3048480 - Davis Moebus Tree

Name Suffix:<NSFX> Prince Of Wales "The Great"
From: Wales and the Marches, 1230 CE: Llywelyn Fawr, Prince of Wales, and the Execution of William de Braose

"During the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Welsh were ruled by many ruthless and able men: Tywysogion, or Princes. The most forceful and intelligent of these rulers was surely the prince of Gwynedd, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (d. 1240), whose castle, Dolwyddelyn, is pictured here. Llywelyn was the only prince of the age to earn from posterity the cognomen Fawr: the Great. Like his predecessors and contemporaries, Llywelyn had to simultaneously find a way to coexist with his vastly more wealthy and powerful neighbor to the east, and at the same time extend his hegemony over the lesser princes of Wales. The Angevin Kings of England and their marcher barons were powerful and dangerous, and the princes of Wales were quarrelsome and resistant to any of their number who would attempt to impose his authority on the rest. In spite of this volatile political atmosphere, Llywelyn Fawr came closer than any of his predecessors to creating a Welsh polity which could withstand the encroachments of the marcher lords and the impositions of the English King. But it was not an easy task and even Llywelyn the Great had his setbacks.

In the spring of 1230, Llywelyn's wife Joan, the illegitimate daughter of King John of England, was discovered "in the prince's chamber" with William de Braose, a powerful Anglo-Norman marcher lord. The two were imprisoned and soon William was executed. The affair and the subsequent execution created tensions between Llywelyn and the princes of southern Wales, as well as jeopardizing his good relations with both the royal government and the Braose family with whom Llywelyn had been negotiating a marriage for his son Dafydd. These unresolved tensions and royal inattention ultimately led to the outbreak of war in south Wales in 1231."@@S124@@