Princes of the Dragon: The Rise and Fall of the Welsh Kingdoms (c. 400–1283)

Eight centuries. Three dynasties. One conquest. Princes of the Dragon is a narrative history of medieval Wales from the departure of Rome to the Edwardian conquest of 1283 - the rise, fracture and fall of the Welsh kingdoms. At its height, Welsh political life ran through three principal royal lines: Aberffraw in Gwynedd, Dinefwr in Deheubarth and Mathrafal in Powys. Their halls gave Wales the lawcode of Hywel Dda, the praise-poetry of the Gogynfeirdd, and the Cistercian abbeys where the native chronicles were kept. Their princes - Rhodri Mawr, Hywel Dda, Owain Gwynedd, the Lord Rhys, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd - built a political world that outlasted eight centuries of Viking raids, Anglo-Saxon pressure and Norman invasion before the final English conquest of 1283. Inside the book:·The post-Roman kingdoms and the making of early medieval Wales: Cunedda, Vortigern, and the age of the saints·The Viking Age and the rise of the house of Aberffraw under Rhodri Mawr·Hywel Dda, the Welsh law, and the world of the kindred·The Norman conquest of the Marches and the long Welsh resistance of the twelfth century·The thirteenth-century principality of Wales under Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd·Edward I's conquest of 1282-83, the death of Llywelyn at Cilmeri, and the long afterlife of the Welsh princes From the dynastic rise of the fifth century to the ambush at Cilmeri in December 1282, Princes of the Dragon is the story of a political world whose law, poetry and memory outlasted its conquerors - and whose red dragon still flies over Wales today.