Lucius Artorius Castus

Lucius is depicted as a fair-skinned man of probable Roman and Celtic parentage. He goes clad in Roman armor beneath a red cape, a red plume crowning his helmet, and carries what looks to be a spatha, the long sword of the Roman cavalry.

The series treats Lucius less as a rounded personality than as a legend. To the Welsh who keep his memory alive he stands as a heroic defender, a folk champion celebrated for driving back invaders, and it is this larger-than-life reputation, rather than any intimate portrait, that the story preserves.

Serving in the second century A.D., Lucius led forces in Britannia, the Roman province that would eventually become England and Wales. History credits him with defeating the Saxons, a people out of northern Germany, even though those same Saxons would much later displace the Romans and Celts as Britain's dominant population. Generations after his death the Welsh still honor him as a folk hero, and his lineage carries forward through the centuries to Lydia and, through her, to Askeladd, who count him as their forebear.