Uther Pendragon

Uther Pendragon ( PEN-dragon ): at the origin Petr Penndrogn : " Perfect Pendragon" in Welsh (become Uther Pendragon, by bad reading of Geoffroy de Monmouth), literally " perfect chief of troupe" , of the kymris (Welsh) Pedr: " 4/parfait/très" , PEN: " chief/tête" & Drogn: " troupe". The " traduction" alleged Breton: “head of the dragons”, is false because in Brezhoneg dragon says Aerouant). Uther Pendragon is the father of the King Arthur in the Légende arthurienne. A bad French translation of the Latin version of Geoffroy, itself copied on a Breton original, made that one forgot the true orthography and his translation, so that one builds in addition to legend, false etymologies indicating that the name had the same root as Arthur, than the nickname Pendragon comes from a Comet having the form of a dragon, than Uther “sees”, and which it takes as a starting point to create two standard-with-dragons. Another tradition says that Uther carried to its saddle the heads of two dragons, a white and a red, which lived under ground and which were awaked by the weight of the tower that the king Vortigern made build above them. While leaving ground, the dragons were entretuèrent.

Uther is mentioned for the first time by Geoffroy de Monmouth in his Historia regum Britanniae ( Histoire of the Kings de Bretagne , in 12 pounds, according to an original made up into Breton and carried in England by Norman the Gautier, archdeacon of Oxford). According to Geoffroy, it fertilizes Ygraine by taking the semblance of her husband Gorlois, duke of Cornouailles, by the means of the magic of Merlin. From this pregnancy will be born Arthur. The topic of the illegitimate birth is repeated in the later novels arthuriens with Mordred, generated by Arthur, and Galaad, wire of Lancelot.

Geoffroy makes of Uther the youngest brother of Ambrosius Aurelianus (character historical) and his successor with the throne of Logres, both being the younger brothers of Constans, of which Vortigern had made its king marionette before his death, all three being the wire of a king named Constantin de Damnonie. This legendary king is perhaps partly the fact of a confusion with the king Constantin III, having really existed, claiming with the imperial throne of Rome between 407 and 411, and the king Constantin de Damnonie which lived at the 6th century and perhaps also with a third Constantin who appears in the Welsh Genealogies.

The Welsh text mentions another son of Uther, Madoc, father of a nephew of Arthur, Eliwlod.

Geoffroy also allots to Uther a girl, Anna (called elsewhere Morgause and sister of Morgane and half-sister of Arthur), sister of Ygraine. Anna marries the King Lot and becomes mother of Gauvain (Gawain in English) and Mordred. But in later novels the mother of Gauvain is generally Eleine the girl of Ygraine and Gorlois, beforehand married. In the same way, elsewhere in his work, Geoffroy affirms that king Lot had married the sister of Aurelius during the reign of this one.

In the Welsh Genealogies, Anna seems being the mother of Howell of Brittany (whose Geoffroy also makes a nephew of Arthur). But in these Généalogie S this Anna appears without relationship with Uther Pendragon. Geoffroy insists also much on a line of kings de British Bretagne of origin that Uther “sees” in the vision that it has of a comet personified by a girl of its descent; the first of these Breton kings being Howell. Thus, it seems that the “Anna” of Geoffroy appeared in all the sources that he used as being the mother of Howell, not that of Gauvain. Later narrators left the account of Geoffroy remain in prey with confusion in front of these contradictions and generally try to solve them by making kingdom of Howell a fact arthurien.

There exists another account having the character of Uther Pendragon like backdrop, the Parzifal of Wolfram of Eschenbach. Certain Mazadan goes with a Fée, named Terdelaschoye , with the country of Feimurgan . This resembles some distorted original source telling the alliance of Mazadan with the Fée Morgane , fairy of the Ground of Joye . Mazadan becomes father of two wire, Lazaliez and Brickus. This last becomes father of “Utepandragun”, itself father of Arthur, while the elder one, Lazaliez, becomes the father of Gandin of Anjou father of Gahmuret, father of Parzifal/Perceval. As well Uther Pendragon as Arthur appear here as the kids of a minor branch of an imaginary House of Anjou of.

In the Prose Lancelot , Uther Pendragon affirms being born in Bourges. It gathers an army to go to Brittany in order to fight king Claudas of Bourges, a situation resembling enough that which took place at the 5th century with the British chief Riothamus which went to Brittany to fight the plunderers which prevailed in Bourges.

In the Merlin of Robert de Boron, Uther Pendragon kills Saxon the Hengist (the name Hengist is equivalent to Angis or Augis ) whereas Hengest is introduced into the British camp with the intention to assassinate it. It is for Uther Pendragon that is created, by Merlin, the Roundtable.

According to a theory of David Sims and Mick Baker, Uther Pendragon could have been the Welsh king Einion the Impetuous, because of a series of coincidences: The Impetuous one, saying “Yrth” could have given “Yrthr” (“Uther”), and as a head of the royal household of Gwynedd, Einion carried the title of PEN Draig “Dragon Chief”. Name “Yrthr PEN Draig” is not without pointing out “Uther Pendragon”. Moreover other coincidences go on his/her son, Owain Tooth-White which could have been King Arthur. They are of course only conjectures being given the little of documents which one has of this time.

Simple: Uther Pendragon

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