Arthur, Merlin or Robin Hood: the greatest British Folk Hero? And Guinevere...

As a kid, I would have said Robin Hood - for sure. 

This was almost entirely because of the "lifestyle" aspect - I liked the idea of living in the woods, and off the woods, with a gang of my friends: tracking, bows and arrows, camouflaged clothes etc. And Robin Hood was without doubt the premier English folk hero, through the middle ages and up until the past couple of generations. If Robin has a real-life origin, he is English. 

Nowadays, it is Merlin - for sure. But he is not really an English folk hero - being a combination of the Scottish Lailoken and the Welsh Myrddin - with (I believe) the Scottish Lailoken being the historical person (and having nothing to do with the historical Arthur, Lailoken being born two or three generations after the Celtic general). 

Arthur has always been there, but was never first in my interest - indeed I found him a rather lacklustre person (in some versions) or a mere warrior (in other versions) - and not even the best warrior, either. 

The historical Arthur is "British" - i.e. from the time of Celtic England and Wales - but when Scotland was distinct, mostly Pictish. 

The later Arthur is "Norman" - or, more exactly, a product of the Franco-English Plantagenet dynasty; and thus concerned with validating and mythologizing their aristocratic obsessions with cavalry, adultery and celibacy. 

This is why the chivalric knight hero Arthur has tended to be a favourite of the upper classes, while Robin was the people's hero; and Merlin became the collective archetype of the great seer/ prophet/ magician/ sorcerer/ wizard - therefore something of a link between the Celts, English, Scots, and Normans.

Guinevere - who has never had much of an heroic status, except in the most superficial treatments - has always struck me as even more lacklustre and uninteresting than Arthur. But in marrying Arthur she can be regarded as another linking figure; between the Ancient British Celts of Cornwall, and the Anglo-French Normans - the failure of that marriage is the spiritual failure of the project of Britain. 

Guinevere is a sterile (childless) beauty, who never does much except get abducted and (apparently) falls in and out of "love" with various suitors (especially Lancelot). This hints towards a recent idea (elaborated by Wendy Berg - in Red Tree, White Tree) is that Guinevere is a fairy - and thus a link (or intended to be a union) between the world of Men and Fays. That is why she is fascinating but sterile, and so passive - she is unsuited to the human world. 

Also why Guinevere keep getting abducted by various (disguised) fairies who are her relatives and suitors from faery, trying to get her back. 

But the Anglo-Norman Chivalric Arthur was challenged in my childhood by a more historical Arthur; as the warlord-leader of the Roman-British Christians against the pagan, savage, barbaric Saxon invaders.  This Arthur was propagated widely, via scholarship initially, and later (but not much later!) by romantic fiction, TV, movies etc. 

For may people, this "peoples' hero Arthur" has largely displaced both the Knights and Damsels Arthur; and also Robin Hood; and absorbed Merlin as a kind of druidic figure. 

Arthur is the new Robin!...

Thus the national mythology continued to develop and evolve; even in late 20th century (maybe into the 21st century?) Britain.