Oh yes, they are. Canon is the official word on what is true and not, and how things work in Ars Magica/Mythic Europe. Rules and setting both. Essentially all that is in the published official books.
But since it is a game, you can ignore, modify, or add to it as you please for your own game. Doesn't change what is canon or not if you do.
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Avalon is literally a covenant. It's Oleron in Normandy.
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This thread took a bit of the turn (and I really don't mind, and honestly don't have a real side at all here). But thanks to the mod(s) for separating this into separate thread.
I've stated my position already above. The Ars Magica Chronology may be a big fan project, but it's 90%++ based on the canon in official supplements. I did not add anything about Arthur or Merlin that was not in Ars Magica 5e canon already (as previously stated).
@Aurelius my friend and sodalis, you should think a little bit about how you come off about this in the discussion. At heart it's a good discussion, but the one coming off as the most "huffy, precious and miffed" as you put it is yourself (but perhaps not alone, but those are just reactions on your tone IMHO). And I say that without malice or as a retort for being offended. I'm really not offended, but I think the debate is not at a good level. We can do better here please.
While I respect your opinion (and I wouldn't mind playing myself with that as canon) and value the debate, it just does not align with the established published canon game world (as I referenced and outlined above).
Everyone will and should their own canon world (including me for my own saga, which doesn't follow canon or the timeline I compiled completetly).
As for the Ars Magica Chronology project, the timeline is aligned to the canon (so really no use debating that fact specifically). Where it's really not, feel free to challenge that in on specific details that are actual errors compared to Atlas Games published canon. The Ars Magica Chronology or what I put in it is not the point here (also why I take zero offense, so no worries). You have a problem with what's actually referred in Ars Magica canon, not really my project.
The timeline is shared in an editable format (on which EVERYONE is invited to comment and suggest fixes for) for precisely the reason that every Storyguide and Troupe can make the changes they want to fit their Saga.
My tip for you is to just open it, CTRL+F for Arthur and then Merlin and remove those "canon" entries. All done. Or change everything as you see fit, put in your own entries or editor comments and share with your players to enjoy. Hurray, you don't need to spend 100's of hours (like I did) to enjoy your own compiled timeline. You're welcome.
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Now the question is, did they just take the name (from myth or history) or does it relate to an "actual" Avalon in some way (too long since I read the module myself to remember if anything was there).
In addition to my previous comment, one of the fun and interesting parts about old history and legends is that you can never be quite sure whats fiction or fact - it often just blurs. It was also way way worse in the middle-ages as they didn't have the same established scientific method or historical analysis that we have now. Both my players and I love the ambiguity Mythic Europe provides vs "established" (but not necessarily 100% correct) history, and we play into that all the time. The timeline has some of that "enrichment" in the italic comments.
Another game point here is Heirs of Merlin. It was a while since I read up on them (and I don't use them or plan to), but Are they? Are they not? Were they just aligning to the myth or did he exist? Was it Myrdin or Merlin or someone else? I mean our setting is full of actual and historic druid magicians... Where should we actually draw the line? Even if we ran a purely historical game without any myth or magic, we'd likely be super-far off any reality of how it actually was.
We'll never get perfect reenactment so I see little point arguing absolutes, when it's more or less all somewhat ambigious at the very least - especially in a mythical game world already full of fictional liberty, errors, omissions and anachronisms. Let's just enjoy it instead.
TL&lL p.70:
The covenant of Oleron is descended from a faerie court of the Arthurian Age. Its members are Merinita magi who enjoy stories of feats of arms, passionate wooing, and tragic deaths. ...
History
In the time of King Arthur, a young knight named Lanval won the heart of Triamour, the faerie Queen of Oleron. After an adventure of love, loss, and reunion, he was taken there to live forever. ...
As hence the history of the area starts already with Faerie stories, in Mythic Europe there is no need to try to figure out, whether and when what of that story has actually happened. The Faeries running it have their public: the covenant's magi - and these magi know how to benefit from the tale.
