Of Camilla and Vortigern: The Shieldmaid and the Overlord

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Camelot Chat! I’m your hostess, Shannon Watson; and this month, we’ll be talking about King Arthur’s Four Queens… and Their Fearsome Fathers.

More specifically, this episode is called Of Camilla and Vortigern: The Shieldmaid and the Overlord.

Let’s get started.

Queen Guinevere was, without a doubt, the most well-known of King Arthur's queens… even with her multiple, and confusing, plethora of names. Guinevere’s father also had, as they say, “more names than God.” Not counting Cador of Cornwall, who was her foster father, Welsh sources claim the queen had three fathers, variously called Gogrvan,Leodagan, Cywryd Gwent, Gwythyr ap Greidol, and Garlin of Galore… each of these with its own strange variations.

Additionally, Guinevere's father was variously viewed as an ogre, a warrior, and a giant, landing him neatly in the realm of myth.

But does he really belong there? And was there really more than one man who claimed the honor of being “father of the queen?”

Is it not likelier that, through the centuries, a few of the original names and titles of the queen’s father got garbled, resulting in something quite different: a batch of colorful, but bastardized, names? Might we be able to find, with a sharp enough shovel, a real man to whom the title “queen's father” belonged?

This month, I was all ready to dig into Guinevere’s alleged “triple fathers” and their multiple names and meanings and to flesh out the places they came from… and all that. But then, the fathers started piling up. You see, there are a lot more than just three fathers with three names. There are multiple fathers with multiple titles and multiple names and multiple honorifics and multiple locatives. Way more than three. Way more than four.

And I needed four: one for each week of December. One for each episode of Camelot Chat.

Well, I don't have only four fathers. But I do have four women. Three queens. One concubine. Four weeks.

So, we're going to go with the women. They've got it where it counts.

The first syllable, or word, of each of these women’s names either sounds the same or has the same meaning. Each of them was either married to King Arthur… or slept with him and bore him a son… or both. Each of them holds a unique place in Arthurian legend. And possibly, in history.

And we’ll get to the fathers. Or, at least, who I think the fathers were.

This week, we're digging into the least likely of the ladies: King Arthur’s concubine, or mistress, or seductress: “the Saxon battle maiden, Camilla.”

So, we’re starting with a fun one!

At first glance, the name Camilla doesn't appear Saxon or Germanic or Jutish, which is probably what she was. Because it isn’t.

Camilla is a Latin name. The Arthurian scholar, Norma Lorre Goodrich, postulated that the name Camilla was a Romanization of a better-known, more dramatic name. In the later Norse language, this name would have been Kvenhilde: K-V-E-N-H-I-L-D-E. In fifth-century Old English, it would have rendered something like Cwen Hild: “Battle Woman,” or “Battle Queen.”

Camilla, or Cwenhild, was known in legend as the “Saxon battle maiden” who fought King Arthur at the head of what were probably Jutish troops in Arthur’s twelfth and arguably most famous fight: the Battle of Mount Badon. Cwenhild would have been Jutish on her mother's side.

Cwenhild 's mother was an actual queen. Seductress and later wife and queen of the infamous King Vortigern, she had been instructed by her brother or father – sources differ – Hengst – of the famous duo, Hengst and Horsa – to seduce the king so his Germanic sometime allies, later enemies, might better control him. The ploy worked.

The Jutes were one of many tribes comprising the horde of Germanic invaders that were then crossing the sea into northern Europe, overrunning places like France and Spain, as well as Britain. Alongside them came the Saxons and Angles, the Frisians and Danes.

Known as Eotenas, the Jutes also called themselves Wódeningas, “Sons of Wóden,” their divine ancestor. Wóden was the Father God of the Germani, commonly known as the first berserker, and laden with a magic all his own. The word Jute may be related to their other name, Eotenas, which, at times, indicated “giants.” Even the Jutish names wielded a mighty sword.

When Saint Germanus first visited Britain in 429 AD, he came to fight the Pelagian heresy, which had infected British Christians like a plague. He also came to censure King Vortigern, who was not only himself a Pelagian, but had also allegedly committed incest with his daughter, producing a son. That son became Saint Faustus of Riez. The daughter seems to be the earliest mention of the celebrated shieldmaiden, Cwenhild, later styled Camilla.

Germanus fought, and won, the famous Hallelujah Battle against King Vortigern and his barbarian Jutish forces. As we all know, the victor is the one who makes the report that turns into history, or in this case, legend. So, these slanders against Vortigern may simply have been anti-Vortigern propaganda. We see this later when, in the medieval Arthurian romances, other sides of the story than Arthur’s are reported, painting the king in a less-than-glowing light.

The practice of smear campaigning continues to this day in modern politics. It is a very, very old practice. Don't believe everything you read.

What seems to be true here is that this particular “Battle Queen” of Arthur’s had a kingly father named Vortigern. The “name” Vortigern comes from the Old Welsh guor tigern, which is a title and not a name, meaning “Overlord.”

While Vortigern allegedly descended from an ancestor named Gloius, who founded and gave his name to the city of Gloucester in England, he is associated with other place names. Ganarew Castle along the river Wye. Mount Snowdon in Wales. Ganarew village in Herefordshire, England. Even Dumbarton Castle in Scotland.

Vortigern is also associated with the land he gave away to his erstwhile brothers-in-law, Hengst and Horsa. Land that was not his to give.

So, does the title, Vortigern, match any of the Guineveres’ other fathers’ names?

