When Disney studios released The Lion King, it was proclaimed to be the first “original” Disney story—that is, not a remake of a fairy tale, a ballet, or retelling a novel (such as they did with retelling The Once and Future King in The Sword And The Stone.). That isn’t true. The Lion King can be seen as an animalized retelling of the Arthurian cycle.
In both stories the central character is a male. In the Arthurian cycle, the central character is Arthur, the son of King Uther Pendragon. In The Lion King, the central character is Simba, the son of King Mufasa. Both are male sons of a king, princes, in fact, of their realms. Simba and Arthur also had similar childhoods. Simba’s father, Mufasa, was killed, and Simba leaves, disappears from sight until he has grown, taken care of by the surrogate family of Timon and Pumbaa. Arthur, however, was taken away from his father and fostered to Sir Ector Morven, and raised by Sir Ector as a part of his family. Both future kings grew up without the guidance of their birth parents.
