History Literature / HereLiesArthur

* AdaptationalWimp: As it's set in the real world, magic doesn't exist so Myrddin (Merlin) is just a storyteller and conman who knows a few conjuring tricks and has a knack for predicting the weather.

* AmbitionIsEvil: Gwenhwyfar says at one point that men who want power shouldn't have it, and the only people who can be trusted with power are the ones who don't want it. Cei is a far better ruler than Arthur because he doesn't want to be lord of anything, while power is all Arthur thinks about.

* DeadGuyOnDisplay: After Arthur defeats a rival warlord who also claims to be Dux Bellorum, he hangs the guy's severed head from his saddle.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Slavery is considered normal, women are carried off as loot in raids, teenage boys fight as soldiers and raiding and warfare are everyday parts of life.

* NonActionGuy: Myrddin doesn't fight, or do any other physically dangerous activity like hunting.

* ShoutOut: When Gwyna invents the story of the magic cauldron (Holy Grail), she describes it as solid gold and intricately carved. She later needs to actually get something to stand in for it and plans to steal an antique gold bowl from a nearby manor, but can't get close enough and so grabs a [[Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade simple wooden cup]] instead.

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: Cei (Kay) is usually depicted as a {{Jerkass}} or BigBrotherBully, but in the book is shown to be a loving husband and father, brave warrior, loyal brother and NumberTwo to Arthur and arguably a much better leader. It's explained InUniverse that Myrddin makes Cei a jerk in his stories because he's worried, with justification, that people would like Cei better if they knew what kind of men he and Arthur really were.

* AdaptedOut: Staples of modern Arthurian stories such as [[Literature/SirGawainAndTheGreenKnight Gawain]], Literature/TristanAndIseult, Galahad, Morgana Le Fay and Lancelot don't appear; as they aren't part of the original legends and were inventions of much later writers.
* AerithAndBob: The book uses character's original Welsh names rather than the Anglicized or Gallicized names that modern audiences would be more familiar with.

* AuthorityInNameOnly: Arthur styles himself Dux Bellorum, inheritor of Rome and King of the Britons. In reality he's just a slightly better equipped and more successful than average warlord. He's not even the only one who calls himself the Dux Bellorum.

* RelatedDifferentlyInTheAdaptation: In most versions of the story, Cei is Arthur's foster brother. Here he is Uther's son and Arthur's paternal half-brother.
** Medrawt is merely Arthur's nephew, rather than his nephew [[BrotherSisterIncest and son]].

* LikeASonToMe: Myrddin eventually tells Gwyna that he loved her like a daughter. She's actually angry about this because he never told her and never acted like a father to her.

* FakeUltimateHero: The basic premise of the story is that King Arthur was in fact just a moderately successful warlord with a good PR man.

* TheAlliance: A generation ago, the mighty leader [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosius_Aurelianus Ambrosius]] united the squabbling warbands of Britain into a single great army to push the Saxons back into the sea. He failed, and his army fell into infighting and splintered almost immediately after he was killed in battle, but he did manage to halt the Saxons' advance for decades. Myrddin hopes to make Arthur the figurehead of another pan-British alliance, but Arthur is no Ambrosius...

* AdaptationalUgliness: Not necessarily ugly, but Gwenhwyfar (Guinever) definitely isn't the beautiful young redhead readers are familiar with. That said, it's mentioned that she was moderately attractive when she was younger, and can still look fairly handsome in the right light or WhenSheSmiles.

* AGodAmI: When Gwyna asks Myrddin if Arthur believes in the old gods or the Christian God, he replies that Arthur believes they all exist, but doesn't worship any of them because he thinks he's their equal. Later, when they enter Aquae Sulis and see the church, a converted Roman temple, Gwyna notices him eyeing the spot where the emperor's statue once stood and fantasising about putting his own statue there.

Britain in the 5th Century AD. Rome and the Legions are long gone and when they departed Britain collapsed into a patchwork of warring kingdoms and fiefdoms, easy prey for the Saxon raiders who now control the eastern half of the island. However Gwyna, a slave girl from a small farm in the contested borderlands between some of the stronger petty kingdom, doesn't know or understand any of this; all she knows is that her home has been raided by a warband and she needs to flee into the forest to survive. She escapes a soldier by diving into the river and swims as far as she can. Exhausted on the bank she is discovered by a strange man who introduces himself as Myrddin, personal herald to Arthur, ''Dux Bellorum'' and King of the Britons.

