The Winter King

The Winter King is a historical novel by the English writer Bernard Cornwell, published in Britain in 1995 and the first book of the Warlord Chronicles.

Cornwell reworks the Arthurian stories into the Britain of the Dark Ages, where the legions have gone and the native kingdoms and the incoming Saxons are fighting over the same ground. Uther Pendragon dies leaving an infant son as his heir, and Arthur, who has no claim to the throne himself, becomes the warlord holding the kingdom together for the child. The book is narrated in old age by Derfel Cadarn, a monk who served as one of Arthur's warriors and who describes what he saw rather than what the legends have since made of it.

The trilogy is divided into five parts, and it follows Derfel's own history as much as Arthur's. Cornwell treats the magic of the original tales as something the characters believe in rather than something the narrator confirms. The later books, Enemy of God and Excalibur, carry Derfel's account through to the end of the kingdom he served.