Rhun Emlyn
speaker
133 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 25 Jun
Rhun Emlyn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, Wales in the 11th century was a country of many kings and many kingdoms across the whole country.
So there was a sense of a common Welsh identity, although the Welsh would have called themselves Britons in the 11th century rather than Welsh.
But there was this sense of Welsh identity across the country.
But that wasn't reflected politically.
So you had different kings.
different kingdoms.
We might know some of the names now as the names of counties like Gwynedd and Powys and Glamorgan and so on.
So there were these kingdoms, but they changed all the time.
There was a period of flux in Welsh politics as a kingdom depended on
the personal power, the aggressive personality of the king himself.
Now, before the Normans arrived on the borders of Wales, there had to be one powerful king, Gryffudd ap Llywelyn, who had managed to unite the whole of Wales under his control.
But a few years before the Battle of Hastings,
We had Harold Godwinson, of course, who was defeated at the Battle of Hastings, invaded Wales.
That led to the collapse of Griffith and Llywelyn's kingdom.
Incidentally, Harold Godwinson also married Griffith and Llywelyn's wife, Eildgith.
So poor Eildgith was Queen of Wales then, Queen of England.
And that really left a power vacuum in Wales, where you had a number of kings and a number of kingdoms then trying to vie for power against one another.
So it was quite a turbulent time and, of course, 1066 complicated matters even further.
Well, they'd had 100 years or so of trying to conquer Wales.
They'd managed successfully at the beginning, but the Welsh had learned how to fight back.
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