See especially TL&lL p.71 Culture and Traditions:
This covenant’s traditions are a curious mixture of historical chivalry and contemporary romanticizations of the past. The covenant changes slowly, so that its buildings and inhabitants seem suited for historical stories of courage and love. Magi interested in history will notice many discrepancies.
It is actually a site where the covenant's magi experiment with the creation of Faeries based on folk heroes (p.72 Spreading Stories and Creating Heroes).
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I've extended this concept to previous sessions. We the players aren't acting what actually happened, but the legend left 100 years later.
This mindset is liberating. There's no need to fear little inconsistencies, you aren't limited by the reality of what could be done. Your goal is to have fun while telling a nice story that will survive the aeons.
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IIRC, in the original chronology, the chronicler was at least a hundred years in the future, so may have given more credence to King Arthur than earlier magi might, and was recording many legendary events even though they clearly contradicted each other, some of which were basically cribbed from earlier sources of dubious authenticity. He knew the work was inconsistent. He also reported things that were wrong: he mentioned the wizard Volkhv, not understanding that this was a composite character of a class of hedge wizard.
The narrator was sometimes unreliable, sometimes misinformed, and sometimes indifferent and indecisive. This was by design to allow saga flexibility.
Source: Me.
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This thread exploded like crazy, and I am still trying to catch up.It seems very YMMV territory.
The King Arthur stories come from the Dark Ages, where first-hand records are spotty and not guaranteed to survive centuries. The Anglo-Saxon chronicles are supposed to be an attempt to fix this, as they are supposed to have 3 monasteries each recording the same events, but if you check this so called triplicate backup system there is a lot of disagreement between the 3 copies..
In Mythic Europe it might be possible that Geoffrey of Monmouth may have made a romantic history made from fragments he had access to. Thus could be built around nuggets of truth.
Not too dis-similar to how the later Shakespeare in our world would write various historical tragedies around historical individuals in plays such as "Julius Caesar", "Hamlet" and others.
What the nuggets of truth are is YMMV territory.
Dare I ask if in ME that Robin Hood existed?
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I daresay that there will be no problems to your Mythic Europe, no matter whether you have a Robyn Hood in your saga or not. 
YSMV, but it'd be a clear anachronism. The earliest known references to Robin Hood stories date to the 1370s, and the king named in "A Gest of Robyn Hode" is an Edward (with Edward I's reign starting in 1272, and Edward III's ending in 1377). Backdating Robin Hood to the era of King Richard wasn't done until the 16th Century.
OK, that may have been a bad choice, though I understand that modern research has found several potential historical candidates for the basis of Robin Hood. If my fuzzy memory recalls correctly, one of them may have been in King Richard's time.
The veracity of New England might have been a better one to ask about.
That's a really cool take!! Can you expand a bit on how you do it in practice?
I always thought the similarity of her name to "Trianoma" might have been a good plot hook.
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There isn't much, it's just a mindset.
It's more accepting "hey last week we did something impossible" as part of the legend, and not fearing doing another impossible thing this week.
You miscounted your xp or both magi we reading the same summae. Your upkeep was higher than paid for the last 5 years, place a story to fix it in the future and ignore the past deficit. That kind of tedious things.
Don't let minutiae slow down the story. If your spont/2 isn't quite there, just accept you succeded with some complication. Then resolve that complication with more roleplay.
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The earliest surviving written documents date to the 1370s but could point to an oral tradition that is a fair bit older.
Additionally, both Robert as a given name and Hood as a surname were common in england at the time. So that a dubiously good-hearted criminal called Robin hood is certainly not out of the question.
Given the closeness of the dates and records of historic criminals named Robert Hood I would say that it would not be anachronistic, at least not to an extreme extent to include him if you are in the area.
If by that you mean actual manuscripts, no. The "1370s" date reference is based on taking the surviving manuscripts of Piers Plowman (none older than the 1390s) and working back from them to derive a composition date for that work. And Piers Plowman is not itself a Robin Hood tale, it is just the oldest surviving mention by anyone, anywhere, of the existence of any "rhymes of Robin Hood".
