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: For historical kings who used or upon whom was bestowed (often retrospectively) the title 'King of the Britons', see King of the Britons.
The following list of legendary kings of Britain derives predominantly from Geoffrey of Monmouth's circa 1136 work Historia Regum Britanniae ("the History of the Kings of Britain"). Geoffrey constructed a largely fictitious history for the Britons (ancestors of the Welsh, the Cornish and the Bretons), partly based on the work of earlier medieval historians like Gildas, Nennius and Bede, partly from Welsh genealogies and saints' lives, partly from sources now lost and unidentifiable, and partly from his own imagination. Several of his kings are based on genuine historical figures, but appear in unhistorical narratives. A number of Middle Welsh versions of Geoffrey's Historia exist. All post-date Geoffrey's text, but may give us some insight into any native traditions Geoffrey may have drawn on.
Geoffrey's narrative begins with the exiled Trojan prince Brutus, after whom Britain is supposedly named, a tradition previously recorded in less elaborate form in the 9th century Historia Britonum . Brutus is a descendant of Aeneas, the legendary Trojan founder of Rome, and his story is evidently related to Roman foundation legends.
The kings before Brutus come from a document purporting to trace the travels of Noah in Europe and once attributed to the Mesopotamian historian Berossus, but now known to be a fake. Renaissance historians like John Bale and Raphael Holinshed took the list of kings of Celtica given by pseudo-Berossus and made them kings of Britain as well as Gaul. John Milton records these traditions in his History of Britain , although he gives them little credence.