The Winter King

Derfel Cadarn is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. In the frame narrative, he is a Christian monk living a quiet monastic life, but he recollects a time, many years ago, when he was one of Arthur’s best warriors. A Saxon raised among the Britons, Derfel is captured in a raiding party as a baby and miraculously spared from a sacrificial burning pit. This early event informs the rest of his life, as though the gods deliberately spared him to fulfill a greater purpose. Merlin is the first to recognize his potential, and he raises him on his lands and wants to make him a Druid priest, but from a young age Derfel insists that he wants to be a warrior. When circumstances allow him to fulfill his wish and become a soldier in Arthur’s army, he feels no conflict between his Saxon heritage and his duty, as “I had been raised among the Britons and my friends, loves, daily speech, stories, enmities and dreams were all British” (23). Derfel identifies himself in terms of his trusted companions rather than his bloodline. Therefore, when he meets Arthur, the seeming embodiment of the warrior prince, he eagerly takes up the chance to fight in Arthur’s service.