Well, this Geoffrey bloke is not Bonisagus. He's not the unparalleled genius of his age, and he's not spent decades scouring the length and depth of Britain seeking out the secrets of its history. He's a clerical penpusher with a flair for making stuff up. He's not found the books either, he got them from an archdeacon, there weren't many of them and we have a fair idea of which books they were, i.e. Historia Britonum by Nennius, Bede's Ecclesiastial History of the English People and De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae by Gildas. None of the stuff he writes about in his Arthurian pseudohistory is in any of those sources. That's why I find it a bit of a leap.
No, Geoffrey is not Bonisagus. Bonisagus never existed. Bonisagus is just made up, and so is all his research. Bonisagus never wrote anything, since he didn't exist.
Geoffrey existed. He did write stuff. He did some research.
Yet somehow you find the fictional Bonisagus' non-existing accomplishments more believable than the real Geoffrey's claims?
4 Likes
If we're talking about characters in a story, then yes I do. In an Ars Magica setting what Bonisagus discovered and achieved is verifiable fact, whereas Geoffrey's works could be presented as either fact or fiction. I opt for the latter. I also think it's within the realms of plausibility that Geoffrey was doing something a bit similar to what Virgil was doing in The Aeneid, i.e. fabricating a mythical ancestry for royalty and nobility, to flatter them and for them to bolster their own claims to be rightful rulers.
Anyway - Geoffrey seems to have reached the conclusion that the Britons were descended from the Trojans and that Britain was named after some Trojan prince called Brutus, so I wouldn't personally rate his "research" very highly.
Arthur and Merlin are historical persons in Mythic Europe, not fictional.
The facts of the real world are not necessarily facts of Mythic Europe.
That Geoffrey in the real world wrote fiction is not a convincing argument for his Mythic Europe counterpart necessarily doing the same.
8 Likes
I completely disagree. I know the premise of Mythic Europe is that the world was what people in the medieval era believed it to be, but I think it's the storyguide's prerogative to decide that they also believed things that were just nonsense. In this case there were also people living at the time who said Geoffrey was writing nonsense, and in Lords of Men I think it's established that the nobility and clergy believed a lot of nonsense about magic and magi. So why can't the Arthurian stories be in Mythic Europe what they are in actual Europe, i.e. fiction?
1 Like
Medieval legends - of saint, heroes and wizards - are tricky. It does rarely matter, whether and how real role models of them lived.
For an example take a look at Roland. Would it matter, if he had not been mentioned by Einhard?
For another, look at the legends of St. Francis, and how they were edited before being authorized by the Latin Church. Historical accuracy generally did not matter there.
Do Geoffrey's contemporary critics defend historical accuracy - what ever that was in the middle ages? Or do they rather try to discredit the Welsh legends coalescing in his work? Or a little bit of both?
Cognizant Faeries know, what in it is important to them!
Actually yes - William of Newburgh wondered why no one had ever heard of a king supposedly more amazing than Alexander the Great until Geoffrey started writing about him. He wasn't really discrediting any Welsh legends either, because they bear almost no resemblance whatsoever to the stuff Geoffrey was writing.
1 Like
It might seem odd but I'm in complete agreement with your last sentence. The Arthurian stories could easily be fiction in Mythic Europe. However it opens up a bigger question - how do you treat all of the other stories? Did medieval people really believe in real dragons and wood wives and whatever other thing you want to think about? Or were they merely the cultural touchstones of the time similar to how we tell stories about X-men, Averngers, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones. A mix of entertainment, metaphor, and morality tale that no one is supposed to take literally.
1 Like
Of course they can be, and in your saga you can do whatever you want, but in canon Mythic Europe Arthur, Merlin, and the rest were historical persons who did a lot of what the stories say they did.
That Geoffrey of Monmouth was right in Mythic Europe is no less plausible than a whole lot of other made-up stories that are true in Mythic Europe.
5 Likes
It looks like we have roughly three things to work with.
We know there are Welsh stories about Arthur (I seem to remember that there are a few characters that might resemble some portions of Merlin in Welsh stories also). We have Geoffrey of Monmouth saying he is writing about things he has found in old books. And we have William (and maybe other contemporaries) saying Geoffrey is clearly inventing things / writing fiction.
To me that leads to three possibilities.
- You can say its all fiction that everyone knows is completely made up.
- You can say its some form of hidden or secret history that Geoffrey found about about but William didn't know about, didn't believe, or wanted to keep hidden.
- You can say that Geoffrey is writing down stories that have been circulating as part of a popular oral tradition. Arthur and all are known similar to Roland. Geoffrey added in some of the history stuff to butter up people who might pay him but otherwise he's just the earliest surviving written source.
I feel that #1 leans too far into real life and set a precedent in a saga that reduces the Mythic feeling but all three have potential to be workable options.
1 Like
Medieval historical 'truth' about obscure periods centuries before is typically written with lots of artistic freedom - to make it readable by some learned public and sponsored by some powerful patrons.
