I'm so confused by this premise...
Traditionally, Arthur was pretty explicitly post-Roman. And he was Welsh, and fought against Anglo-Saxons.
What's the political point they're trying to make? Daily Wire pivoting to supporting Plaid Cymru?
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Traditionally, Arthur was pretty explicitly post-Roman. And he was Welsh, and fought against Anglo-Saxons.
Originally, but then he was co-opted by the Anglos to be one of their culture heroes, right?
Yeah it's super weird, though, because it seems like in this he'd pretty explicitly be fighting Saxons, so it's kind of hard to elide that in the same way.
Well, hard if you expect any of your viewers to know any of the actual tradition behind Arthur or to critically consider the media they consume in any way, which of course is something the daily wire doesn't need to deal with.
What's the political point they're trying to make? Daily Wire pivoting to supporting Plaid Cymru
Would be a phenomenal bit
but i think the grains of the Britons being Christian and the invaders non-Christian establish the heap that the show is dogwhistling non-christian immigration, especially in the UK context where boat-borne migrants are a perennial right wing dead horse
Don't right-wingers still idolize like, "based pagans" or whatever? These Saxons would still have been worshipping Wotan, I think.
I guess Ben's not part of that faction, though.
Ben and I presume most jewish conservatives probably aren't into right-wing neopaganism, that tends to be really antisemitic. But there are heaps of right-wingers who egg on people that want them dead 
Yeah Ben is part of the Jerusalem -> Athens -> Rome Western Civilization perverts, not the "RETVRN" White Supremacist perverts.
the Jerusalem -> Athens -> Rome Western Civilization perverts, not the "RETVRN" White Supremacist perverts.
I'm losing my mind at you using heap like this
I thought the legend of King Arthur was about him going to save a princess after she was taken by Satan himself, with the holy knife, Excalibur.
Are they confusing Arthur with Alfred?
They're trying to play into the idea that Britain, right now, is being invaded by brown people
Haha, they wanted their own LotR so badly they even tried to do a facsimile of the name, but "the Merlin" just sounds weird.
Of course, since these are the most unimaginative people on earth, they just had to use the most tired subtitle, Rise of (blank).
They could have had a sense of humor about it and swamped out "The Merlin" for a wizard called Rtol. Or they could have called him Pmurt. Or more formally Pmurt the Strong and Powerful.
Watched the trailer and oooh boy. First off, why is it called Rise of the Merlin? Shouldn’t it be Rise of Merlin? Does Merlin talk about himself in the third person?
Trailer makes it painfully obvious there’s going to be a suffocating amount of evangelical propagandizing. It’s clearly not historically accurate and is anachronistically pasting modern evangelical framings of the religion onto early Catholicism. It’ll all be about “personally” finding Christ and no acknowledgement of the international politics of the Christianization of Britain.
Speaking of historical issues, while Arthur is clearly a legendary figure, it’s pretty clear that he’s a post-roman legendary figure. Having him present at the same time that the Romans are still a strong presence in Britain makes neither historical nor narrative sense. Arthur is the national foundation mythos in the aftermath of the WRE, there’s no element of conflict with Rome in that. I suspect the show is forcing some pained “Britain is America and Rome is Britain” metaphor.
The trailer is vague about what the show is about. It’s a lot of people being dramatic with each other but not offering any glimpse into the meat of the thing. Despite the description, I don’t think I heard a single concrete thing about the barbarian invaders in the trailer. It also seems contradictory on the religious element; the Christian god is the true god but there’s also magic coming from other gods? It also seems like it’s the Romans who are skeptical of Christianity, which makes no sense as they’re the ones that introduced Christianity to Britain.
the OP/imdb might be a little misleading, wikipedia claims the show is mostly post-roman. but specialists have been using the terminology "sub-roman" for a long time due to longstanding disagreements about what "Roman" even means or meant in that historical context. Elements of Arthurian myth have been frequently identified with "roman" figures and since the central figure is made up, it's feasible to place your 'Arthur' as a 'last roman' sort of character.
I don't want to give the Daily Wire any credit, but the nature of the grains that make up the heap of Arthurian myth don't fall on a neat roman-not-roman axis.
Yhea, I think I'm some versions he is even a cavalry commander from Romania, hence the knights.
the 'sarmatian theory' grain is completely untenable but it was the basis of the 2004 film so it has outsized cache. the sarmatian commander guy was over a century too old! it still gets used a lot because it's hard for audiences to wrap their heads around "knights" being direct descendents of roman cavalry. it's a whole heap of communication issues & narrative decisions
Umm, werent the romans the invaders? Or are they referring to germanics as barbarians for some reason here? Weird tag line if its supposed to be Arthurian and not Roman.
It's not history - it's rightwing storytelling so anything goes.
What they're probably doing is simplifying 'Romano-British' into just Romans. Some of the medieval sources we have that treat Arthur as a real guy (he probably wasn't, for the record) specifically place him in the late 400s-early 500s. Historia Brittonum, specifically.
While Rome had abandoned the island at that point, the syncretic Romano-British culture still survived, and it is they that were subject to the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
If they're trying to be accurate to either the legends or history, the "civilized" people would be the post-Roman Romano-British and the barbarians would be the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
damn, this reminds me i gotta re-acquire that Britannia series. i always root for the pagans, or whoever has the most skulls on their altars, or whoever has the most unsettling/inscrutable holy sites. respect to all menhir.
also, someone already sort of did this with that Clive Owen flick King Arthur (2004) which takes its license from the "Sarmatian hypothesis", though it's more "rome is evil, let's do our own jesus thing without slaves" than this appears to be.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I love how every single person who commented on this post has put way more thought into this shit than literally anyone who works at the Daily Wire lmao
"the" merlin?
the merlin, the
we must eradicate the barbarous Angles and Saxons