As the Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII called Prince Valiant the "greatest contribution to English literature in the past hundred years".

[1] Generally regarded by comics historians as one of the most impressive visual creations ever syndicated, the strip is noted for its realistically rendered panoramas and the intelligent, sometimes humorous, narrative.

Val travels to Africa and America and later helps his father regain his lost throne of Thule, which has been usurped by the tyrant Sligon.

The first episodes follow the youth through the wild Fens district of Britain with his father, the deposed King Aguar of Thule.

Steve Donoghue comments: At first, in the earliest months of Prince Valiant, Foster's Arthurian England might easily be confused with the Cimmeria of Conan the Barbarian: monsters abound.

When they all at length succeed in killing the beast, Val is outraged that Gawain still seeks to have the man tried before King Arthur.

The young prince naturally speaks up in his outrage before the great king, his queen Guinevere and his feared wizard Merlin—and so a career at Camelot is born.

On the trip, Gawain is seriously wounded, and the large panel where Val finally gets him back to Camelot is Foster’s first genuine visual show-stopper in the strip.

Arn hands Valiant the charmed sword to help him hold back their pursuers while he himself rides ahead to free Ilene.

Moving across Britain, Europe, and the Holy Land, Val fights invading Goths, Huns and Saxons.

In strips from 1987 Val becomes a grandfather when Arn and his wife, Maeve, daughter of the traitorous Mordred, give birth to Ingrid.

[5][7][8] The historical and mythological elements of Prince Valiant were initially haphazard, but soon Foster attempted to bring the facts into order.

Many elements of the story place it in the fifth century, such as the death of Attila the Hun in 453 and Geiseric's sacking of Rome in 455, which Prince Valiant and Aleta witness.

Slightly fantastic elements, like "marsh monsters" (a dinosaur-like creature) and witches, were present in the early years but were later downplayed (as was Merlin's and Morgan le Fay's use of magic), so that by 1942, the story became more realistic.

While obviously meant to take place during the Later Roman Empire, Foster incorporated anachronistic elements: Viking longships, knights, Muslims, alchemists and technological advances not made before the Renaissance.