See here a brief summary of an evaluation of Geoffrey of Monmouth by Miles Russell :
In 2017, Miles Russell published the initial results of the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project established at Bournemouth University.[21] The main conclusion of the study was that the Historia Regum Britanniae appears to contain significant demonstrable archaeological fact, despite being compiled many centuries after the period that it describes. Geoffrey seems to have brought together a disparate mass of source material, including folklore, chronicles, king-lists, dynastic tables, oral tales, and bardic praise poems, some of which was irrevocably garbled or corrupted. In doing so, Geoffrey exercised considerable editorial control, massaging the information and smoothing out apparent inconsistencies in order to create a single grand narrative which fed into the preferred narrative of the Norman rulers of Britain. Much of the information that he used can be shown to be derived from two discrete sources:
=> the orally transmitted, heroic tales of the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes, two essentially pre-Roman tribes inhabiting central south-eastern Britain at the very end of the Iron Age;
=> the king-lists of important post-Roman dynasties that ruled territories in western Britain.
Stretching this source material out, chopping, changing and re-editing it in the process, Geoffrey added not just his own fictions but also additional information culled from Roman and early medieval histories and early medieval writers such as Gildas and Bede.[22]
That is not that bad for a 12th century churchman. And the Faeries might find their places there.
1 Like
If I can ignore things or include them as I see fit they're not exactly "canon," are they. They're just ideas that troupes can use as they like. From what I can see though, while the stories themselves might exist in Mythic Europe whether or not the characters ever did is a totally different matter. If other stories in Mythic Europe are as or less plausible than Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th Century pseudohistory then as far as I'm concerned they could well be nonsense too.
I'm a bit confused, so I'm going to see if my perspective is flawed regarding this thread. If need be, explain it like I'm in primary school.
We are arguing that in a fan made history in a fictional world, where we accept the world is younger than the Pyramids but the Pyramids exist; Egyptian, Roman, Greek gods exist, and did all their things from starting the Trojan War, Zeus shagging anything that moved, etc, but the history including King Arthur as a fact in this fictional world is wrong.
I'm thinking the Mythic part of Mythic Europe is being overlooked. If someone does not want Merlin in their Mythic Europe fine, but in a fan history, just let it go.
6 Likes
I'm not saying it's wrong to include the Arthur from 7th and 8th Century historical accounts or early Welsh poetry. I'm saying it's wrong to treat as fact something that could well have been made up in the lifetime of an older Magus living in the 13th Century. If Merlin had really been this towering figure in myth and legend I think the Order would have known all about him long before Geoffrey of Monmouth was even born. He might even have been one of the Founders yet he's completely absent from any editions of the core rules.
Try it this way for 1220:
(1) There are some older British Ex Miscellanea or hedge magi who know the Welsh models for 'Arthur' and 'Merlin'. These also know that the Latin Order of Hermes doesn't.
(2) There are many other Hemetic magi who are more or less interested in the weird history of Britain - but not interested enough to learn Welsh and do their research. These like to quote Geoffrey of Monmouth - especially for some pseudo-erudite references about the importance of British wizards as 'Heirs to Merlin'.
(3) Then there are British Faeries out to gather vitality from humans. With interest in Welsh poetry being local and slowly fading, but Geoffrey finding followers all over Britain, those Faeries noticed by the Order of Hermes will soon be the ones playacting Round Table.
(4) And finally there are Seekers, who need to know far more about old history of hidden places, learn old dialects and interview bards and wise people. But these are "reluctant to share information that would help other seekers" (HoH:TL p.15), and of course do not care at all about the learned charades of their other sodales.
The Order doesn't know everything there is to know even about living Magi, let alone some dead Magi for the more recent history of the Order, and you think they'd know everything about Merlin?
They don't know everything about the Spider, or about Guorna the Fetid. And those are more recent than Merlin.
You can ignore RoP: Faerie, or Covenants in your game if you want. Does it make it less "canon"? No.
The fact that YOU decide to ignore something that's in the source material of the game, or an entire book, doesn't mean that it's not part of "canon", just that you don't see it as a part of it.
And that's fine, YOU don't consider it relevant to your game. But don't presume to claim that it's irrelevant to everyone else's game.
5 Likes
When did I ever claim any such thing? You seem to be one of these rather smug, patronising people who "wins" arguments by misinterpreting other people's viewpoints as whatever you can criticise.
You keep hammering on someone's fan project to bend it to your desire. Don't talk to me about smug and patronizing.
You started by claiming that King Arthur and Merlin are just pseudo-history, by any magi in the 13th century.
This is a Fan project. You don't like that he included them? fine, delete those entries from your copy, and that's it.
4 Likes
You and some others seem to have taken great offense to the suggestion, and are coming over all huffy, precious and miffed about it. If you want to fill your sagas with all that kind of stuff it's no business of mine, and I think it's probably about time to stop hijacking the whole thread with just one minor issue. You're certainly not going to change my view that in an Ars Magica saga it's quite valid for Geoffrey of Monmouth to be in Mythic Europe what he was in actual Europe, so you can find something else to get self-righteous about.
The first quote has a certain smug, "I know history better than you" vibe , and seems to be sniggering derisively at the person compiling the History.
I would suggest the people are more defensive, than huffy or precious. If you are going to take a metaphorical dump on a fan project, it should be a glaring error, not a difference of opinion.
I appreciate I'm not helping here. Would it be possible for a mod to move every post after the last post by the OP, Original madman, roughly post 44, in to it's own thread. Maybe call it Is Merlin canonical?
6 Likes