History Literature / TheWarlordChronicles

* SlidingScaleOfBeauty: Ceinwyn, as a PrincessClassic, meets the Western archetypal of beauty exactly, with pale skin, blonde hair and soft features. Guinevere on the other hand is also very good looking but unconventionally so, with vaguely masculine features and taller than was considered attractive for a woman at the time, and more striking than beautiful. When Queen Igraine is surprised at how Derfel describes Guinevere, as the stories she's heard describe Guinevere as the most beautiful woman in Britain, he tells her than many women would have gladly traded their beauty for Guinevere's looks and charisma.

* LovableRogue: Oengus Mac Airen and his Blackshields are noted for being cheerful and friendly, and everyone likes them save Cuneglas (the prime target of their raids) but nobody in their right mind trusts them any further than they could throw them.

* SlidingScaleOfBeauty: Ceinwyn, as a PrincessClassic, is described as being archetypally beautiful, with pale skin, blonde hair and soft features. Guinevere on the other hand is also very good looking but unconventionally so, with vaguely masculine features and taller than was considered attractive for a woman at the time, and more striking than beautiful. When Queen Igraine is surprised at how Derfel describes Guinevere, as the stories she's heard describe Guinevere as the most beautiful woman in Britain, he tells her than many women would have gladly traded their beauty for Guinevere's looks and charisma.

** Guinevere, Ceinwyn, and Seren [[spoiler: ultimately become the three ladies who help Morgan take Arthur to Avalon.]]

[[folder:TV series]]
!! ''The Winter King'' miniseries further includes:

* AbledInTheAdaptation:
** Morgan is introduced in the first book as scarred and disfigured from a fire, wearing a mask to hide her face. She is (yet) unburned in the show.
** While Gundleus assaults Nimue, he doesn't take her eye.
* AdaptationExpansion: The show doesn't have the FramingDevice of old Derfel telling the story, and it has an omniscient shifting point of view going and forth between subplots and characters rather than stick to just Derfel's. This means Arthur gets more focus early on in the first episode as it shows him getting banished from Britain by Uther, but not before saving Derfel as a child and taking him to Avalon.
* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: Merlin leads Nimue to believe she has VirginPower and therefore must forsake her attraction to Derfel, and this becomes more of an issue after Gundleus rapes her, at least partly to remove her power or so he believes. In her despair, she has suicidal thoughts and Derfel has to snap her out of it. In the book, she is under no such belief or restriction, not being a virgin thanks to the dirty old man Merlin, and she takes her rape and maiming in dissonantly far better stride, as she believes the trial empowered her in the eyes of the gods.
* AdaptationNameChange: Gorfyddyd (pronounced "Gor-fith-id") is simplified to Gorfydd ("Gor-fith").
* AgeLift: Merlin is portrayed as being early to mid-middle-aged at most, not elderly, even after there's a TimeSkip of 8 years where Derfel goes from a boy to a young man.
* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: Nimue renames the injured Saxon boy in her care "Derfel", and says it means "strong", and so he'll pull through. It's "Cadarn", his future epithet and the name of the Camelot-equivalent fortress Caer Cadarn, that's supposed to mean "strong" or "mighty".
* DecoyProtagonist: The first half of the pilot episode specifically focuses on Arthur and his banishment (an off-page event in the books), before shifting focus to Derfel, the book protagonist.
* GoodShepherd: Bishop Bedwin, even when in pagan Avalon with Norwenna.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Arthur doesn't resist when Uther is about to execute him for failing to protect the original Mordred, though intervention from Morgan and Merlin spares Arthur from this.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Played with, as in the books. There are moments where Merlin and Nimue's powers seem to be unambiguously real, as they both see visions only they and/or the other can see, like spirit animals that are invisible to Derfel. Merlin touches the boy Derfel and seems to telepathically sense his doomed village, but it could just be Merlin imagining the obvious since Arthur told him about it. But later Merlin touches baby Mordred and sees bloody visions that have no reason to happen unless it's actually foresight. On the other hand, the birds Merlin releases in during the bull idol ceremony seem to have just been pre-placed, and Nimue clearly uses fire trickery when trying to defend Avalon against Gundleus.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: How Uther punishes a wounded Arthur after the first Mordred's death in battle.
* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Stuart Campbell (Derfel) noticeably slips into his natural Scottish accent while berating Gundleus for his treachery.
* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: For a show set in 5th-Century Britain (and briefly Gaul), the amount of black Africans and even West Asians is odd to say the least. (Sagramor's presence in Arthur's band notwithstanding, as the books explain him to be a Numidian auxiliary of the old Roman army.) The apparent HandWave explanation is that Merlin's Avalon, where most such characters and extras are, is a place for "those who don't fit in".
* RaceLift: A number of Celtic British characters including Merlin and Guinevere are portrayed by black British actors. Thus Sagramor is no longer the unique TokenMinority with nobody spooked by his appearance alone, to the point that Arthur weaponizes this.
* RelatedDifferentlyInTheAdaptation:
** Baby Mordred is Uther's son instead of grandson, and thus Arthur's half-brother instead of nephew (and probably half-brother to the elder Mordred instead of his son).
** Mordred's mother Norwenna is thus Uther's latest wife and queen rather than daughter-in-law (the elder Mordred's wife), despite being much younger, young enough to be the latter as in the books.
[[/folder]]

* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: For a show set in 5th-Century Britain, the amount of black Africans in Avalon is odd to say the least. (Sagramor's presence in Arthur's band notwithstanding, as the books explain him to be a Numidian auxiliary of the old Roman army.) It's not entirely implausible, given that there were high status burials of African Roman citizens in Britain not long before this, and the Legions came from all over the Empire, but it's still a bit of a surprise. The apparent HandWave explanation is that Merlin's Avalon is a place for "those who don't fit in."
* RaceLift: The first episode includes Sagramor, but a number of Celtic British characters including Merlin himself are portrayed by black actors.

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Derfel has three sons, all of whom die shortly after birth. [[spoiler: Most importantly, his youngest daughter Dian is killed in the second half of ''Enemy of God''.]]

* ChasteCouple: In the third book Morgan marries Sansum. They apparently never consummate their marriage, likely because Sansum is almost certainly a pedophile and even if he wasn't Morgan is grotesquely deformed. However, when Derfel sees them together he is surprised to see that their relationship is not just an alliance, they genuinely do care for each other. Morgan is happy to just have anyone, loves Sanusm and is fiercely loyal to him, to the point of renouncing magic and becoming Christian; meanwhile Sansum respects and trusts Morgan more than anyone else and is genuinely fond of her, if only platonicaly.

* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: For a show set in 5th-Century Britain, the amount of black Africans in Avalon is odd to say the least. (Sagramor's presence in Arthur's band notwithstanding, as the books explain him to be a Numidian auxiliary of the old Roman army.) The apparent HandWave explanation is that Merlin's Avalon is a place for "those who don't fit in."

** Gawain remains virginal due to Merlin's promise of him saving Britain from the Saxons and becoming a hero and marrying Olwen. [[spoiler: However, it's a trick. Merlin sacrifices him at Mai Dunn to summon the Pagan Gods. Olwen ''does'' end up having sex with him, though - [[ILoveTheDead after his death]].]]
* VitriolicBestBuds: Galahad and Culhwch are prone to squabbling about their religious differences, but that isn't a barrier to them being close friends.
--> 'It's a woman's religion,' Culhwch spat.
--> 'It is my religion, dear Culhwch,' Galahad murmured. He and Culhwch had argued thus throughout the whole long war in Benoic and their argument, like their friendship, had no end.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler:Merlin]] eventually backs away from this without crossing the MoralEventHorizon. [[spoiler:Nimue]], on the other hand, goes JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope.
** Technically Merlin does cross the [[MoralEventHorizon Event Horizon]], but only against strangers (and it's dubious whether it was a MoralEventHorizon by the standards of his time), hesitating when it comes to betraying his friends.

