Camber (legendary king)

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For other uses of the word see the disambiguation page, Camber.

Camber, also Kamber, was a legendary king of Cambria, according to the account given by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the first part of his Historia Regum Britanniae (12th century).

Camber was the son of Brutus, and a descendant of Aeneas of Troy. Upon his father's death he was given the region named after himself, Cambria. This area corresponds roughly to present-day Wales, and the name Cambria is still sometimes used in Welsh tourist literature and journalism (see, for example, Cambria Magazine).

He aided his brother, Locrinus, in the defeat of Humber, King of the Huns, in revenge for Humber's murder of their younger brother, Albanactus. Locrinus and Albanactus are the eponymous kings of England (Welsh: Lloegr) and Scotland (Yr Alban); like Camber himself, they have no historical basis but are the product of Geoffrey of Monmouth's imagination, invented largely for political ends within the contemporary Anglo-Norman world.^[1]

[edit] References

1. ^ See for instance J. S. P. Tatlock's classic study, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950).