House of King Arthur
The genealogy of King Arthur and his family changed from one generation to another, during the medieval period. The main difference between one source and another is the number of sisters and half-sisters, or the number of nephews Arthur had.
The spelling of names also changed, depending on language or region.
Below are four different family trees of King Arthur (not counting the Vortigern/Hengist tree).
I placed the Vortigern/Hengist family tree with Geoffrey's version of Arthur's genealogy, under the Early Tradition.
For the Welsh version of Arthur's genealogy, see the House of Arthur and Culhwch. Also in Wolfram von Eschenbach's masterpiece, Parzival (c. 1210), Arthur and the heroes Parzival (Perceval) and Gawan (Gawain) shared a common ancestor, Mazadan. So you will find this family tree under the House of Parzival in the genealogy page of the Grail hero and Grail Keeper.
Early Tradition
There a related family tree of Arthur in the Welsh legends, under House of Arthur and Culhwch.
Family Tree of King Arthur (Geoffrey's version)
The family tree of the House of Constantine came from three early sources:
Geoffrey of Monmouth ("Historia regum Britanniae", 1137),
Wace ("Roman de Brut", 1155), and
Layamon ("Brut", c. 1200).
Geoffrey's Historia was written in Latin, but the names I used are the popular English names.
The last two sources are adaptations of Geoffrey's Historia; Wace wrote in French and Layamon in English.
Note that in the early tradition of Arthur, there was no Lancelot, Perceval, or many others found in later Arthurian tradition.
Here, Arthur had a full sister named Anna, which was different from most Arthurian literature. There was no Morgan le Fay, mentioned here. And also, Gawain and Mordred were brothers, and they were nephews of Arthur.
Since, Vortigern and Hengist played important roles before Arthur's time, I constructed a family tree for the two protagonists.
House of Vortigern and the Saxon House of Hengist
This family tree above shows the family of Vortigern, and that of the Saxon leaders. The same sources were used as for the previous family tree: Geoffrey, Wace and Layamon.
Later Tradition
Wolfram von Eschenbach's version (see Houses of the Grail Keeper and the Grail Hero)
Family Tree of King Arthur (Chretien de Troyes' version)
The family tree of King Arthur shown here, came from Chretien de Troyes' five Arthurian romances. Chretien was the first to introduce Lancelot and Perceval into the legends. He was also responsible for beginning the Grail legend.
Chretien de Troyes was more interested in the adventures of individual heros, in which Arthur played only a minor role, and there was no last battle. Therefore, there was no Mordred. Of all the knights, only Gawain appeared in all of Chretien's romances, yet his role was minor to the hero of each romance (eg. Erec, Cligés, Yvain, Lancelot, Perceval), except in Conte du Graal. But even in Conte du Graal, Gawain only appeared in the tale halfway through the poem; Perceval figured largely in the first half.
Here, Morgan le Fay is Arthur's full sister. He had another unnamed sister in Conte du Graal ("Story of the Grail" or "Perceval". But if we follow the First Grail Continuation, then her name was either Norcadet or Morgawse. Also, Chretien listed three brothers for Gawain, but no Mordred.
Another thing I should point out is that in later literature, Morgan le Fay was the wife of King Urien and mother of the hero, Yvain. In Chretien's materials, there was no indication of Morgan's relationship with Urien or Yvain (compare that with the Vulgate family tree or Malory's version).
Family Tree of King Arthur (Vulgate / Post-Vulgate version)
The main sources here came from a number of 13th century romances of the Vulgate Cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Note that this is the revised (expanded) version of the previous tree of the Vulgate.
It's almost identical to the next family tree, which used Sir Thomas Malory's work, called Le Morte d'Arthur, 1469. The difference is mainly in the spelling of Arthur's nephews and the number of his sisters.
Speaking of daughters of Igraine (Ygraine), there is some confusion over their number, particularly in the Vulgate Merlin (c. 1240), where it contradicts itself. There are two main texts (manuscripts) that were used to translate Merlin: Micha and Sommer.
In chapter 4, the Micha text only mentioned Arthur as having two half-sisters, the youngest being Morgan. The eldest wasn't named, but traditionally the wife of King Lot was known as Morgause or Morgawse. But in the same chapter of the Sommer text, he introduced a third daughter of Igraine who would become the wife of Neutres and mother of Galeschin.
Later, in chapter 5, Igraine's daughters increased to five – two from her (unnamed) husband and three from the Duke of Tintagel (who was later named as Duke Hoel in chapter 9, but other sources called Igraine's husband, Gorlois). That meant Igraine had married three times. The eldest (Morgause) was married to Lot and mother of five sons. The second married King Neutres of Garlot; she was named Blasine (Elaine) in chapter 9. The third was the wife of Urien and mother of Yvain; her name, Brimesent, didn't appear until chapter 19. The fourth was unnamed, and she was the wife of Caradoc and mother of King Aguisant of Scotland. The fifth was in school, and she was most likely to have been Morgan le Fay, since chapter 4 mentioned her learning all sorts of arts in the nunnery.
Another confusion appeared because Morgan appeared as the wife of Urien and mother of Yvain, in the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin (Merlin Continuation). So Morgan replaced Brimesent (chapter 19 of Vulgate Merlin) in the Post-Vulgate, and thus the tree concerning the family of Urien and Morgan would look like this:
It's different from the previous family tree based on Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romances, showing Morgawse and Morgan le Fay as Arthur's half-sisters.
Family Tree of King Arthur (Sir Thomas Malory's version)
I used a popular Middle English work by Sir Thomas Malory called Le Morte d'Arthur (1469) to draw up this family tree. It is almost identical to that of the French romances in the Vulgate Cycle and Post-Vulgate Cycle. The main difference is the names of some of Arthur's nephews were spelt differently from the French romances, and he had less half-sisters (only three, in this work).
By Jimmy Joe