* AerithAndBob: The naming schemes are an odd mix of Romance names of various origins (Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, Mark), modern Welsh names (Iorwerth, Dafydd), medieval Welsh names with modern spellings (Culhwch, Derfel, Olwen), medieval Welsh names with ''latin'' spellings (Gundleus, Cuneglas), and names that sound Welsh but don't translate to anything (Gorfyddyd). And then you add the Irish and Anglo-Saxon characters to the mix, leading to a situation where we see Merlin, Nimue, and Lavaine interact with Derfel and Cerdic.

** The series doesn't mention Ambrosius Aurelianus and Vortigern, the immediate predecessors to Uther and Arthur as British kings/rulers according to Arthurian lore - Cunedda, the founder of Gwynedd, is named as Uther's predecessor in books. Likewise, no mention is made of Saint Germanus, whose visits to Britain would have been in living memory for the older characters, and Pelagius and his followers are only given a off-hand mention in ''Excalibur'', despite the Pelagian-Chalcedonian rivalry being given great importance by contemporary writers (Paganism, by contrast, is barely mentioned by those same writers).
** Aelle is revealed in ''Excalibur'' to not be a Saxon at all, but ruler of the closely related Angles. Traditionally, Aelle is listed as a Saxon, ruler of the South Saxons and thus traditional founder of Sussex - interestingly, Cerdic's base of power seems to be the region Aelle is traditionally associated with. Also, the list of sons he's given in that same book (even discounting [[spoiler:Derfel]]) don't match up with his traditional sons of Cymen, Wlencig, and Cissa.

** Galahad being Lancelot's illegitimate half-brother, makes him one for Ector de Maris and, oddly enough, Lancelot himself (Lancelot's baptismal name in the Vulgate was "Galahad, son of Ban").

** Culhwch takes on a lot of the traits traditionally given to Gawain, being a BoisterousBruiser who is friendly with everyone (except Lancelot).
** Mardoc, being the son of Mordred, is one with Melehan.

** Argante takes the name of a faerie queen from Layamon's ''Brut'', but as [[spoiler:Arthur's third wife she stands in for one of the three Gwenhwyfars of the Welsh Triads (even being barren like later depictions of Guinevere) and given that he sets Guinevere aside to marry her and then sets her aside to take Guinevere back, this makes her the "False" Guenivere.]] As Mordred's wife she combines his two traditional wives Gwenhwyfach and Saint Cywyllog.

** Bishop Emrys, one of the very few Christians in an authority position who is entirely reasonable, as well as his predecessor, Bishop Bedwin.

* DecompositeCharacter: Merlin and Bishop Emrys are implied to both be sources for the medieval conception of Merlin. Aside from the names (Emrys is the modern Welsh version of Ambrosius, which is often given to Merlin as a surname), both men are [[CoolOldGuy cool old guys]] who serve as mentors and advisors to the protagonists. [[spoiler:And in the end, both are [[MerlinAndNimue killed by Nimue]]]]

* TheDragon: Tanaburs to Gundleus, more so even Nasiens, his actual champion. Also Bors (the NobleTopEnforcer [[spoiler:and eventual HeelFaceTurn]] variant) to Lancelot, Cyllan to King Mark, and [[spoiler:Olwen the Silver to Nimue, in a much more unorthodox way.]]

* {{Deconstruction}}: The whole series is a massive deconstruction of the Arthurian mythos. [[{{Demythification}} There's no anachronistic chivalry, jousting, plate armour,]] and the setting is full of ignorance, superstition and brutality.

** The Thirteen Treasures have their traditional names despite many of those names referring to figures who post-date both the narrative and the framing device, such as the Chariot of Morgan Mwynfawr, who TheOtherWiki dates to around 730.

** Tewdric, Meurig, Aelle, Cerdic, Clovis and possibly Cuneglas (there is a historical king named Cuneglas, but he was from Rhos, not Powys, and his father was Owain Ddantgwyn and not Gorfyddyd, who is fictional) are all figures from either historical records or Welsh tradition, although Tewdric and Meurig's timeframe has been difficult to pin down.