* AGodAmI: When Gwyna asks Myrddin if Arthur believes in the old gods or the Christian God, he replies that Arthur believes they all exist, but doesn't worship them because he thinks he's their equal. Later, when the enter Aquae Sulis and see the church, a converted Roman temple, Gwyna notices him eyeing the spot where the emperor's statue once stood and fantasising about putting his own statue there.

** Myrddin is the most ambitious person in the book, although his ambition isn't personal it's more about ensuring his vision for Britain, and while not evil is utterly ruthless and certainly morally dubious.

* DeathOfTheOldGods: Downplayed. Britain is in the midst of Christianisation, where the urban population and most important people are at least nominally Christian, but a lot of the population either hold onto the old supersitions as well as praying to the Christian God, or are just outright pagans. However, it's made clear that the old beliefs are on their way out.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Slavery is considered normal, women are carried off as loot in raids, teenage boys fight as soldiers and raiding and warfare is an everyday part of life.
* DrivenToSuicide: Gwenhwyfar drowns herself after her affair is discovered and her lover [[spoiler:Bedwur]] is executed.

* FreudianExcuse: Myrddina fanatically hates Saxons. It's eventually revealed that when he was a boy the Saxons destroyed his home, killed his family and enslaved him for years.

* KnightInShiningArmor: Arthur and his band of heavy cavalry certainly look the part, but morally they're far more dubious. They also don't call themselves knights as the institution of knighthood didn't even exist at this point.

* NotWhatItLooksLike: A non-humorous version. Arthur executes [[spoiler:Bedwyr for sleeping with Gwenhwyfar]] where he finds him, which is in the old Roman baths under a statue of Minerva; he beheads him and then throws his head in the bath. To the largely Christian onlookers, it looks like he sacrificed a man to pagan gods.

* PetTheDog: Everyone gets at least one moment of kindness or humanity, even people who are otherwise despicable, to hammer home the idea that these are real people and not one-dimensional heroes or villains.

* SuperSwimmingSkills: Because she spent her childhood setting and tending to fish traps, Gwyna is an excellent swimmer at a time when most people can't swim at all; and can also hold her breath for a very long time, which is why Myrddin first takes her in to play the Lady of the Lake.

* SympatheticAdulterer: ZigZagged Gwenhwyfar's marriage to Arthur is loveless and sexless, and follows her previous, similarly loveless ArrangedMarriage. They don't live together and Arthur doesn't even pretend to be faithful. This would all normally add up to her affair with [[spoiler:Bedwyr]] being depicted sympathetically but Gwyna believes she is selfish, because she has a crush on Gwenhwyfar's much younger lover herself, and because Gwenhwyfar made sure she knew about it, meaning Arthur would kill her too if her even found out.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Myrddin wants the Saxons out for Britain, and he'll do whatever he needs to to make it happen.

* ProperlyParanoid: Late in the story Gwyna tells Myrddin that the Saxons aren't the huge threat he thinks they are and are happy to just hold the land they've seized and let the Britons fight each other for what's left. That might be true at that moment, but we know that eventually the Saxons will take the rest of modern England eventually.

* PetTheDog: Everyone gets at least one moment of kindness of humanity, even people who are otherwise despicable, to hammer home the idea that these are real people and not one-dimensional heroes or villains.

** Peredur wants to become a warrior once he realises he's a man, but because he was never taught how to fight he's fairly useless. He gets knocked out in his first fight and Gwyna has to save him. He does get accepted into the warband, but only as a kind of mascot, and after his first real battle, where he's seriously injured and almost dies of his wounds, he gives it up and becomes a minstrel.

* OddFriendship[=/=]VitriolicBestBuds: Myrddin and Cei start out as this, a devout Christian warrior and an atheist storyteller posing as a pagan wizard, but who nonetheless respect and genuinely like each other, even if they throw affectionate insults back and forth. Cei is also the only person besides Myrddin and Gwyna who knows that Myrddin is a fraud and Arthur receiving Caliburn was a trick. They grow apart as Myrddin depicts Cei as an asshole is his stories to prevent him outshining Arthur. Myrddin eventually [[spoiler:sends Cei to his death]] without much regret.

* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Arthur murdering Bedwyr]] marks the point in the story where he goes from profoundly flawed to straight villain.

** Later in the story she also does some of the other deeds attributed to the Lady, albeit not quite in the way the stories tell.

