King Arthur Historical Accuracy

O’Reardon, 1
King Arthur is a 2004 film directed by Antoine Fuqua. In this film, Arthur, played by Clive Owen is forced to lead knights and fight for the Roman army. He and his knights have spent their lives fighting and are about to be freed and sent home to their families, when they are given one last mission. Their mission is to rescue a Roman family who is thought to be a very important religious figure. When Arthur and his men save the family, he also frees a pagan that had been taken as a prisoner. Her name is Guinevere; she is played by Keira Knightley, Guinevere and Arthur work together, to defeat the Saxon army that had invaded. The director, Fuqua claims that his film is completely accurate. Despite the claims of historical accuracy, there are many points throughout the film that are not completely factual for the time period.

In the movie, all of the knights forced to fight for the Romans were all Sarmatains, with the exception of their leader Arthur

Arthur’s fort is set near Hadrian’s Wall in the movie, but the Sarmatians in Britannia were actually based near modern Liverpool.

The parts of the film containing Anlgo-Saxons, where some of the most inaccurate parts of the entire film. The rulers of the West Saxons or Wessex, were Cerdic and Cynric. In the film, Cerdic and Cynric are right in between the boarders of England and Scotland, but Wessex was in the south of England near modern day Hampshire. The north of Britain was actually the last area that the Anglo-Saxons went to.
In the film, barbarians, which were communities of tribes that did not belong to part of one of the great civilizations , that lived further north of Roman Britannia were given the name Woads in the movie, but were thought to take after the Picts. In the movie we see that the Woads painted themselves, this was an accurate representation of what the Picts did. The Woads lived in what is now modern day Scotland.