Gildas refers to a "superbus tyrannus" (proud ruler) who invites the Saxons into Britain. Bede names this figure Vortigern. Nennius tells of Vortigern's attempt to build a tower which will not stand. He is advised to sprinkle the site with the blood of a child with no father. The child—Ambrosius in Nennius's account and Merlin in the accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth and others—saves himself by revealing the true cause of the tower's collapse: two dragons fighting beneath the foundation.
 
Geoffrey of Monmouth creates a picture of a wicked and foolish Vortigern whose ambition leads to the treacherous killing of a king and whose folly leads to inviting the Saxons into Britain. Geoffrey tells of Vortigern's persuading Constans, the brother of Uther and Aurelius, to leave a monastery and ascend to the throne. Thoroughly unsuited to rule, Constans gives all real power to Vortigern, who then engineers the assassination of Constans and has himself named king. Those protecting Constans’s young brothers take them to Brittany to save them from a similar fate.
 
The Welsh Triad 51 names Gwretheyrn the Thin (Vortigern) as one of the "Three Dishonoured Men" because he "first gave land to the Saxons in this Island, and was the first to enter into an alliance with them." According to a number of sources, his lust for Hengist's daughter Rowena causes him to give land to the Saxons. Merlin predicts Vortigern’s death after revealing the fighting dragons beneath the tower. In the chronicles, Vortigern is virtually always presented as a treacherous, ambitious, and foolish king.
 
While much of what is written about Vortigern in the chronicles is standard, some authors of romances and novels introduce less traditional...

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Gildas refers to a "superbus tyrannus" (proud ruler) who invites the Saxons into Britain. Bede names this figure Vortigern. Nennius tells of Vortigern's attempt to build a tower which will not stand. He is advised to sprinkle the site with the blood of a child with no father. The child—Ambrosius in Nennius's account and Merlin in the accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth and others—saves himself by revealing the true cause of the tower's collapse: two dragons fighting beneath the foundation.
 
Geoffrey of Monmouth creates a picture of a wicked and foolish Vortigern whose ambition leads to the treacherous killing of a king and whose folly leads to inviting the Saxons into Britain. Geoffrey tells of Vortigern's persuading Constans, the brother of Uther and Aurelius, to leave a monastery and ascend to the throne. Thoroughly unsuited to rule, Constans gives all real power to Vortigern, who then engineers the assassination of Constans and has himself named king. Those protecting Constans’s young brothers take them to Brittany to save them from a similar fate.
 
The Welsh Triad 51 names Gwretheyrn the Thin (Vortigern) as one of the "Three Dishonoured Men" because he "first gave land to the Saxons in this Island, and was the first to enter into an alliance with them." According to a number of sources, his lust for Hengist's daughter Rowena causes him to give land to the Saxons. Merlin predicts Vortigern’s death after revealing the fighting dragons beneath the tower. In the chronicles, Vortigern is virtually always presented as a treacherous, ambitious, and foolish king.
 
While much of what is written about Vortigern in the chronicles is standard, some authors of romances and novels introduce less traditional ideas about him. In Robert de Boron’s Merlin, Vortigern is the seneschal to the British ruler Constans and his three sons. William Ireland’s play Vortigern (written in 1795 and performed in 1796) recounts much of the traditional story, but Vortigern is spared when his daughter Flavia, whom Aurelius loves, pleads for his life. In Edison Marshall's novel The Pagan King (1959), Vortigern is the father of Medraut and Arthur, the latter being his son from an incestuous relationship with his own daughter Anna. Vortigern's tragic story is a central symbol in Haydn Middleton’s novel The Collapsing Castle (1990). One of the rare sympathetic depictions of Vortigern comes in Parke Godwin's novel Firelord (1980), in which Arthur as narrator claims that although Vortigern had the soul of a tax collector, he had to invite the Saxons into Britain since the country was being overrun by invaders.
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