Welcome to Fil Reid, guest author of today’s Footnotes on Friday. Thanks for being with us today, Fil.
Several times in my books I’ve had characters refer to The Dream of Macsen Wledig. This is a story that’s survived to today as one of the tales in The Mabinogion, stories compiled from earlier oral traditions in the 12th and 13th centuries. I thought it would be nice to infer that these were stories being recounted around the fireside in kings’ great halls only a hundred years after Prince Macsen’s own time.
Although he’s classed as a Celtic ‘hero’ he’s based on a real person – a Roman general born in Spain called Magnus Maximus, who served in Britain where he acquitted himself heroically and briefly became the Western Roman Emperor in AD383. Unfortunately, he led a lot of the forces defending Britain, including native British warriors, away to fight in Europe and was himself killed on the 8th of August AD388.
Those are the facts about him, but for some reason, the British tribes took him to heart and he became one of ‘theirs’ rather than a member of the occupying force. This was helped by his defeat of the rampaging Picts and Scots (the Irish) in the North in AD381. In a time when the British themselves were not able to defend themselves against invaders, Magnus Maximus did it for them, and they loved him for it.
And of course, he went off and had a tragic end that the bards could transpose into being both romantic and heroic. Thus was born The Dream of Macsen Wledig, which is how they came to refer to the man they thought of as Prince Macsen.
The content of the dream is as follows – the emperor of Rome (Macsen – already emperor unlike in reality) dreams one night of a lovely maiden in a faraway land and sends his men off to search for her. Eventually, they find her in a splendid castle in Wales, the daughter of a chieftain based at Segontium (Caernarvon) and lead the emperor to her. Everything is just as in his dream. The maiden is Elen and he marries her and, as she is a virgin, makes her father king of all Britain.
However, in Macsen’s absence, a new emperor seizes power and warns him not to return, and that Rome is his now. Macsen, being a hero etc, takes an army (in the dream strictly a Celtic army) and marches on Rome. He gets himself killed, and Elen receives the news on the road and promptly lies down and dies as every romantic heroine should on hearing of her loved one’s demise.
What’s interesting about Macsen is his presence in so many genealogies as a founding father: he crops up in the lists of the Fifteen Tribes of Wales, has a prominent place in the Welsh Triads, and he’s given as an ancestor of a Welsh king on a monument – the Pillar of Eliseg – 500 years after his own death. Luckily this inscription was recorded in 1696 by Edward Lluyd as nowadays it’s illegible. But it’s interesting not just for its mention of Maximus (in that spelling) but also for its mention of Britu, son of Guarthigirn (Vortigern) and Sevira (described as a daughter of Maximus presumably by Elen) having been blessed by Germanus (a saint who we know visited British shores in Rome’s fight against Pelagianism).
Of course, none of this is really relevant to how I use Maximus in my stories, but in the current book, Excalibur turns out to have belonged at one point to Maximus, and to have been returned to Britain after his final battle, when he knew he was about to die, and hidden until his true successor could discover it. That might be a small spoiler, but you’ll have to read the book to find out the complicated ins and outs of how it ends in Arthur’s hands.
Excerpt (Merlin shows Gwen where the sword has come from)
The younger man reached for the sword with reluctance, his stubbly cheeks tear-stained, eyes anguished. Filthy fingers closed around the hilt. “My Lord, I will not rest until this sword lies in the hands of your wife.” His head bowed in supplication.
The dragon ring winked at me in the raw daylight, as the Emperor laid a hand on the young soldier’s bare, short-cropped head in benediction. Withdrawing his hand, the Emperor fumbled at the ring with awkward, bandaged fingers as the young man rose wearily to his feet, and slid the sword into the scabbard by his side.
The Emperor, his own cheeks wet with tears, held out the ring, gripped between finger and thumb. “Take this as well. It was my wife’s.”
It fell into the soldier’s open hand, and the young man turned it over, so the dragon rested uppermost on the filthy palm.
An overwhelming urge to reach out and snatch it washed over me, but the vision vanished. My eyes flicked open.
I was back on the wall-walk again, with Merlin still holding my hands and the dragon ring on my finger glinting in the afternoon sunlight.
My breath came hard and fast. “Was that sword Excalibur?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. This is the clearest I’ve seen him. All I can tell you is that every time I look, I see this sword gripped in that hand. That hand with that ring. This ring.” He indicated the ring on my hand. “And I believe that what I’m seeing, what I’ve just shown you, is Macsen’s defeat by the Emperor Theodosius. I think he knew execution awaited him and wanted to send his sword back to Britain. Perhaps it was a British-made sword – even linked to the Princess Elen, his wife.”
The Quest for Excalibur
Book Five of the award-winning historical romance series based on Arthurian legend.
Twelve years ago, 21st-century librarian Gwen decided to remain in the Dark Ages with the man she loves above all else – a man around whom endless well-known tales of legend and magic have been spun. King Arthur. Over the years, she’s carved a life for herself by her husband’s side, gently steering him in the direction she wants him to go, but always with an awareness that he’s a Dark Age king with a Dark Age view of the world.
Equipped with her prior knowledge of Arthurian legend, Gwen’s sole aim has long been to save her husband from the legendary fate she dreads hangs over him. But always, at the back of her mind, is the nagging doubt that whatever she does is already set in stone, and nothing she can do will change his future which is already her past.
Now, in book five of the Guinevere series, she’s all too aware that time is marching on, and that this fate might well be drawing closer to the man she gave up everything for.
Danger lurks in the most unexpected places, and long-hidden secrets threaten to rise to the surface. After a long, cold winter in their hilltop fortress, Gwen’s pleased to welcome traveling players to Din Cadan. But these players are hiding secrets of their own, and one of them has come with black deeds in mind. Gwen will have to fight harder than she’s ever done to save herself and thus her husband. And all evidence points to the hand of Morgana, Arthur’s wicked sister, manipulating everything from afar.
Throughout all of this, simmering in the background, is young Medraut, Arthur’s nephew. Unnoticed, despite still being only a boy, he’s been exerting his malignant influence over those around him, in particular, Gwen and Arthur’s son and heir. The wedge he succeeds in driving between Arthur and his son will carry forward into the cataclysmic events of the final book, The Road To Avalon.
But even Morgana can’t prevent Gwen discovering the truth behind the story of Excalibur and setting the legendary sword in her husband’s hands.