Urien
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Urien (
Biography
According to the genealogies, Urien, the king of
Urien joined with other northern kings,
Urien's power and his victories, including the battles of
Legend
Urien remained a popular figure in
He, like the kings of several other lands, initially opposes Arthur's accession to the throne after Uther's death. Urien and the others rebel against the young monarch (with Urien even briefly kidnapping Arthur's wife Guinevere in the Livre d'Artus), but upon their defeat, he is among the rebel leaders become Arthur's allies and vassals. His marriage to Morgan is not portrayed as a happy one, however, as in a popular version from the Post-Vulgate Cycle (also included in Thomas Malory's influential Le Morte d'Arthur) Morgan plots to use Excalibur to kill both Urien and Arthur and place herself and her lover Accolon on the throne.
Morgan fails in all parts of that plan, being foiled by their own son and by the
According to
In popular culture
- Urien is mentioned in the 20th-century Welsh awdl Yr Arwr by Hedd Wyn.
- He is a minor character in Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy.
- He appears as Uryens in John Boorman's film Excalibur (1981), depicted as an enemy lord who becomes Arthur's ally and is the one to knight him.
- He is one of the key characters in Melvyn Bragg's novel Credo (1996) (reprinted as The Sword and the Miracle in the USA), a celebration of the Celtic tradition and its fight against the Northumbrian and Roman (Catholic) incursions.
References
- Thornton, David E. "Urien Rheged". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28016. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 1136755373, 9781136755378.
- ^ Loomis, Roger Sherman. "Some Names in Arthurian Romance" in Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Volume 45, Number 2, pp. 416-443. Cambridge University Press, June 1930. "A king whose name appears in the Vulgate Cycle frequently as Uentres or Nentres was derived from the name Urien, borne originally by a king of the Britons of Strathclyde in the seventh century. Besides the test of an established transmission that derivation can be supported by two other tests: a community of relationships between Urien and Uentres, and an explanation of the latter corrupt form. According to the Huth Merlin, Morgain is given in marriage to Urien of Garlot; according to the English Merlin, Morgan, a bastard daughter of Ygerne, is given to Neutre of Sorhaut. (...) Urien is king of Garlot in the Huth Merlin, and of Gore in Malory, but Sorhaut is a city within his borders. So marked an equation of Urien and Uentres as husbands of Morgain and as lords of Garlot and Sorhaut should suggest a confusion between the names."