I love a history geek!!!!!

She had an absolute talent for alienating people who might well have supported her.

Stephen finally offered her a deal. Let him have the throne for his lifetime, and he would name Matilda's son as his successor. Matilda wanted to turn it down, but her chief supporters told her that if she didn't agree, they would take their troops and their money and go home. She did live long enough to see her son crowned as Henry II.

help help, I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!

n/t.

She is messing with us

I've seen Bronze Age swords pulled from boggy water and they're very much the worse for wear, corroded down to next to nothing and either bent or broken before they were tossed in, since they were meant to be expensive sacrifices.

Likely there's an amateur bronze worker in the area who was hoping one of his less than perfect efforts would be discovered only after it had been pickled for a while.

It's an Arthurian miracle. Jesus makes regular appearances on toast and prenatal ultrasounds, after all.

A wackaloon fundie 'preacher' once told me that the holy grail would never be found, as it was safely ensconced in heaven - along with the ark of the covenant. Physical items in a heavenly realm. Really.

By the Loch Ness monster that lived in the lake.

Next on my NetFlix queue, as soon as I send back Marx Bros., A Day at the Races, which I watched last night and will watch again tonight.

So many fine actors in Excalibur. Nigel Terry, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Helen "fucking" Mirren, Nicole "Chew the scenery" Williamson.

A great flick.

Trailer:

Excalibur, plus royal pink Crocs? Hell, forget No. 10, clear the pretenders out of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle! Send the pretenders to the Tower! Let their heads be displayed on Traitor's Gate!

I've really had to reconsider the wisdom of strange women lying in ponds distributing swords. Farcical aquatic ceremonies are starting to look fairly reasonable as a means to derive supreme executive power.

I can see your point

He once found an 'ancient relic' while scuba diving mere feet from the shore.

Hmm.

It is meant for fighting in the front ranks of pike squares, between the pikemen and cutting off heads of pikes and people. It's not Excalibur, and it looks modern made.

Wolf

What stuck out: "Ironically, dad Paul Jones, 51, had recounted the famous folklore of King Arthur to Matilda and her four-year-old sister Lois just before the recovery."

Or...Dad planted a $29.95 replica for Matilda to find.

Maybe he wanted to encourage her love of history or mythology or literature.

Alternatively, an overly enthusiastic cosplay reenactment. And Dad telling the story really was coincidental.

No matter what, if that sword has been underwater for 12 months, I'd be surprised. But still, it would have been a thrilling find for a 7 year old.

There have been, as far as I can find, about two dozen movies dramatizing the King Arthur story, but I think that 1981's EXCALIBUR, the one featured in two clips above, was the best. It pretended, like a few others, to be based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, written in 1469, based on legends very deliberately cultivated during the reign of Henry II (12th cent.), rather than admit any obligation to a copyrighted source.

Anyway, it featured Helen Mirren (as Morgana), Nicol Williamson (as Merlin), Nigel Terry as a heroic Arthur (only a few years earlier he had been a rodent-like Prince John in Lion in Winter). The music is all Wagner (the bit behind the tossing of the sword is Sigfried's Rhine Journey). A tad too steamy for small children. The spirit Lady of the Lake, who provided and repaired the sword earlier in the movie, was director John Boorman's teenage daughter.

My amateur opinion is the sword found by the little girl is not the style, material, corrosion, etc., appropriate to the 7th century or anything close (presumably the era of Arthur).

See

At this point a 10 year old girl wearing pink crocs and holding a sword could do a better job that the present Admin....

In order for her to rule she would have to have pulled it out of a stone to prove her worth to rule.

I saw it on the TeeVee, so it must be true.