Carlion
Welsh city serving as King Arthur's court, site of feasts and political conflict, in Le Morte d'Arthur.
Carlion is a city in Wales attested in Le Morte d'Arthur, serving as a recurring seat of King Arthur's court. Arthur held a great feast at Pentecost at "the city of Carlion" following his coronation, drawing kings and lords from across the realm (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book I, Chapter VIII). The city's political significance is underscored by its role in provoking conflict: the "despite and rebuke" suffered by six kings at Carlion became the cause of the northern host gathering against Arthur (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book I, Chapter XII). Arthur's knights returned to Carlion after encounters abroad, as when Arthur and his company "came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book I, Chapter XXV). In later books, the king departed from Carlion for various undertakings (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book VII, Chapter XXIII), and a varlet found the king and queen "in Wales, at Carlion" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X, Chapter XXVI).
All six attestations come from Le Morte d'Arthur, spanning Books I, VII, and X. Carlion functions consistently as a political and ceremonial center. In Book I, the city is the site of both celebration and provocation: it is where Arthur proclaimed his authority through feast-holding, and where the humiliation of rival kings seeded future war. The chase involving a knight named Egglame, pursued "even to Carlion," suggests the city also operated as a boundary or refuge within the narrative geography (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book I, Chapter XXV). By the middle books, Carlion remains a base to which Arthur returns and from which he dispatches business, maintaining its status as the practical seat of governance rather than a site of adventure.
Appears in: Places, Entities in Le Morte d'Arthur, British Tradition