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60 free King Arthur trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
King Arthur trivia that goes well beyond 'name the sword'. This quiz starts with the familiar legend - Uther and Igraine at Tintagel, Merlin, Guinevere and Lancelot, the Round Table, Mordred at Camlann and the voyage to Avalon - and then digs into where it all came from: the Welsh poems and the Historia Brittonum with its twelve battles, Geoffrey of Monmouth's inventive Historia, Chrétien de Troyes, the Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The last section covers Arthur's afterlife in popular culture: Tennyson's Idylls, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, T. H. White and Disney's The Sword in the Stone, the musical Camelot and the Kennedy connection, and the 2004 and 2017 films. Questions are ordered roughly from easy to expert, so casual players and medievalists both get their turn. Every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. If you want more, we also have dedicated quizzes on the Holy Grail and on Excalibur.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which wizard and prophet serves as King Arthur's magical adviser?
Merlin
He was created in the 12th century by fusing two earlier Welsh prophets into one figure.
Q 02What is the name of King Arthur's legendary sword?
Excalibur
Its 12th-century Latin name was Caliburnus, apparently borrowed from the Welsh Caledfwlch.
Q 03Who is King Arthur's wife?
Guinevere
In the romances her affair with Arthur's greatest knight helps bring down the kingdom.
Q 04Who is King Arthur's father?
Uther Pendragon
His epithet Pendragon is a Middle Welsh title meaning roughly 'chief of warriors'.
Q 05Which knight's affair with Arthur's queen was introduced in The Knight of the Cart?
Lancelot
That same poem also contains the first passing mention of Arthur's most famous court.
Q 06Against whom does Arthur fight his final battle?
Mordred
In Geoffrey he is Arthur's treacherous nephew; later romances make him Arthur's own son.
Q 07Arthur's final battle is fought at which place?
Camlann
The Welsh annals date it to 537-539 and say both Arthur and Medraut fell there.
Q 08To which isle is the mortally wounded Arthur carried?
Avalon
The name is generally taken to come from the Welsh word for an apple tree.
Q 09Arthur is conceived at which Cornish castle?
Tintagel
Digs there in 2016-17 uncovered a 5th or 6th-century palace, so someone important really did live on the headland.
Q 10What is the name of Gorlois's wife, with whom Arthur's disguised father conceives him?
Igraine
Later versions insist Gorlois was already dead that night, which lets Arthur be legitimised by his parents' marriage.
Q 11Which 12th-century cleric wrote the Historia Regum Britanniae, the first full narrative of Arthur's life?
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Over 200 manuscript copies survive; a contemporary accused him of an 'inordinate love of lying'.
Q 12Who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, the great 15th-century English retelling of the whole legend?
Thomas Malory
He describes himself in the text as a 'knight prisoner', and probably wrote much of it in jail.
Q 13Le Morte d'Arthur was first printed in 1485 by which pioneering English printer?
William Caxton
It was among the earliest printed books in England, and the 1485 edition was the earliest known text until a manuscript surfaced in 1934.
Q 21In Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963), what is the wizard's talking pet Archimedes?
An owl
Archimedes is grumpy and highly educated, and ends up teaching Wart to read and write.
Q 22In Disney's The Sword in the Stone, what is young Arthur's nickname?
Wart
He is a twelve-year-old orphan working as squire to his foster brother Kay.
Q 23In Disney's film, the sword is lodged in what object sitting on top of the stone?
An anvil
The inscription promises that whoever pulls it out will be the future king.
Q 24In Disney's The Sword in the Stone, the wizard fights a shape-shifting duel with which witch?
Q 14Which Arthurian object first appears in Wace's 1155 Roman de Brut, made so no baron sat lower than another?
The Round Table
Wace himself credited the idea to the Bretons; some scholars think he borrowed it from biographies of Charlemagne.
Q 15Which king ordered the repainting of the Round Table hanging in Winchester Castle?
Henry VIII
Tree-ring dating puts the timber at 1250-1280, in the reign of Edward I.
Q 16Which Welsh town was Arthur's chief court in Geoffrey's Historia and in the early French romances?
Caerleon
Only in the 13th-century French prose romances does the more famous court begin to supersede it.
Q 17Which sorceress, Arthur's half-sister, rules the isle to which he is carried after his last battle?
Morgan le Fay
In her earliest appearance she is a great healer leading nine magical sisters, and not related to Arthur at all.
Q 18In the French romances and Malory, Arthur's treacherous son is born of incest with which half-sister?
Morgause
The wizard prophesies the boy will destroy the kingdom, which is why in some tellings Arthur tries to drown all babies born that May Day.
Q 19Arthur's wizard is traditionally said to be the son of a mortal woman and what?
An incubus
That demonic parentage is where his powers come from, and it makes him a 'cambion'.
Q 20The wizard's name was Latinised in the 12th century from which legendary Welsh bard?
Myrddin
One theory says Geoffrey softened the name because 'Merdinus' would have sounded like a French vulgarity.
Madam Mim
He wins by turning into a germ and infecting her.
Q 25Disney's The Sword in the Stone adapts the first part of which 1958 novel by T. H. White?
The Once and Future King
The book was assembled from shorter novels published between 1938 and 1940.
Q 26In T. H. White's novel, the wizard tutoring young Arthur has what unusual condition?
He lives backwards through time
It lets him remember the future and complain about the present.
Q 27Who wrote the 1889 satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?
Mark Twain
Twain's engineer uses an eclipse and gunpowder to overawe the sixth century.
Q 28Alfred Tennyson's Arthurian cycle, first published in 1859, is titled what?
Idylls of the King
It sold 10,000 copies in its first week and made Arthur a symbol of Victorian ideal manhood.
Q 29Which 1832 poem was Tennyson's first on an Arthurian subject?
The Lady of Shalott
The lady is doomed to see the world only in a mirror until a knight rides by.
Q 30Who plays the title role in the 2004 film King Arthur, directed by Antoine Fuqua?
Clive Owen
Keira Knightley co-starred as a woad-painted warrior queen.