King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Movie vs. Legend

How closely does the Guy Ritchie film stick to the medieval legend of King Arthur?

April 15, 2026

Let us now talk about the 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, directed by Guy Ritchie. As with the other of my Movie vs. Legend videos, we’re not talking so much about whether it’s a good movie, we are focusing on how much or little it relates to the actual Arthurian legend.

In this case, there is one short answer: it doesn’t! Okay, maybe like 3 percent. This movie is trying hard not to be at all like any of the other boring old King Arthur stuff you’ve seen. It’s not your father’s King Arthur! And it’s not anyone’s King Arthur. Because it’s not King Arthur.

But there are a few things to say about it in relation to the medieval Arthurian legends, so let’s dive into those.

A new take on the old king

So somewhere along the line, King Arthur stories began to be considered old and tired, like “we all know the story,” even though in reality, most people don’t know the actual story at all. The other thing is, the actual King Arthur story doesn’t have a lot of stories with clear-cut endings or defined goals such as would fit our modern movie storytelling conventions, so that’s another reason it doesn’t actually make a great candidate for a modern blockbuster.

I have a separate video on youtube called “Why are there no good King Arthur movies?”and the short answer is: it’s just too long and too weird to make a decent movie or even a TV show, which is why, much as we think we all know King Arthur inside and out, most of us really don’t know the actual story.

Still, fantasy movies are huge, what with Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, and King Arthur is one of the most recognizable IPs out there, and therefore movies must be made, whether they work or not. And one method of doing that is to create a generic fantasy action movie and just throw on a bunch of Arthurian names that people might recognize, and that is what we have here.

Hopes for a six-film franchise

Another thing to know before we get started that helps to explain why we ended up with the movie we did is that this was supposed to be the first of a six-film series that would create a King Arthur cinematic universe! So each film would focus on a different character, like King Arthur here, then Merlin, then Gawain, then Lancelot, and in the end they would all come together, like the Avengers!

And the very idea of that kind of shows you up front that there is not a great deal of respect for the actual Arthurian legend here, because they’re throwing out almost everything from the original story and treating it like it’s just ‘Generic Epic Fantasy X,’ and two, that already does happen organically in the Arthurian legend, where we have a bunch of characters who do have their own adventures and then team up and go on adventures together, only not in a neat sequential order.

In fact, when I saw Avengers Infinity War, I was like “Yeah! My book series is going to work out for that very reason”—that we have this multitude of interesting characters whose stories all interconnect and affect each other in fascinating ways.

Okay, but let’s get started on the actual movie.

Throw Arthurian names and see what sticks

So in this movie, Mordred is a warlock and Uther and Vortigern are brothers, with Uther being Arthur’s father. Only one of these things is accurate to the legend, which is that Arthur is Uther’s son. In the legend, Mordred is Arthur’s son, so Mordred is never alive at the same time as Uther. Also, Vortigern was king two kings prior to Arthur, so in the legend, Vortigern and Arthur are never alive at the same time.

So in the movie Uther has the sword Excalibur, which is a magical sword forged for him by Merlin. We’ll get into the sword later, but in the legend Merlin has nothing to do with the creation of Excalibur, which is given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake in one of the most famous images of the Arthurian legend, where it is held above the surface of the lake for Arthur to take up.

Okay, so in the movie, Vortigern is jealous of Uther’s power and sacrifices his own wife to become a demon knight, which then allows him to kill Uther and Uther’s wife Igraine, but not before the infant Arthur floats away on the river, Moses-style. So the character of Igraine is Uther’s wife for a while in the legend, but that’s after he steals her from her previous husband and impregnates her through deception, so it’s not like she’s just his beloved wife. Igraine is also the mother of Morgan le Fay, by the way. And in the legend there are not giant elephants or sea witches, as you see here.

In the movie, Arthur is taken in by a group of prostitutes and grows up to be a tough and canny low-level gangster of the streets who is not afraid to settle matters with his fists, in the manner of the heroes of numerous Guy Ritchie films. In the legend, there’s a whole story in which Merlin promises that Uther give him the child conceived as payment for Uther’s one night with Igraine, and Merlin takes the baby away as soon as he is born.

He places Arthur in the care of the Ectors, a humble knight who raises Arthur away from money and the comforts of royalty, so he can learn a solid set of values. Arthur also grows up alongside his foster brother Kay, a character who is at his side until the very end of his life. Kay does not appear at all in this film.

An echo from the legends

So in the movie, Vortigern is a tyrant and is trying to build a tower. This is actually true to the legend, or at least refers to it, because in the legend Vortigern is trying to build a tower to protect himself against Uther and his older brother Pendragon, sometimes called Aurelius, because Vortigern killed their older brother on order to become king, and he fears them coming back to overthrow him and claim their birthright.

Vortigern’s tower keeps falling, because there are two dragons underneath it, a red one and a white one, and they have to dig the dragons out and let them fight before the tower can be built. The red dragon of the legend is the one that is still on the Welsh flag today. This story, with the dragon fight is told in the second book of my series, The Sons of Constance.

What if King Arthur was a dickhead?

Meanwhile, in this movie the sword in the stone is underwater. Maybe just don’t ask about that. All the water drains away suddenly, and Vortigern has all the men in the city brought in to try to pull the sword. Arthur is among those people and here’s a significant moment, because there are a bunch of people waiting to try to pull the sword, and Arthur decides that he shouldn’t have to wait his turn, they can all wait, but not him, so he just shoves his way ahead of everyone and bullies his way to the front of the line.

