The historicity of King Arthur has been debated both by academics and popular writers. While there have been many claims that King Arthur was a real historical person, the current consensus among specialists on the period holds him to be a mythological or folkloric figure.
The first definite mention of Arthur appears circa 828 in the Historia Brittonum, where he is presented as a military leader fighting against the invading Saxons in 5th- to 6th-century Sub-Roman Britain at the Battle of Badon, more than three centuries before the work was written. Arthur developed into a legendary figure in the Matter of Britain from the 12th century, following Geoffrey of Monmouth's influential but largely fictional Historia Regum Britanniae.
