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Why Everybody is Obsessed with Dragons and Other Intense Legends from History

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Acceptance of a Dinner Invitation from These Saxons Turned Out to be a Huge Mistake

Romano-Briton nobleman Vortigern greets the arrival of Saxon chiefs Horsa and Hengist. Ancient Pages

Once the Saxons settled in Britain and got themselves comfortable, they decided that they not only liked the place, but that they also wanted more than what had been originally offered. So they accused their hosts and employers of a failure to meet their side of the deal, and alleged that they had deceived them and cheated them out of the supplies that they had been promised. The Romano-Britons sent their leaders to try and negotiate with the Saxons and reduce the tensions.

Unfortunately for the locals, the Saxons’ idea of negotiation was to suddenly pull out their daggers in the middle of the sit down, and massacre the native leaders. They spared just one of the Romano-Britons, a leader named Vortigern, and kept him alive as a puppet ruler in exchange for his promise to grant the Saxons more land. The resultant conflict, as the Saxons gobbled up more and more territory from the locals, gave rise to the mythology of the heroic British leader, King Arthur, who valiantly fought against the invaders. His fictional exploits are with us to this day.

Written by

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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