The Kings and Queens of Wales

Sheds light on enigmatic rulers from Vortigern to Llewelyn 'the Last' First truly comprehensive history of the rulers of the WelshThe Welsh kings and queens who ruled prior to the Norman Conquest of Wales are shrouded in mystery. Most of what we know is from legend, names in annals, and from their opponents. This book sets out to identify what we know or can reasonably surmise about these rulers, to disentangle their history, and to assess their achievements.The Welsh ruled over large areas of Britain in the pre- and post-Roman eras, before they were pushed back into Wales itself by the Anglo-Saxons. Caratacus and Boudicca are names that stand out from early tribal states, and Medieval Welsh legends refer to shadowy 'High Kings' who ruled after the Romans left - Vortigern, Ambrosius and of course the enigmatic 'Arthur'. Venning explores these mysterious figures before discussing the kings and queens of each area of what we now know as Wales - the north, the centre and south-west, and the south-east - as well as the short-lived Welsh states in the rest of Britain.The thirteenth-century unifiers of Wales, Llewelyn 'Fawr' and his grandson Llewelyn 'the Last', were contemporaries of great nation-builders in England, Scotland, and France, but their political achievements did not last. The precarious Welsh state was permanently overrun by the English war-machine. A considered attempt to set out what we can know about the rulers of what is now Wales in the early medieval period, Timothy Venning's new book does not shy away from problems of dating and interpretation in the use of the meagre source material. Venning takes a regional approach, and rather than try to provide a water-tight narrative is happy to present different possibilities and traditions, weighing up their likelihood and pointing the reader in the direction of further discussion as necessary. The book starts with coverage of the Iron Age background, as well as the shadowy post-Roman era, finishing with the period of Anglo-Norman expansion and Welsh resistance and co-existence for which we are on much firmer ground