Certainly it is possible that oral tales and ballads of Robin Hood predate Piers Plowman by a century and a half. But the actual stories that we have postdate Piers Plowman by a century. By the time you take those c.1470 Robin Hood stories and carve off the bits that would be anachronistic for stories in circulation 250 years earlier, you don't have much left beyond a cameo.
So, insofar as Mythic Europe is shaped to be the world as the people of 1220 believed the world to be (which, granted, can never be much more than an aspirational statement), the stories of the Historia Regum Britanniae would be part of the shape of that world, while the tales of Robin Hood known to us would not.
Having several references in the early 1400s and earlier (Piers Plowman, Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, Dives and Pauper, Friar Daw's Reply) mention Robin Hood without elaborating points to a general cultural presence at that time.
It would not be absurd to posit that such a cultural phenomenon would have existed for quite some time before being written about in such a tone, especially before the advent of the printing press.
When the printing press came to England, the Gest of Robyn Hode was printed en masse fairly quickly, so it was an enduring fad.
In addition to that there are records of outlaws named Robin Hoods robbing people in the time period. I would wager that were I to go back in time to 1220 and ask an Englishman about Robin Hood, a thieving do-gooder he would get what I was talking about.
The specific stories might not have been known at the time, but I would say that there is enough precedent that a Robin Hood story would not be ahistoric to happen, especially given that most of the setup is essentially just "local man in forest helps people, cops get angry".
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There's a change I'd make to that.
"Mythic Europe is shaped to be the world as modern day people believe the people of 1220 believed the world to be".
Considering that history is always biased by who writes the history, and oral tales get distorted over time, any Mythic Europe history has lots of room for interpretation.
It's not unreasonable to suggest a Robin Hood figure in 1220. Hollywood elements regarding interactions with certain nobles, etc, would require a slightly more generous interpretation of Mythic Europe history than some Story Guides may wish to give.
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Mmm-hmmm.
The context of this discussion, recall, was the historicity of Arthur and Merlin. But even on the full-out "The Historia Regum Britanniae was pure fiction made up by Geoffrey of Monmouth, none of it was true in ME" side of the argument, there still are the Welsh stories of a bard named Myrddin, and it wouldn't rule out having a minor "historical" warlord in sub-Roman Britain with the name Artorius. It's just that they're now just names without the substance of the stories; they're cameos.
To put it another way, there's nothing in the historical record that rules out someone in Britain in 1220 being known as "Bruce the wain" (presumably some distant, possibly bastard descendant of the 1st Lord of Annandale, who it happens makes wagons). And all sorts of other bits of his biography are possible ("He had an apprentice named Robin, and they beat up some robbers on one occasion, and . . .). But if you insert such a character in your saga, you're quite clearly projecting later-written stories back in time. You are perfectly free to do that, but if someone in this forum says, "Dare I ask if in ME that Batman existed?" the default answer is, in fact, "no", whatever you did in your saga.
I would certainly consider having Arthur feature in a saga somewhere, as he's portrayed in Welsh poems and pre-12th Century historical accounts, just as I might do something with Myrddin Wilt or Ambrosius Aurelianus, but for me the fictions of Geoffrey of Monmouth exist in Mythic Europe as fictions. More and more people in the early 13th century may be taking them on face value as bona fide fact, but magi who have lived long enough will know that they aren't.
I'm not exactly sure how they're part of the Ars Magica canon any more either. I know they're all over Heirs to Merlin but that's 4th Edition and I'm not sure if it's meant to be taken as what actually happened rather than just what people believe (I don't think that absolutely everything that people in Mythic Europe can possibly all be true). It does seem that they get mentions in sourcebooks, but more in the context of fables or allegories, whereas characters such as Bonisagus or Dav'Nalleous are major figures in the game setting and their 'existence' is, for characters who may be descended from them or meet them in sagas, completely beyond dispute and not at all allegorical.
As for Robin Hood, I like the idea that there might be some truth there but it's totally different from what anyone thinks it is. Like with Arthur, it's a good opportunity to put a completely new spin on the stories and not just go with stuff that's been done loads and loads of times before.
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