Merlin and Harry Potter

One of the more amusing but ultimately least impacting contradictions in the series is the timeline for Merlin. Mrs. Rowling writes that he himself was a student at Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin, a source of pride for the house and a justification (for those who need such) that not all who are so sorted are evil.

There are, naturally, problems with this. Most people attempting to reliably place Merlin and King Arthur in real history would do so in the sixth century, identifying him has a Welsh king who fought against Saxon invaders, culminating in the Battle of Camlann (537) in which he died.¹ Authors in the 12th and 13th centuries updated these tales and legends, giving them a more feudal and Christian flavour, as well as setting them in the (then) “present” time.² It is from this that we get what we now think of as “Arthurian Legend” and very little of the “original” (assuming he is in fact historical) ruler remains.

Rowling is clearly building off the legend version, placed in the 11th or 12th century, and thus within two or three centuries of when Hogwarts was founded. For a work of fiction to work off of the fictional version of the king with his fictional adviser (Merlin) is probably reasonable. The problem is that I have grown up with enough stories, for example Mr. Stephen Lawhead’s version,³ where Arthur does live further back in time, closer to the (probable) historical king. The resulting dissonance leaves me dissatisfied.