Referenced By / Arthurian Legend

A list of various media referencing the legends around King Arthur.

For more works using the legends more directly, such as adaptations or for worldbuilding, see Derivative Works/Arthurian Legend. For our purposes, if Arthurian elements show up directly or as part of the universe/setting, it probably goes in there. If the references are more of homages or allusions, it probably goes in here.

See also Merlin and Excalibur for specifically their appearances in various media.

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass draws from Arthurian myth, most prominently with Britannia's Super Prototype Humongous Mecha being named for Knights of the Round Table (Lancelot, Gawain) and the presence of the Knights of the Round, described as the Emperor's twelve elite soldiers. There's also Arthur, the stray cat that follows the Lancelot's pilot around, apparently for no other reason than to bite his hand whenever he lets his guard down.

Comic Books

• Caliber is a comic series that transports the Arthurian Mythos to The Wild West. A magic gun replaces Excalibur, a Native American Shaman stands in for Merlin, etc, etc.

Films — Live-Action

• Army of Darkness has Ash transported to medieval England and meet a Lord Arthur, but not the King Arthur, and he helps Arthur and his rival Duke Henry against the titular army. Arthur also has an unnamed Wizard Classic-seque Wise Man who's akin to but not quite Merlin. Ash also blows Arthur's sword, hopefully not Excalibur, to pieces with his shotgun when the latter threatens him.
• The Fisher King sets a semi-symbolic Grail Quest in modern Manhattan.

Literature

• In The Dark Tower novels by Stephen King, Mid-World has a mythical figure called "Arthur Eld" who is largely equivalent to King Arthur. The barrels and handles of Roland's guns are said to have been forged from the blade and hilt of his Excalibur. Roland is in fact a descendant of Arthur Eld, and has a son named Mordred, which is a fitting name for the unhappy young half-demon.
• Teresa Edgerton's Green Lion trilogy has strong Arthurian overtones, particularly the backstory in which the kingmaker wizard Glastyn brought the heir of the High King out of obscurity after an interregnum. The current High King established the Order of St. Mark as a knightly order supposedly based on merit. By the opening of the first book, however, Glastyn has left the Standard Royal Court, turning over his job to his young apprentice, and the king and most of his older knights have stopped going on quests and aren't paying enough attention to their respective jobs of running the kingdom and keeping order.
• The Power of One and its sequel Tandia by Bryce Courtenay borrow heavily from Arthurian myth, even though it's about a South African boxer during the beginnings of Apartheid.
• David Lodge's satirical campus novel Small World uses the Grail legend as a frame for the story of academics on the conference circuit. Characters include leading professor Arthur Kingfisher (Fisher King, geddit?) and the Irish Innocent Abroad Persse McGarrigle (Percival/Parzifal) and the Grail itself is a lavishly-funded sinecure.
• Jo Walton's Sulien series, composed of The King's Peace and The King's Name, features the King-Arthur-equivalent of the fantasy world it's set in. Some readers have found it confusing that not everything in the story is the direct counterpart of something in Arthurian legend, especially the protagonist Sulien, who is an entirely new character.
• Many of the characters in The Wheel of Time series and much of the underlying skeleton of the story are adapted from Arthurian myth: Egwene Al'Vere (Guinevere), Morgase (Morgawse), Elayne (Elaine of Carbonnek), Nynaeve (Nineve), Rand Al'Thor (Arthur), Moiraine (Morgan le Fey), Lan, one of whose titles is "Lord of the Seven Lakes" (Lancelot du Lac) and many, many others. Also, sa'angreal (a rare type of magical artifact) = "Sangreal" = The Holy Grail.
  • One particular sa'angreal is Callandor, the Sword in the Stone - that is, the Sword in the fortress called the Stone of Tear - and Rand draws it.
  • The most obvious Arthur parallel would be Artur Hawkwing, the legendary great king whose surname was Paendrag, and whose descendants, at least, are returning across the Aryth Ocean.
  • The perhaps most interestingly named character is Galad Damodred - named after Galahad and Mordred? - who is a Religious Zealot and Rand's half-brother through their shared mother, Tigraine (Ygraine of Cornwall).
  • Galad's half-brother Gawyn is based on Gawain, to the point of using the Welsh spelling.
  • One subplot is a very interesting take on the Merlin and Nimue story. Instead of Nimue imprisoning Merlin, Thom Merrilon has to rescue Moiraine, and Nynaeve doesn't even take part in it.
  • Some parallels can be seen between Elayne of Andor (whose symbol is a golden lily) and Elaine of Astolat, the lily maid.

