Uther Pendragon ap Custennyn, King of Britons - Morgause-Anna

@Morause (Anna) b480 is listed as married to Caid Gwyywg b595 Powys Wales this is wrong because she is a 110 yrs older than her husband you will have to check this by the manager Bjorn P Brox Judy Rice

This is probably one of the hardest parts of the tree to get agreement.

First, it's important to understand that King Arthur is not fully established as a historical person. Since the 1960s many scholars have come around to thinking he was, but they still disagree about his real name and when he lived and whether he might be a composite of two or more different men (perhaps including the men who might have been his father and grandfather. On top of that, some scholars think King Arthur was a fictional version of Riothamus (a 5th century British chieftain), some thing he was a fictional version of Lucius Artorius Castus (a 2nd/3rd century Roman commander), some think he is a fictional version of the Celtic sun god, and some think he was a Sarmatian culture hero brought from Iran to Britain by Roman troops.

Dates for King Arthur generally range from 400 to the mid-600s. That leaves a lot of room for doubt.

Second, it's important to understand that most of what passes for "fact" about King Arthur's relatives on the Internet really came from elaborate allegorical poems and stories composed in the 12th century. If you wouldn't take Gone With the Wind as a genealogical source, you shouldn't take these stories as a source. (But some people do.)

There are some manuscript genealogies from the 10th century and later that claim to show King Arthur's genealogy. Maybe some of them are right, but they often disagree about the details. There's also some suspicion that it might be just a little too much of a coincidence that just when the Welsh were beginning to develop a national consciousness and fight against the English that their leaders started saying, "Hey look! I'm the heir of King Arthur. Let's go kill some English."

So, coming back to the problem here. Some of those old Welsh genealogical tracts show that the wife of Gwyar ap Dwywg was a relative of King Arthur. (Don't know why he is called Caid Gwyar ap Dwywg on Geni.) This wife seems to have originally been called Anna, but was later identified with Morgause, who was either Arthur's sister or the sister of his mother Ygraine, depending on the story).

The dates don't work very well if Mount Badon, the battle where King Arthur died, is dated to 517 (approximately) and Morgause's husband was born probably in the mid 500s. That's why we're seeing the problem with dates that Judy pointed out -- people are guessing at dates, but haven't found a way to do it plausibly. The dates aren't given in the original sources so this is part of our own modern struggle to figure out if these people were real, when they lived, and how they were related.

Erin Ishimoticha is our expert on this area. She has put a lot of time and effort into researching the various versions of the old Welsh genealogies and trying to get them accurately represented on Geni.

George J. Homs is the one who disconnected the parents of Anna / Morgause. I assume he talked to Erin first.

Probably we should have had a public discussion before making a change of this magnitude to a line that affects so many people. Doesn't matter. We can have the discussion now.

Thanks for tagging me, Justin. I haven't discussed with Erin, which is my mistake. And, of course, within the Arthurian legends, Morgause seems to be Arthur's half-sister, so that is my second mistake.
Anyone is free to re-connect, of course, and I won't disconnect again. I'll need to look for areas more recent in time where a connection exists to these legends. I think it's very important to keep the integrity of the legends as they are constructed through much work here on Geni.
The reason to disconnect was to severe, indeed, the connection for many living descendants who don't accept to be connected to these legends. This by itself is another debate, of course - and has to do with what one accepts as "fact" or "fiction" from a genealogical point of view.
But, in this particular case, it's indeed wrong to disconnect Morgause as that "fact" seems to be correct from a legendary perspective.
As it's my mistake, I'm happy to do the work and re-connect - but will await further comments.

Thanks, George. This one will be very difficult to sort through, I think.

Morgause is Arthur's half-sister in legend, but in the earlier sources she is variously his sister or his aunt. That's a conflict that can't be resolved, except on faith alone.

There is a source the claims Morgause was the wife of Gwyar, but there is not any way to make the dates work. It's just not possible. Perhaps there is a generation or two missing, but that would be just a guess not a fact.

I think this would be a good place to cut the tree. Leave Gwyar married to Anna, with an explanation that identifying her with Uther's daughter Morgause is very problematic.

But, I understand that would distress many people. The line through Morgause is the only line to Arthur that is even semi-reliable.

