Lore questions about Avalon and it's denizens

[Britaius]

First of all - minor spoilers possible.

Okay, so I have finished the main storyline and assumed I won't get much more lore stuff after that point (except maybe fomorians, but they're out of question), but some questions still persisted.

Is Avalon a real place in a real world (through maybe magically veiled or smth) or a proper afterlife?

On the one hand, all the knights say they perished in Britannia one way or another, and by the look of some of them (yes, sir Tristan, please get yourself a full-face helmet) it is true. Also, the island is full of undeads and stuff, even from pre-Arthur times.

But on the other hand - who are all of those peasants we're saving occasionally here and there, all those lackeys, brigands, merchants? Are they all dead and resurrected as well? They seem to have families, and children, work on fields, and even our knights need rest (sir Mordred has the same confusion from time to time: "What is the point in resting if we're already dead?"). And what about picts? The Lady stated that they travelled by sea somehow from the real world, so they can't be undead.

Moreso, Avalon has a number of christian monasteries and castles. Are they all just twisted reflections of real Britannia places, like Camelon, Corbenic and Tintagel? In the first endgame mission it is stated that the building of monasteries was tolerated by The Lady.

But if it's a real place, how could The Lady collect all the dead knights to be resurrected there, some of them died way before Camlann (and probably buried properly) and even one from Roman times?

I assume, the story in this games continues lore from previous two wargames, which were, as far as I understood, quite "alternative" to the common version of the Atrhurian myth, but unfortunately I don't know where to read about it properly.

P.S.
In the last bossfight of the main storyline Arthur calls Mordred "son". Is he really his son according to local lore? There are no other signs of that in the whole game, or is it Arthur just being patronising to his old nemesis?

[JustMonika]

I too, would like answers to these questions.

[Gold Dragon]

Avalon is a mythical island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 Historia Regum Britanniae as a place of magic where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was made and later where Arthur was taken to recover from being gravely wounded at the Battle of Camlann. Since then, the island has become a symbol of Arthurian mythology, similar to Arthur's castle of Camelot.

Avalon has often been identified as the former island of Glastonbury Tor. An early and long-standing belief involves the purported discovery of Arthur's remains and their later grand reburial in accordance with the medieval English tradition, in which Arthur did not survive the fatal injuries he suffered in his final battle. Besides Glastonbury, several other alternative locations of Avalon have also been claimed or proposed. Some medieval sources also occasionally described the place as a valley, and Italian folklore connected it with the phenomenon of Fata Morgana in relation to Mount Etna.

From the Wiki page.

[Dumeka]

Many Artists, Illustrators and Photographers have released Books, Art, Photography among a lot of other things between the 17th and 19th Century that included a lot of variations of the lore with also characters that partially are supposed to have existed but mostly not mentioned in the more popular written lores.
Most of them were women and were excluded because the lore should mainly be men heavy because of arthur, the knights and merlin.
So it could be indeed that some of these characters are also partially connected to the many exisiting lores that weren't covered in most movies and more popular books because they weren't important for the main characters Arthur, Merlin and the Knights. :)

[oeregharcos]

I got a dev-answer for you :)

"In this game, Avalon is part of the afterlife, it's an island, but it is connected to other realms (like the Roman underworld) that have an influence on it. Right now it is a corrupted version of what once was. It is a twisted nightmare version of Arthur's remembrance of Britannia, this is why parts of it appear as counterparts of the real world.

The relationship between Mordred and Arthur is deliberately left obfuscated."

[Britaius]

Originally posted by oeregharcos:

I got a dev-answer for you :)

Well, thank you a lot, really appreciate dev answer. Makes a lot of sense now.