Legend of King Arthur revealed: Experts decode seven pages of a 700-year-old manuscript - one of the earliest of its kind - telling the story of Camelot, including a romance between Merlin the Magician and the enchantress Viviane

When my kids were little I would make up stories with various characters - with all of them making an appearance in the stories a single story might have Batman, Superman, Bigfoot, Huckleberry Finn, Snow White, etc. in them. Goofy adventures where they got into trouble and their friends would help them.

My last series of stories and the kids were older, was of King Arthur and the Knights of the roundtable. No Bigfoot or stuff in them. All of the stories were about the very young boys trying to join the round table. They each had their own attributes (good fighters, clever/tricky, smart, compassionate, etc. I recall one boy that screwed up big time but somehow redeemed himself just on his sheer perseverance.

The end of the story (probably a month or more in the telling) had King Arthur letting them all join based on their distinct and special skills that they brought to the round table. Obviously trying to instill in my kids what I thought were good attributes to have, and some that I could see in my kids even though they were still very young.

Your storytelling approach is pretty interesting, and actually relates to the Arthur legends. There was probably no actual, one-the-only, "real" King Arthur. Post-Roman kingdoms are however historical, and there must have been leaders. And each kingdom was probably in a continual struggle with each of its neighbors, gradually getting subsumed into one another, much as England grew out of the Heptarchy (seven kingdoms, plus a bunch of decent-sized other kingdoms with unfamiliar names that didn't make that particular list) and was nailed together well before 1066.

The legendary version of Arthur and his knights shares characteristics of Robin Hood and his Merry Men -- another group for whom there is zero evidence that there ever was such a single, actual, one-the-only person and followers. This is a storytelling practice, and isn't meant to convey history, rather, it's there to, well, entertain the listeners and among young listeners, mentor them.

This differs from historical people such as George Washington -- yet some stories got attached to The General. He crossed the Delaware, but he didn't throw a dollar across it (number one, there were no dollars yet; number two, the actual story as related by his step-grandson is that George in his youth threw a small piece of slate across the Rappahannock). The cherry tree anecdote was apparently invented -- or borrowed -- by a later biographer. That doesn't mean that Washington didn't exist, of course, even his remains are still around and in a marked sarcophagus.

Vortigern, often shown as a villain in the Arthurian legends, was badmouthed in some "Dark Ages" sources as well, but he was a real person. Some of the stories about him are stone cold nuts though, so, V is more like GW.

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