I think the majority of people on Geni would prefer not to have something this far-fetched, something that doesn't have the backing of any reputable scholar anywhere (as far as I know). But, there are also many people on Geni who feel that this is an intensely personal part of their heritage.

How do we choose between those competing claims? If we could find the answer here, I think many similar problems would be easier to handle.

I need to hear from Erin on this. As you say, she's put in the study and the work.

I'm all ears.

Our oldest even semi-reliable source (and he isn't very), Geoffrey of Monmouth, cites Arthur as having one sister, Anna.

Geoffrey was writing (heavy-duty historical fiction) in the 12th century about events in the 6th and earlier. He may have had sources that have since been lost, or he may have had an exceptionally creative imagination - we have no way to know.

We have a thin thread of a clue from Nennius in the 9th century - he just piled up all the scraps he could find from anywhere and everywhere, and didn't do very much to them. One of the scraps consists of two lines from what was very probably a lost epic poem modeled after Virgil's Aeneid:

Tunc Arthur pugnabat contr'illos in illes diebus
Cum regibus Brittonum, sed ipse dux erat bellorum.

Anyone who has ever read the Aeneid, or had to study it in Latin class, will recognize the meter.

This fragment tells us a few things: 1) Arthur, whoever and whatever he was, was sufficiently famous to have had an epic poem written about him; 2) he was a helluva fighter; 3) he allied with the kings of Britain; 4) he was not a king.

What "dux bellorum" actually meant, we can't be sure now. He seems to be set apart as "separate but equal" in a different category. It may be worth noting that in Irish legends the King's Champion and/or the leader of the King's war band could be better known and better remembered than the King himself. (Who remembers which king Cuchulainn served? Or Finn mac Cool? Finn has some especially instructive parallels, not least that at first he was accurately remembered as not-a-king.)

What is REALLY unfortunate is that the one source who could have served as an eyewitness, Gildas, chose to write a tirade claiming that the Britons got what was coming to them for their sinful ways, instead of a historical account (which would have been FAR more useful).

For what it's worth, various saints' legends claim that Gildas was one of the younger sons of Caw of Strathclyde - and per the Mabinogion and other legend-based sources, there was no love lost at all between Arthur and Caw's oldest son, Heuil. Some of them say that Arthur killed Heuil, or had to have him executed for banditry. And if Gildas was Heuil's baby brother, he would be very unlikely to forget that or forgive it - ever. (The Celtic propensity for holding a grudge is literally the stuff of legend.)

Thanks, Maven. I have three shelves of books on Arthurian material because this was part of my (never finished) master's thesis. It would be a daunting task to try to summarize all the arguments and problems, but you've done a very good job.

The best introduction to the problems is perhaps the one at the Vortigern Studies website: http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artgue/mikeambrintro.htm

Then let's stick to basic genealogy, where the facts ends, the line ends. How difficult can that be???

Wouldn't restricting the big tree to fact-based genealogy mean that most of it would have to be chopped down?
;)

Maven, doesn't the fragment represent the composer's opinions of Arthur rather than facts about Arthur? They may be accurate or they may be entirely fictional.

Perhaps Gildas did not write about Arthur because there was no Arthur to write about? As Justin says there is no certainty that Arthur ever existed, Gildas' silence is stronger evidence against Arthur existing rather than of a bitter family feud.

I agree with George that the link between Arthur and "us" has to be severed somewhere, the fact that a lot of people will be upset by the severing isn't really a factor in deciding where to sever.

Even without the connection to Anna i am still related to Arthur via his mother, which on the surface would seem just as speculative. How can someone who didn't exist have a mother? :)

>> where the facts ends, the line ends <<

Not hard in theory, but often very hard to figure out what is fact -- as we all know. What we need is a careful examination of the evidence, then general agreement on what we can accept.