This movie is dares us to ask the question: What if King Arthur was a total knob? He is soon making all sorts of snotty comments to the people who are trying to help him, and later in the film, he makes a bunch of ambassadors from another kingdom kneel to him as he bullies them and reneges on an agreement they had with the previous king. So, this movie’s idea of a cool, admirable guy that would be a good king is a bully who lords his strength and power over others.

By contrast, the King Arthur of legend is very much not an knob, and certainly not a bully. King Arthur rules with chivalry, which is a code of conduct that prizes honor above everything, and a big part of chivalry is courtesy toward others. Arthur comes to power in a very uncivilized time, and overarching all the stories is that he brings civilization and civility to this uncouth world, mostly through the honorable deeds of the Knights of the Round Table.

They are sworn to protect women, the poor, the church and the elderly, and they abide by rules like that a knight must keep his promises, must defend women when they have been wronged, must never attack an unarmed opponent and must get off their horse if their opponent is on foot. They talk a LOT about honor and being a worthy person, and being honorable really is the most important thing to Arthur and his knights. This is not a hidden subtext, this is a main topic they discuss at length.

One of the things that, as an author, really helped me get into the character of who Arthur is, because he can often be a blank heroic archetype in the old stories, is that when someone comes in and says; “King Arthur! You are the worst, most shameful king that ever held the throne!” Arthur doesn’t say, “Yeah, well piss off, dickwad! Come here and I’m going to bash your head in!” The King Arthur of legend asks; “Why do you say that?” and tries to understand the criticism laid against him. His courtesy and honor is his key feature, and thus he is not an knob and a bully as this movie portrays him.

But what of this legend of the sword?

So let’s move onto the sword, which as I’m sure you know, is called Excalibur. Since this movie is called Legend of the Sword, the sword is a huge deal. In this movie, when Arthur grabs it with both hands—not just one, for some reason—it causes him to have visions of his father and mother and this demon knight who killed his father, who we will soon find out is Vortigern. He has to confront his past and realize that the sword is his birthright.

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We also eventually find out that the stone the sword is in is the actual body of his father, which has been turned to stone. Arthur has to go through a sort of ritual to be up to the power of the sword, and once he is, Excalibur becomes a kind of super weapon in which one stroke causes an explosion that sends like ten knights flying across the room. So Arthur is able to plow through armies of knights just with the power of his sword, which also causes his eyes to glow and him to be all infused with power.

So, a common theme in Arthurian adaptations is for Excalibur to be a magic sword, or to be “the sword of power,” or whatever. In the actual legend, Excalibur is not a magic sword. Well, it is a magic sword in that it was made by the fairies and given to him by the lady of the Lake, but it does not really possess magic. All we know is that the Lady of the Lake says that the name Excalibur means “Cut-Steel,” but we never learn whether it actually does cut steel or not. It kind of is just a sword! So it is definitely not a super-weapon and it does not allow Arthur to have fantastical powers.

What is special, and magical, although you never see it in any adaptation, is the scabbard that Excalibur goes into, because as long as Arthur wears it, he will not bleed from any of his wounds. So boring as it may seem, Excalibur is pretty much just a sword—a super-cool sword, but just a sword.

The other thing is that the Arthur of the legend really is just a man. Just a plain old human being, and that is what makes him awesome. He is of royal birth, which at the time was believed to make people inherently better, but he was raised among humble people, so he is grounded and has values. He fights alongside his men, which earns their respect, because he puts himself in danger with them, he’s not sending them into war while he’s safe in some pavilion.

He is also very imperfect. He makes bad mistakes, and really ends up paying for them. One mistake he makes very early in his reign is what ends up haunting him his whole life and ultimately costing him his kingdom. So even though the legend has a lot of magic, the Arthurian story really is just about human beings and the problems and glories of their lives.

So we get to the end of the movie, and just to mention, in the medieval legend of King Arthur, there is no giant snake.

The 411 on the Round Table

In the movie, after things have been resolved, Arthur is working on making the Round Table. In the actual legend, Merlin makes the Round Table for Uther, Arthur’s father. The Round Table itself actually is magic, and it draws the people who sit at it into allegiance and connection.

There is one seat at the Round Table that no one is ever allowed to sit at, because it will eventually be filled by Galahad, who is the knight that will achieve the Holy Grail. When Uther defies Merlin’s warning and lets a man sit in that seat, the man turns to lead and melts! That story is told in Book Three of my series, The Void Place, and the title The Void Place refers to the empty seat.

Once Uther dies, the Round Table goes to King Leodegrance, who happens to be the father of… Guinevere! And when Arthur and Guinevere get married, he receives the Round Table as part of her dowry.

We often hear that the whole deal with the Round Table is that no one is at the head of it, so it’s inherently democratic, and I think they say that here in the movie, but honestly, I have never seen that idea expressed in the Arthurian legend.

Alrighty, I hope this gives you a better understanding of this movie and the Arthurian legend. Check out some of my other videos, like ones like this where I go through the movies Excalibur or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you want to find out how closely they match the real Arthurian legend.

And if you want to get into a fun, readable book series that stays completely faithful to the medieval legend of King Arthur, check out my series The Swithen, where we’re seven novels into an epic 25-novel retelling of the classic saga that has endured for over a thousand years! Thanks for reading and see you later.