|
List of legendary kings of Britain is a list of legendary kings of the Brythons, as recorded by medieval authors such as Nennius, Gildas, and predominantly Geoffrey of Monmouth. Background Various lists of the kings survive, although none of the originals. The Welsh chronicles supply another source for early Brythonic kings. Regardless of the source, no list of the kings has a high level of historic fact and, while they generally are similar to each other, no two lists are exactly the same. Modern historians consider these lists not as historically reliable sources but as comprehensive conglomerations of various Celtic rulers, Celtic warlords, mythical heroes, and, more obviously, Roman Emperors. Though legendary and apocryphal, the kings of Britain contributed much to the Matter of Britain, the medieval and early modern traditions about the history of England. The following list is the most recent, being written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136 in his fictional Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain). It spans a length of nearly two thousand years. The first name on the list is Brutus, after whom Britain took its name, and who was a descendant of Aeneas of Troy (the ancestor of the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus). The descent from Aeneas to Brutus can be found in the Trojan Genealogy. Although Geoffrey gives us the lengths of reign of quite a few of the monarchs that he lists, he only supplies three exact dates in his entire history; two of which are demonstrably wrong. (For these and other reasons John Morris in The Age of Arthur calls Geoffrey's book a deliberate spoof.) It can be calculated, however, that if Brutus ever existed he would have lived around 1100 BC. In the following list, the names of the kings are given according to the spellings favoured by Lewis Thorpe in his now-standard translation, The History of the Kings of Britain. Earlier variants are given in brackets. The names of mythical kings of Britain before Brutus are given in The Prose Works of John Milton, within the chapter of the History of Britain I. He writes that they were part of tradition, though it is doubtful many of these kings were real. First Kings House of Troy Henwinus, duke of Cornwall, son-in-law to Leir, jointly 855–852 BC Cunedagius (Cunedag), son of Henwinus of Cornwall, jointly 844–842 BC House of Cornwall Civil War of the Five Kings House of Cornwall Kings Chosen by Lot House of Beldgabred Kings Chosen by Lot House of Capoir Anti&Roman Resistance Leader House of the Severi Usurping British Rulers See also: British Emperor#Britannic Empire (late 3rd century) Roman Commander House of the Votadini House of the Constantii See also "Constantinian Dynasty" on the List of Roman Emperors House of the Gewissei House of the Votadini House of the Gewissei House of the Votadini House of the Dumnonii Usurping British Ruler House of Brittany House of the Gewissei House of Brittany House of the Dumnonii House of Brittany House of Dyfed House of Gwynedd House of Wessex House of Gwynedd Aftermath After the death of Cadwallader, the kings of the Brythons were reduced to such a small domain that they ceased to be kings of the whole Brythonic-speaking area. Two of his relatives, Yvor and Yni, led the exiles back from Brittany, but were unable to re-establish an united kingship. The Anglo-Saxon invaders ruled the south-eastern part of the island of Great Britain after that point in time under the Bretwaldas and later the kings of England. The heirs to the Celtic-British throne continued through the Welsh kings of Gwynedd until that line was forced to submit itself to the English in the 13th century. Princes and lords of Gwynedd ruled until the reign of Dafydd III, who ruled from 1282 to 1283. His death marked the end of the house of Brutus. Owen Tudor, grandfather of Henry VII of England, was a maternal descendant of the kings of Gwynedd; Henry's marriage with Elizabeth of York thus signified the merging of the two royal houses (as well as the feuding houses of York and Lancaster). See also Bibliography | |||||||
|
--> | ||||||||
 |
|
| |