Mordred Mordred Mordred or Modred (; ) is a character in the Arthurian legend. Based on a possibly historical figure, Mordred is most commonly known as a notorious traitor who fought King Arthur at the Battle of Camlann, where he was killed and Arthur was fatally wounded. In the popular version, he is the bastard son of Arthur and Arthur's half-sister, Morgause. The name "Mordred" (found as Modredus in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae") comes from Old Welsh "Medraut" (comparable to Old Cornish "Modred" and Old Breton "Modrot") and is ultimately derived from Latin "Moderātus" meaning "within bounds, observing moderation,
King Arthur Arthur. Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's "Age of Arthur" prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time". Gildas' 6th-century polemic "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae" ("On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain"), written within living memory of Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is