If someone has the time and interest, here is a nice link to the old Welsh genealogical manuscripts, which are the primary material for serious Arthurian genealogy. The links from these pages will take you to much more material, including many attempts to sort it all out. I had hoped to find some time to extract the essential points tonight, but I see that it will be awhile before I find time.

http://www.kingarthur.justwizard.com/Genealogy/Welsh_Genealogies.html

For those who just want a simple introduction, try the Wikipedia page on the Historical basis for King Arthur. A quick read through this material would save a lot of discussion time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_basis_for_King_Arthur

For the specific problem of Gwyar, Anna, and Morgause I don't find an easy reference. However, the English Wikipedia page for Gawain (that is, Gwalchmei) has a nice summary of the problem:

"The Gwyar (meaning "gore"[19] or "spilled blood/bloodshed"[20]) in Gwalchmei ap Gwyar is likely the name of Gwalchmei's mother, rather than his father as is the standard in the Welsh Triads.[7] Matronyms were sometimes used in Wales, as in the case of Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion fab Dôn, and were also fairly common in early Ireland.[7] Gwyar is named as a female, a daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, in one version of the hagiographical genealogy Bonedd y Saint, while the 14th-century Birth of Arthur substitutes Gwyar for Geoffrey's Anna as Gwalchmei/Gawain's mother.[21] Other sources do not follow this substitution, however, indicating that Gwyar and Anna/Morgause originated independently.[22]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyar#Gwalchmei

Then, of course, English Wikipedia gives a bit also about all the different literary incarnations of Morgause:

"The corresponding character in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century Latin chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae is named Anna; in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, Anna is replaced by Sangive (whom Der Pleier calls Seife), while her parallel in Arthour and Merlin (late 14th century) is Belisent. And the mother of Gawain's Welsh forerunner, Gwalchmei ap Gwyar, is thought to be Gwyar (a name meaning "gore").[Notes 2]

"The earliest known form of Morgause's name is Orcades, given in the First Continuation of Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval (the former of which was once attributed to Wauchier de Denain and dated c. 1200), in which she is the mother of Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth and Mordred and daughters Clarissant and Soredamor. As Morcades she also appears in Les Enfances Gauvain (early 13th century) and again in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône (c. 1230). It appears her name was originally a place name, as "Orcades" coincides with the Latin name for the Orkney Islands, the land traditionally ruled by Gawain's parents. Medievalist Roger Sherman Loomis suggests that the toponym was corrupted into "Morcades" (or Morchades, Morcads) and finally "Morgause" due to the influence of the name "Morgan" (le Fay).[7]"

"Note 2. In later Welsh Arthurian literature, Gawain is considered synonymous with the native champion Gwalchmei; Gwyar (meaning "gore"[2] or "spilled blood/bloodshed"[3]) is likely the name of Gwalchmei's mother, rather than his father as is the standard in the Welsh Triads.[4] Matronyms were sometimes used in Wales, as in the case of Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion fab Dôn, and were also fairly common in early Ireland.[4] Gwyar is named as a female, a daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, in one version of the hagiographical genealogy Bonedd y Saint, while the fourteenth-century Birth of Arthur substitutes Gwyar for Geoffrey's Anna as Gwalchmei/Gawain's mother.[5] Other sources do not follow this substitution, however, indicating that Gwyar and Anna/Morgause originated independently.[6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgause#Earlier_counterparts

Is it not exactly the same as the Ragnar debate?

A whole bunch of conflicting secondary sources which even if you could meld them into a cohesive narrative would still only be a unreliable record made hundreds of years after the events?

Similar to New Testament scholarship issues where nothing is primary and the secondaries don't line up. I love the argument that is trotted out on occasion that there is more evidence that the Bearded One existed than Julius Caesar, it's true but one piece of primary evidence trumps a mountain of secondary.

I think this is a prime example for Remi's attitude of sever everything and just write a bunch of About notes, but then your open to any user just recreating the mess.

An idea that just occurs to me (so i may as well share with you all!) is that Geni could disable the Relationship Algorithm so that it could not make connections to particular profiles, sort of like an Anti-MP. That way users could look at these sorts of profiles but rather than being told "Harry Potter is your 23rd great grandmother" the notification would be something like "Path cannot be calculated due to identified flaws in this portion of the tree."

Of course it would probably be a negative commercial decision...

Actually what you're describing is exactly what we want; a standalone (isolated) tree. The genealogy is there, people can build it as best they can, but can never, ever see it as a "related to."

Now I'm not sure this applies to Ragnar (my knowledge isn't good enough) but I was a huge T.H. White fan ("The Sword in the Stone"). And I think he'd have expected this sort of solution for the world he created.

He has (at least) two Morgause's if I remember right.

