Speaking of legendary sacred kings, do you think there was a historical King Arthur?

I’m a firm “maybe.”

On the one hand, he pops up in a number of chronicles and poems, so clearly he was someone people thought existed before Geoffrey of Monmouth showed up and whacked the collective imagination of Western Europe with a 2×4 until no one could think about King Arthur without thinking about his version. 

On the other hand, he only shows up in chronicles that come several hundred years after when he was supposed to have existed, and doesn’t show up in earlier chronicles that were more contemporary to when he was supposed to be alive. 

So as they say in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.“