create wondrous fantasy worlds and some of the names and icons adapted directly from history and literature.

As many of you may know, I was quite the fan of the video game Diablo and Diablo II, both great games, albeit somewhat prone to hacking. But I never realized that the setting of the Original game was the town of Tristram, which borrows its name directly from one of the knights of the round table. This does make sense as you play the hero and fight the ongoing battles of good versus evil, the everlasting dichotomy. The fight for truth, light and all things noble wins in the end, but like Arthurian legend can only last so long before falling to the darkness from within.

Another glaring example comes from Warcraft III, yes another Blizzard game. While playing the missions in single player mode, in the Human campaign, the Hero controlled by you is Arthas, quite the same model for the name Arthur, coming from Art which I believe was Celtic for bear. I am almost surprised that the flag of Lordaeron did not have a bear on it. His mentor is the Lord Uther, which is remarkably the same as Arthur’s father in legends. But beyond this was the unbelievable similarities that Warcraft seems to have shared with Middle Earth. Granted there were no Hobbits in the game, there was a good selection of Human, Dwarf, Elf, Orcs and Undead. Again it is the ultimate struggle for good and evil to see what will happen, how will good triumph in the end.

Not that any of this was particularly important to anyone or really even worth reading. It was just a few of my thoughts from when I was watching TV. Seeing as parts of the Arthurian legends come from France, here is a random thought. I had not mentioned, but young Cassandra is overseas now. I remember talking to her and apparently she left to go over there on Monday, and I see that I have received a few hits from France.