logres

Logres is a legendary realm in Arthurian literature, the kingdom associated with King Arthur and the seat of his imperial court and the Round Table. The name first achieved prominence in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (12th century), where it designates Arthur’s land, and it was subsequently adopted by many medieval writers to designate the political heart of Arthur’s dominion. In later traditions, Logres comes to symbolize the broader realm of Arthur’s Britain and the idealized project of chivalric governance.

Geography and scope of Logres are deliberately fluid and vary by author. In some treatments it is identified with the entire island of Britain or the western part of it, while in others it is presented as a distinct, remote kingdom within or beyond the familiar lands of the Britons. Across sources, Camelot often appears as the royal capital within Logres or as the central seat of Arthur’s authority, though exact locations differ.

Function and symbolism: Logres serves as a literary and cultural symbol of knightly virtue, lawful order, and imperial ambition. Its fortunes and fate are closely tied to Arthur’s leadership and to the rise and fall of the Round Table fellowship. The land embodies the ideals of noble knighthood, loyalty, and the fragile balance between civilization and the forces that threaten it.

In modern usage, Logres persists as a poetic or fictional term for Arthur’s Britain, invoked in poetry, prose, and adaptations to evoke the mythic past and the enduring tension between idealized rule and its dissolution.