Bernard Cornwell's WARLORD CHRONICLES optioned for TV

The television adaptation of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Saga, The Last Kingdom, is currently doing very well for the BBC and BBC America. However, news has been revealed that arguably his most critically-acclaimed work, The Warlord Chronicles, has been optioned as well.

Bad Wolf Productions, a new venture headed by ex-BBC executive Jane Tranter and producer Julie Gardner, has optioned the novels and is looking to develop them for television, possibly alongside their new American partner company, HBO. The same team are behind the His Dark Materials TV project for the BBC, announced today.

The Warlord Chronicles consists of the novels The Winter King (1995), Enemy of God (1997) and Excalibur (1998). The trilogy retells the Arthurian legend, but in an unusual way. The books are set in the realm Britain of the late 5th and early 6th Centuries, when passions and tensions are running high between the descendants of the Roman conquerors, the native British kingdoms and the invading Saxons. The books depict Arthur not as the King of Britain, but as the bastard son of the High King Uther Pendragon. After (spoilers!) Uther's demise, Arthur is named Warlord of Dumnonia (Camelot), the regent for the throne until his nephew Mordred is old enough to rule, a responsibility that Arthur takes seriously despite the claims of his enemies that he seeks to usurp the throne. The books also depict a Britain being torn in religious strife between the pagan druids, led by their high priest Merlin, and the spreading forces of Christianity. Arthur, who instead follows a Roman mystical warrior tradition, attempts to stand neutral between them but with mixed results.

The trilogy features as its protagonist Derfel Cadarn, a young man who grows up in the royal household. Although he has his own storyline, he also serves as an independent witness for many of the events of Arthur's time and is later made a member of the Knights of the Round Table. The story is also being told in flashback by Derfel as he writes down his experiences for historians, only to his horror see them being corrupted into the flashier and more exciting version of the story known in the legends (Excalibur, for example, not being remotely magical in reality).

The trilogy has been high acclaimed for its strong narrative drive, its fresh interpretation of a familiar story and its use of the real historical situation (or at least what we know of it) to create a convincing story based in politics, religion, warfare, strife and lust.

According to Julie Gardner:

"[Bernard Cornwell] is a great storyteller as we know from everything from ‘Sharpe’ to ‘The Last Kingdom. He has a very innovative way into the Arthurian stories, which is to take an ordinary man who by work, chance and life is an observer and an intimate in the relationships of Arthur, Lancelot and the key characters that we know."

The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell

Britain, at the close of the 5th Century. The Romans are gone and the Britons are seeking to unite themselves under one ruler, but factional infighting and squabbles between the individual kingdoms are diverting them from the encroaching threat of the Saxons, who have landed on the east coast and made headway into the interior. The High King Uther Pendragon of Dumnonia is determined to drive them off the island, but he is old and dying and his son, Mordred, is but an infant. When Uther's death triggers a bloody war, his bastard son Arthur returns from Armorica with his hand-picked warriors to ensure that Mordred makes it to his majority and takes the throne. But the great druid Merlin is embarking on a great quest to unite the lost treasures of Britain in the hope of restoring the old gods, and his quest will bring Britain to its knees...

The Warlord Chronicles is Bernard Cornwell's take on the Arthurian epic. Published between 1995 and 1997, these books represented a major departure from Cornwell's established role as the author of the phenomenally successful Sharpe series of historical adventures set in the Napoleonic Wars, although the same eye for detail and combat is present. The Warlord Chronicles features greater emphasis on character-building and it is to Cornwell's credit he avoids the cliches. His Merlin isn't quite the same Merlin we've seen a hundred times before on film and in TV series, and his Guinevere, Lancelot and Arthur are all similarly well-defined, retaining some of their traditional characteristics whilst being imbued with greater depth and motivation.

This is a big, complex story, but Cornwell keeps the page-count down by making it a first-person story narrated by the great warrior Derfel Cadarn from his retirement at an abbey many years after Arthur's death. To a certain extent this limits the action as an enormous number of events, some of them pivotal, occur off-page at battles or meetings where Derfel is not present. However, this keeps the action cracking along at a fiendish pace, and Derfel's viewpoint allows Cornwell to illustrate elements of 5th/6th century society that other takes on the legend gloss over, such the fanatical inter-faith squabbling between Christians, Druids and even the followers of the Roman gods who established a foothold in Britain during the conquest. Military tactics are present realistically as well. No Arthur strutting around a London-sized Camelot in full plate armour, for example. This was the beginning of the Dark Ages, with the knowledge and wisdom accumulated by the Roman Empire over seven centuries crumbling into nothingness along with the ruins of its great towns and cities. This sense of a truly great civilisation being lost is one of the most stunning achievements of the books, and is unrivalled by anything else I've read with the possible exception of Lord of the Rings' evocation of the once-mighty landmarks of Gondor and Numenor reduced to a few ruins. In the Chronicles, however, it is given greater pathos by being true.

There is also a quite amusing reference to the traditional Arthurian legend as Derfel watches his careful, accurate historical account being taken away and translated by an interpreter who decides his work is a bit dull and makes various unfotunate changes which we can tell are the beginnings of the rather unhistorical myth as we know it today.

The Warlord Chronicles (*****) consists of The Winter King (1995, UK, US), Enemy of God (1996, UK, US) and Excalibur (1997, UK, US) and is highly recommended.

Bernard Cornwell also wrote the lengthy Sharpe series about the Napoleonic Wars (now standing at twenty-three volumes), The Starbuck Chronicles (four volumes covering the American Civil War, with more to follow) and The Grail Quest, set during the Hundred Years' War. His current work is The Saxon Series, which covers the wars between Alfred the Great and the Vikings in the 9th Century. This series stands at four volumes with another three or four projected, although Cornwell is taking a break to pen a novel about the Battle of Agincourt before proceeding.