It just might.

Let’s start with the Welsh. Here, we find a “triple father.” Three very different names. Three very different men… at least, on the surface.

The first of these is Gwryd Gwent. The earliest of the Welsh Triads that mentions Gwryd Gwent is The White Book of Rhydderch, circa 1350 AD. Another, equally early, mention calls him Cywryd Ceint: C-E-I-N-T.

Gwryd’s second name seems to be a locative. If this is a reference to Gwent – G-W- E-N-T – then it indicates Venta Silurum, a Roman colony in Britannia corresponding to modern Monmouthshire in southeast Wales. Gwent was an important realm in the fifth century, during the Arthurian period.

A second place, the River Caint – C-A-I-N-T – in Anglesey in northwest Wales, has also been suggested as Gwryd’s territory.

If, however, Ceint – C-E-I-N-T – was indicated, then the kingdom of Kent, in the very south of Britain, was probably intended. This version of the name corresponds to the earliest mentions of Cywryd Ceint. Kent is also the very land that would soon be overrun by Jutes under Vortigern’s ally, Hengst. Reminder: Hengst was Camilla’s maternal uncle.

So now, we have triple placenames for the first of three possible fathers. It should be mentioned that the very first and most prominent mention of Cywryd Ceint is in the Welsh Triads, a collection of triple verses organized into threes. This verse is called “Arthur's Three Great Queens.”

Having styled it that, the Triads needed to deliver on their promise and provide their listeners with three queens… whether or not “Three Great Queens” was an accurate accounting of the original facts. Men and women in those days were commonly identified as the “son of so-and-so,” or the “daughter of such-and-such.” This naming convention logically offers a total of three queens with one father apiece. Not three fathers for the same queen.

So, we need to proceed here with a grain of salt. And no more than one grain. Not three.

Back to Cwenhild. She grew up to be a fierce warrior, what the Jutes called “a shieldmaiden.” Amongst the Germani, many women fought as warriors. Cwenhild appears to have been a guocwen, or “warrior queen,” which title echoes her own, personal name: “Battle Queen.”

Having captured King Arthur at the Battle of Mount Badon, however, Cwenhild employed a most un-warrior-like tactic: seduction. It was said that she accosted the captive Arthur in his tent and seduced him.

It doesn't make clear exactly what she hoped to gain by this conquest, as Arthur was already her prisoner. Perhaps, she intended to sway the enemy king to her people's cause. Or hoped he might fall under her spell, so she could control him in future. Maybe she was just feeling horny. Whatever the shieldmaid’s initial intent was, the encounter resulted in a son.

This son of Arthur became known as Smervie Mawr.

Mawr means “great.” It is seen as an appendage to a great many fifth-century names, in a variety of Latin and Celtic languages. One wonders how many of them gave themselves this honorary style.

The name Smervie may have issued from any number of places. Some think it is related to the Early Irish word, smer, “The Fat.” Others that it came of the Celtic root smer, “joy” or “affection.” Mervi means “spiritless” or “delicate” in Celtic, while mer indicates “mad” in Early Irish. Both are tempting choices, considering Smervie’s later career.

-ie in later English forms a diminutive, derogatory, or affectionate suffix. It must be a later appendage to an earlier name.

I think, however, that the name might have been as simple as smar, a Celtic root indicating “a lad or growing youth.” Taken together, it would have later rendered something like Smar-ie, “Little Lad.”

Generic. And simple. Like Smervie.

Because, whatever his name really meant, Smervie Mawr, son of Arthur, was known as a wastrel, preferring wandering the forests and hunting to fighting and governing. At least in the romances.

It has been suggested that Smervie may have originated from the Brythonic name Cerdic. And that Cerdic may have been the Germanic – or at least, part-Germanic – Cerdic who the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded as crossing the English Channel from Gaul into Britain with his son, Cynric, late in the fifth century, in 495 AD.

I think the date is likelier around 470, but that’s a conversation for a different day.

So, maybe, Smervie wasn’t such a wastrel after all. Maybe, he wandered further afield than just the Caledonian Woods of Great Britain. Perhaps, he crossed the Channel to Gaul, returning with an army and a grown son. To reconquer his mother's adopted land... and the homeland of his Briton father. Maybe, he earned the honorific, “great.”

As for Smervie’s mother, Cwenhild, or the “Saxon battle maiden, Camilla,” she met a violent end. But I'm not going to tell you what that is here.

For the full story of Cwenhild, the fiery Saxon shieldmaiden – or at least, the precursor to it – you can pick up a copy of my book, The Wanderer and the Wolves, on Amazon.com. Cwenhild’s story starts with its prequel, The Shieldmaid and the Cross, which is currently in copyediting. I’m hoping to have it out sometime in 2027.

In next week’s episode, we will examine in more detail the fathers of the multiple queens of Arthur, specifically that of the most famous of them all: Queen Guinevere. Her father was rumored to be an ogre, a giant, and an otherworldly wraith straight out of song and rhyme.

But does a mortal man lurk behind these shadowy vapors? Find out next week…

If you can’t wait for more Arthurian lore till the next episode, you will find my historical fiction novel, The Wanderer and the Wolves, told from Queen Guinevere’s perspective, on Amazon.com. The link is included below. And be sure to check out my author page at ShanavereStudios.com.

Until next week: People who read live in many worlds. Books are the surest portals to those worlds. So, keep living, keep reading, and keep dreaming... till we meet again.