Arthurian Legend and the Code of Chivalry

Legends are not history, but they are not empty fantasy either -- they are stories a culture tells to express what it values most. The Arthurian legends, gathered from centuries of French and British storytelling and famously compiled by Sir Thomas Malory around 1470 in Le Morte d'Arthur, center on a young man named Arthur who draws a sword fixed fast in a stone, which bears an inscription declaring that whoever frees it is the rightful-born king of all Britain. No one else, however strong, can move it -- but Arthur, reaching for a sword to help his foster-brother in a tournament, draws it out without even realizing what he has done.

That test is a literary device, not a historical claim: it proves rightful kingship through a mark of true character and destiny rather than through force or wealth. Around the throne he wins, Arthur builds the Round Table, a table with no head seat, symbolizing that every knight seated there is equal in honor. Those knights live by a code of chivalry -- courage in battle, courtesy even to enemies, loyalty to their king, protection of the weak, and mercy toward a defeated foe. The legend's most famous tragedy is that the code itself cannot prevent human failure: Lancelot, Arthur's greatest knight, betrays that loyalty by falling in love with Arthur's queen, Guinevere, and the resulting scandal helps bring the whole kingdom of Camelot down.