I'm of the opinion that there ''was'' somebody named "Arthur" around whom the legends were built (and built, and built, and built). The name is scarcely attested at all prior to the 6th century (one Lucius Artorius Castus, from the 2d-3d century AD, being about the only prominent example), but from about the 7th, maybe as early as the late 6th, onward it starts popping up more and more frequently. That doesn't happen without somebody '''making''' it popular.

Nobody writes Latin epics about nobodies. And nobody in Britain was writing Latin epics at all from c. 540 until ''at least'' c. 600 or later.

As for Gildas, he doesn't name that many people at all, and when he does it is usually to lambaste them for their sins. (Ambrosius Aurelianus is an outstanding exception, and one has to wonder why.) That was his principal focus, that the Britons had become a degenerate and sinful lot who had gotten and were getting what they richly deserved in being invaded and oppressed by the Saxons. The only reason he mentions the battle (or "siege") of Badon is that it marked his birth year.

As to whether Arthur was the commander at Badon, that's quite another question. It would certainly be a good reason for him to be long and well remembered, but....

Suppose you were living in the 24th century and had only the most fragmentary knowledge of southern African history, such as the name "Shaka Zulu" and the battle of Isandlwana. You might be inclined to conflate them (indeed, many ill-informed people do even now, when the basic facts are no further away than Wikipedia). But a good two-three generations lay between them (and BTW it was Cetshwayo, also known as Cetawayo, who was the victor at Isandlwana).

I'm also inclined to think there was a core person around whom Arthurian tradition began collecting very early. No surprise there; that's the same opinion I have of Ragnar Lodbrok. However, I'm personally very skeptical that he was a grandson of Ambrosius Aurelianus. Maybe, but I don't see it as proven by the existence of very late sources.

Nevertheless, the point here is to try for some semblance of black and white, the way genealogists do. Follow the sources? Which sources? Isolate Arthur and his ancestry into their own tree? Or allow him and his family to be part of the World Tree?

Thank you Justin

My, that's one tangled bit of tree! Out of the entire lot, the one we can be most sure has some historical reality is Constantine map Cador (alias "Constantine III"), and that because Gildas picked him out as a Horrible Example. (He accuses him, in so many unminced words, of violating sanctuary to murder two young rivals, of multiple adulteries, and of "sodomy".) And he explicitly addressed him as a yet-living contemporary.

Incidentally, this means we can put an approximate date on him. De excidio is generally taken to have been written circa 540 plus-or-minus some debatable number of years, so Constantine will have died sometime after that.

Tagging Constantine of Dumnonia: Constantine ap Cynfawr, duke of Cornwall

So sorry I'm so late to the conversation. I was out of town for a week.

I have struggled with how to represent this family on Geni. I don't have any academic expertise in this area of the tree, just my amateur research. The information is so conflicting. Even many of the Arthurian stories are in direct conflict with each other. I am open to suggestions!

If it sounds too fantastic to believe, it's probably fictional. :-)

My suggestion is to cut where you think the facts ends and the stories starts, and try to use the most contemporary sources as possible. But I have no knowledge of the real persons (if any) behind the stories.

Justin asks if the Arturian tree should be a part of the world tree or not. My opinion is that it shouldn't be, because there probaby isn't good enough evidence that collaborates what the stories tell.

Constantine of Dumnonia was definitely historical, and a contemporary of Gildas. But how he fits into the overall picture - that's the big question.

The real answer, I think, is that we ultimately have to admit that the King Arthur of medieval romance is not the same person as the man of that name who seems to be historically attested.

And that same principle applies throughout this line. The people in the old manuscript genealogies are not the same as their historical counterparts, and neither of them are the same as the later legends about them.

The problem here -- and everywhere in the ancient and medieval tree -- comes when we allow an overlap of different cultural traditions to substitute for proof about history.

This is a novel idea for most people. It hasn't caught on yet on Geni, but I predict it will -- as soon as we try everything else and it doesn't work ;)

What is the novel idea?

That the only solution is to stop blurring the lines between different cultural traditions. King Arthur in the Welsh pedigrees is not the historical King Arthur and not the legendary King Arthur. Although they are intended to represent the same man, for the purposes of genealogy they have to be treated as three different men.

Okay, yes agreed but how to proceed? Three (or more) trees around each Arthur profile with About sections to explain their relationship to each other.
Lots of MPs to make sure the trees dont get merged then vigilance to ensure that future members merge their profiles to the correct tree?