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List of legendary kings of Britain

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This is a list of the legendary kings of Britain which refers to kings of Celtic Great Britain as recorded by much later authors, including Nennius, Gildas, and predominantly Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Various lists of the kings survive, although none of the originals. The Welsh Chronicles supply another source for early British 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.

Kings of the Britons

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 Britain were reduced to such a small domain that they ceased to be kings of the whole island. 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 island 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

  • John Morris. The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650. Barnes & Noble Books: New York. 1996 (originally 1973). ISBN 0-7607-0243-8
  • John Jay Parry and Robert Caldwell. Geoffrey of Monmouth in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Roger S. Loomis (ed.). Clarendon Press: Oxford University. 1959. ISBN 0198115881
  • Brynley F. Roberts, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Welsh Historical Tradition, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 20 (1976), 29-40.
  • J.S.P. Tatlock. The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and its early vernacular versions. University of California Press. Berkeley. 1950.
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