Historical-mythical roots of the legend of Marko Kraljević

Summary Marko Kraljević is the central figure of South Slavic epic poetry, the protagonist of hundreds of poems and legends, and epic traditions in general. In the frameworks of Serbian and South Slavic folklore (beside the legend of the Battle of Kosovo) the epic legend of Kraljević Marko is certainly best known and, nevertheless, most complex. For this reason, in the course of the last 150 years, it has been the research subject of numerous folkloristic, literary, ethnological, ethno-mythological and other studies. In this paper we shall address the historical and mythical roots of the epic character of Marko Kraljević, drawing from the works of other researchers of this subject. Our preliminary assumption is that the epic character of Marko Kraljević was not based exclusively on the historical figure of King Marko Mrnjavčević, rather it included other prototypes of historical and mythic personalities as well. Some of them are associated with distant periods in ancient history.