Britain in the 5th Century AD. Rome and the Legions are long gone and when they departed Britain collapsed into a patchwork of warring kingdoms and fiefdoms, easy prey for the Saxon raiders who now control the eastern half of the island. However Gwyna, a slave girl from a small farm in the contested borderlands, doesn't know or understand any of this; all she knows is that her home has been raided by a warband and she needs to flee into the forest to survive. She escapes a soldier by diving into the river and swims as far as she can. Exhausted on the bank she is discovered by a strange man who introduces himself as Myrddin, personal herald to Arthur, ''Dux Bellorum'' and King of the Britons.

* HiddenDepths: Once when Gwyna and Myrddin are alone on a beach, Myrddin finds what looks like a stone shell, which we would recognise as a fossil. He muses where how to came to be and confesses to Gwyna that if the Saxons weren't in Britain he would be a philosopher (more like a scientist as we would understand it) and devote himself to uncovering the mysteries of the natural world.

* ConsummateLiar: Myrddin is not only a very convincing liar, he's also quick on his feet and can come up with a plausible explanation for anything off the top of his head if he ever gets backed into a corner. Gwyna turns out to be much the same. When Myrddin tells Gwyna [[spoiler:on his deathbed]] that he loves he like a daughter, she's not even sure if it's actually the truth because she's seen him lie without blinking so many times that she can't trust him.

** Lancelot doesn't feature in the story, and so his role as Gwenhwyfar's lover is given to [[spoiler:Bedwyn]].

* TheAlliance: A generation ago, the great leader [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosius_Aurelianus Ambrosius]] united the squabbling warbands of Britain into a single great army to push the Saxons back into the sea. He failed, and his army fell into infighting and splintered almost immediately after he was killed in battle, but he did manage to halt the Saxons' advance for decades. Myrddin hopes to make Arthur the figurehead of another pan-British alliance, but Arthur is no Ambrosius...

* KnownOnlByTheirNickname: The Irishman.

* SpellNyNameWithAnS: The book uses character's original Welsh names rather than the Anglicized or Gallicized names that modern audiences would be more familiar with.
** Bedivere -> Bedwyr
** Guinevere -> Gwenhwyfar
** Kay -> Cei
** Merlin -> Myrddin
** Mordred -> Medrawt
** Percival -> Peredur
** Excalibur -> Caliburn

* AdptationalWimp: As it's set in the real world, magic doesn't exist so Myrddin (Merlin) is just a storyteller and conman who knows a few conjuring tricks and has a knack for predicting the weather.

Britain in the 5th Century AD. Rome and the Legions are long gone and when they departed Britain collapsed into a patchwork of warring kingdoms and fiefdoms, easy prey for the Saxon raiders who now control the eastern half of the island. However Gwyna, a slave girl from a small farm in the contested borderlands, doesn't know or understand any of this; all she knows is that he home has been raided by a warband and she needs to flee into the forest to survive. She escapes a soldier by diving into the river and swims as far as she can. Exhausted on the bank she is discovered by a strange man who introduces himself as Myrddin, personal herald to Arthur, ''Dux Bellorum'' and King of the Britons.

'''Here Lies Arthur''' is a YoungAdult novel by Creator/PhilipReeve, which purports to tell the true story of King Arthur through the eyes of Myrddin's (Merlin's) apprentice Gwyna, or as you may know her, Myth/TheLadyOfTheLake. Based primarily on the original Welsh legends rather than the later medieval English[=/=]Norman interpretations, it [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] Myth/ArthurianLegend by setting it in a historically accurate world with no magic, knights or heroes.

'''Here Lies Arthur''' is a YoungAdult novel by Creator/PhilipReeve, which purports to tell the true story of King Arthur through the eyes of Myrddin's (Merlin's) apprentice Gwyna, or as you may know her, Myth/TheLadyOfTheLake. Based primarily on the original Welsh legends rather than the later medieval English[=/=]Norman interpretations, it {{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] Myth/ArthurianLegend by setting it in a historically accurate world with no magic, knights or heroes.

'''Here Lies Arthur''' is a YoungAdult novel by Creator/PhilipReeve, which purports to tell the true story of King Arthur through the eyes of Myrddin's (Merlin's) apprentice Gwyna, or as you may know her, Myth/TheLadyOfTheLake. Based primarily on the original Welsh legends rather than the later medieval English[=/=]Norman interpretations, it {{Deconstruction}} deconstructs]] Myth/ArthutianLegend by setting it in a historically accurate world with no magic, knights or heroes.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Myrddin