But it was in 1137, with the release of Geoffrey of Monmonth's Historia Regum Britanniae, that the legend solidified. According to Geoffrey, the Historia translates an ancient book in the British language. Except for his earliest readers, no one has believed him. Imaginary sources were a standard ploy of medieval writers. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that the basis of Geoffrey's work was folk history, perhaps even folk history written down. At all events, the spirit of Geoffrey's work is frankly patriotic. It gives the English and Anglo-Norman aristocracy a British hero as noble as the Norman hero Charlemagne. It traces England's genesis to the fall of Troy and the dispersion of the Trojan heroes — that misty antiquity when, for instance, Romulus fled from Troy to Rome, Tuscan to Tuscany, and Brutus to Britain — and by establishing British power as coeval with Roman and French power, it raises Britain out of its subservient position with respect to European kingdoms. This pseudo-history was accepted as fact well into the Renaissance. Arthur, the greatest of Geoffrey's mythical kings, became not only a vital symbol of British national spirit, but the practical model of real medieval and Renaissance kings. Edward III, like Arthur, had a Round Table and twelve peers; Henry VII traced his claim on one side to King Arthur.
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