Live-Action TV

• The "Fisher King" two-parter that bridged the first and second seasons of Criminal Minds featured an unsub who believed himself to be the titular King from the Grail myths and envisioned the BAU as modern-day Knights of the Round Table, forcing them on a "quest" to save a young girl's life. According to behind-the-scenes features, the show's writers built the initial characters and story around that same theme, and you can find plenty of parallels between the two if you try.

Music

• Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore" contains numerous references to Arthurian legend, and/or Tolkien's legendarium.

Tabletop Games

• The CAMELOT Trigger FATE setting has John Arthur as a freedom fighter in a Robot War turned King of Earth, MerLN and MerGN as good and evil AI, Project MORDRED is about MerGN creating an evil clone of Arthur, and the "armour" of the knights is in fact mecha.
• Warhammer:
  • The knights of Bretonnia, replacing Britain with France, Arthur with Gilles le Breton, and the Christian elements with a (possibly) sham religion of the Wood Elves. The newly-dubbed knights are Knights Errant, young warriors roaming the countryside in search of adventure. Once they prove themselves worthy, they become Knights of the Realm, your standard Knight in Shining Armor (with a piece of land and peasants). A Questing Knight gives up the land and title to look for the Grail, the cup held by the Lady of the Lake (see sham religion by the Wood Elves). If she deems him worthy and lets him drink of it, he becomes a Grail Knight, living longer than other humans.
  • Some Space Marine Chapters in Warhammer 40,000 take oddments from the mythos as well. Perhaps most obviously, the Blood Angels only accept recruits who have braved a certain pilgrimage and had a drink of blood from the Red Grail. And, of course, pretty much every Chapter has a legend about their founder returning for a last battle.

