Arthur I of Brittany

Arthur I of Brittany (March 29, 1187, Nantes-April 3, 1203), posthumous son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and Constance, duchess of Brittany and countess of Richmond, was an English aristocrat.

Early years

He was proclaimed Duke of Brittany by his mother Constance of Brittany and the grandees in 1196, a dukedom associated with Constance, who was the heir duchess.

He was educated at the court of Philip Augustus, who protected him from the greed of his uncle Richard the Lionheart. However, he designated him heir to the English throne upon his death in 1191, relegating his younger brother Juan Sin Tierra. But Philip Augustus was more clever: in 1198, he convinced the Breton nobles to send Arthur to the French court to be educated there, as his vassal, which represented a clear threat to Richard, since Arthur was his heir., he, educated by the French king, would end up turning against him - evidently the English king remembered the bitter moments he put his father Henry II through when he was the heir, and did not want this to be repeated. Richard decided to disinherit Arthur and named his brother Juan as his new heir. However, Richard's legitimate heir was Arthur, by obvious line of succession (being the son of the king's immediately younger brother). This caused serious confusion in England.

Loss of the Crown

When Richard died (1199), Arthur was to be the successor of the late king, but being absent from the country, Juan Sin Tierra took the opportunity to proclaim himself king, supported by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, who gave him the regency of the duchy. of Aquitaine. The nobles of the county of Anjou proclaimed Arthur as count, with the support of the king of France, while the nobles of Normandy and the English themselves recognized John as their sovereign. However, when the new English king was defeated, he decided to make a pact with the French monarch, ceding him some territories and a large financial compensation. In exchange, the king of France withdrew his support for Arthur, leaving him only the duchy of Brittany as a vassal fief of John the Landless. In 1201, when his mother died, Arthur assumed the government of the Duchy of Brittany.

Death

In the context of the war, Arthur tried to kidnap his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the castle of Mirebeau, near Poitou, she asked her son Juan for help, who defeated the French army of the Duke of Brittany in the Battle of Mirebeau and Arthur was captured by the knight William des Roches and imprisoned first at Falaise and then at Rouen, where John Landless tried to force him to renounce his claims to the English throne, first with threats, and then, according to some, through torture. Nobody knows for sure what happened to Arturo after that. According to the annals of Margam, April 3, 1203: "After King John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time in Rouen Castle... after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when John was drunk and possessed by the demon, killed Arthur with his bare hands and, tying the body to a heavy stone, threw it into the Seine. He was discovered by a fisherman in his net, and being dragged to shore and recognized, he was taken for a secret burial, for fear of the tyrant, to the priory of Bec called Notre Dame de Pres.

However, the officer commanding the Rouen fortress, Hubert de Burgh, stated that he had handed Arthur over around Easter 1203 to the king's agents to be blinded and that Arthur died of shock. Hubert later recanted and declared that Arthur was still alive, but no one ever saw Arthur alive again, and the supposed murder of him caused a rebellion against King John in Brittany and later in Normandy. In addition to Arthur, John also captured her niece, Eleanor of Brittany, who remained a prisoner for the rest of her life (which ended in 1241).

Arthur in literature

Arthur's death is a central element in Shakespeare's drama King John, in which Arthur is presented as a child, whose innocence causes Hubert de Burgh to fail to fulfill King John's command. to kill him. Arturo dies shortly after during the escape.

Other works:

• The Troublesome Reign of King John (c.1589) anonymous tragedy
• Jean sans Terre ou la mort d’Arthur (1791) tragedy of Jean-François Ducis
• King John (1800) Richard Valpy tragedy
• Le petit Arthur de Bretagne à la tour de Rouen (1822) poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
• The Mort d’Arthur de Bretagne (1826) poem by Alexis Fossé
• Arthur de Bretagne (1824) tragedy of Joseph Chauvet
• Les Bretons (1845) poem by Auguste Brizeux
• Arthur de Bretagne (1885) drame of Louis Tiercelin
• Arthur de Bretagne (1887, posthumous) Claude Bernard's drama;
• Hubert's Arthur (1935) novel by Frederick Rolfe ('Baron Corvo'), published in 1935 by A. J. A. Symons
• The Devil and King John (1943) novel by Philip Lindsay
• Devil’s Brood (2008), Lionheart (2011) A King’s Ransom (2014) novels by Sharon Kay Penman

Arthur is also mentioned in the novels Saving Grace (1993) by Julie Garwood and Prince of Darkness (2005) by Sharon Kay Penman.

Arturo in music

• Joseph-Guy Ropartz: La Chasse du Prince Arthur, symphonic poem (1912) based on the work of Brizeux
• The Breton group of folk-rock Tri Yann composed a theme about Arthur; the text is found in: [1] (the text is written in ancient French and appears to proceed from an anonymous manuscript of alrededro of 1400).

Arturo on television

Arturo appears in the ITC series The Adventures of Robin Hood in five episodes, played by Peter Asher (seasons 1 and 2), Richard O'Sullivan (season 3) and Jonathan Bailey (season 4). He was also played by Simon Gipps-Kent in the BBC drama series The Devil's Crown (1978).