Video Games

• The Arthurian motifs in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War deserve more than a passing mention and are significant enough for people to be able to write papers on them. Just check out this page. Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation also has elements of this with their legend of the Golden King, an ancient benevolent ruler who had a set of golden armor so magnificent it caused enemies to immediately sue for peace with Emmeria. Exact details about the legend of the Golden King are unknown, but his "return" (namely, the golden armor being recovered by a tank crew-turned wannabe vault robbers) heralds the end of a bitter war with the neighboring country of Estovakia and the liberation of Gracemeria, Emmeria's capital city.
• Backyard Skateboarding has the unlockable Excaliboard (obviously based on Excalibur) and mentions of the Knights of the Round Table in the Medieval European Fantasy level, Merry Old Englandland.
• Lord Indoril Nerevar from The Elder Scrolls backstory, most prominently seen in Morrowind (where the Player Character is supposedly his reincarnation), has numerous parallels with King Arthur. Both were charismatic war-leaders who united their peoples against foreign invasion to great effect, both have numerous conflicting accounts of their passing, both have close groups of followers whose tales and exploits eventually begin to eclipse their own legacies, both became folk heroes to groups who have been marginalised by invasion and progress, and both have prophecies of their return which may or may not have already occurred if valid.
• Though they don't appear in the story proper, the exceedingly powerful Knights of the Round summon in Final Fantasy VII is clearly based on Arthur and his knights. The name is a reference to Knights of the Round, an old Arthurian-themed side-scrolling beat-em-up.
• There are several references in the Fire Emblem video game series to the Arthurian legends. In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, there is a Lord called Uther who has a brother named Hector which may be a reference to Ector, Arthur's foster father. Also in the same game, there is a tome called Excalibur. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance has Gaiwain, also known as Greiland an early sword called Ettard could be named after the Lady Ettard. In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, there is a mage called Pelleas which is the name of the knight who loved the Lady Ettard. There are also the twin swords Ragnell and Alondite. Ragnell was the name of Sir Gawain's wife, Alondite is supposedly the Japanese pronunciation for Lancelot's sword, Arondight.
• Granblue Fantasy has an entire storyline and characters based off of characters from the Arthurian mythos, though it's more than a bit different. The story initially focused on Lancelot, Vane, Percival, and Siegfried, who are already established as a group and True Companions by the time Arthur does show up. And when Arthur finally shows up, he's a child that's training to be a White Dragon Knight under Lancelot and Vane. Mordred is also present as a child and the best friend and adoptive brother of Arthur. Other characters include:
  • Gawain, who is surprisingly not a recurring character in the storyline and not treated as a core "Dragon Knight" like the main four Lancelot, Vane, Percival, and Siegfried. In fact, he's only shown up in one main event related to the Dragon Knights and is otherwise off doing his own thing.
  • Gareth, a mole from the Wales family. A pretty minor character in the story overall. The most notable thing about her is the fact that she's a Gender Flip, though she looks so convincingly like a boy that it would be easy to mistake her for one. She is later revealed to be a Composite Character of Gareth and Dindrane as she has secret familial ties to Percival.
  • Aglovale, who is Percival and Lamorak's older brother and the king of Wales.
  • Merlin is introduced some time later as an individual connected to Percival's brother Lamorak, and who has connections to Arthur and Mordred. While he keeps his reputation as the Mage of Legends, he undergoes Adaptational Villainy because he wants to destroy Feendrache out of a belief that they are responsible for the fall of the kingdom he once served. Similarly to Fate/Grand Order's portrayal of Merlin, he's a young Bishounen rather than an old man, though here he's dark-haired and has red eyes. He also has animal ears due to being an Erune.
• Camelot was a planet based on Arthurian legend in the universe of Honkai: Star Rail. An attack by the Antimatter Legion destroyed the planet, forcing Guinevere and her brothers, members of the planet's royalty, to flee into deep space and become small-time space pirates. After they were caught by the IPC they were shipped off to the Xianzhou Alliance, where Guinevere's brothers received a formal education while Guinevere changed her name to "Guinaifen" (a reference to a mangled Chinese translation of "Guinevere") and took up a job as a street performer/livestreamer.
• Prince Arthas of Warcraft is an inversion of King Arthur. The sword he pulled from a stone (actually, magic ice or something) was very powerful, and marked him as destined for a throne. But it stole his soul, and the throne in question was that of an undead Evil Overlord rather than the throne of The Good Kingdom he was born to. He's advised by a wizard with an odd life cycle, like Merlin, but the weird thing about this wizard is that he's a necromancer whom Arthas killed and later helped come back as a lich. He disbanded the Silver Hand, an order of paladins, and while he later founded an order of death knights, which is an inversion on more than one level: not only are they ignoble and unholy but it wasn't even a new idea or original in-world, making it the reverse of both the Round Table and the Silver Hand.

Visual Novels

• Tears to Tiara is pretty much based entirely from Arthurian mythos, including a main character named Arthur who becomes king in the end, a sword in a magical stone, a Merlin Expy, and various archetypal fantasy elements similar to those seen in classic Arthurian tales.

Western Animation

• The Adventure Time episode "Seventeen" is based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
• Blazing Dragons, series created by Monty Pythons' Terry Jones stages a parodic re-enactment of the Arthurian myth where all the characters are replaced by Punly-named Dragon (King Allfire, Castle of Camel-hot, Sir Loungelot and so on and so forth)
• Dragon Booster features a hero called Artha Penn (and his brother Lance) whose arch foe is named Moordryd Paynn.
• Disenchantment parodies this legend (much like other fantasy tropes) with the Knights of the Zog Table, a reference to the Knights of the Round Table. However, King Zog, the monarch in question whom they serve, is a cruel and selfish jackass rather than the kind Arthur was.

---