Welsh Britain

Shiny

Any way for Wales (In the form of Gwynedd, or whatever you want, really) to rule as an independent country, or ruling a larger part of the Isles?

Looking at times from 1000 on to 1900. (So no independent Romano-British...)
 

robertp6165

Shiny said:
Any way for Wales (In the form of Gwynedd, or whatever you want, really) to rule as an independent country, or ruling a larger part of the Isles?

Looking at times from 1000 on to 1900. (So no independent Romano-British...)
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From 1,000 A.D. onward? Highly unlikely. The last real chance they had for that was in the mid 7th century, when Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd almost destroyed Northumbria. By 1,000 A.D., the English were too entrenched in England to be ejected from any significant part of it. And once the Normans get in there in 1066, the chances that Wales is going to remain independent drop to zero.

I suppose that if the Saxons win at Hastings, there is a possibility that an independent Wales may survive, very much in a client relationship to England, to be sure, but still independent. The Saxons had, by that time, pretty much given up trying to conquer Wales and accepted Offa's Dyke as a permanent western boundary for England. But, of course, once the Viking threat is removed, some Saxon king in the late 1100s or early 1200s might decide to renew the wars against the ancient enemy. In that case the Welsh people probably don't survive at all in recognizable form, as the Saxons would probably engage in ethnic or cultural cleansing there, as they apparently did in all the other areas of England they conquered. Probably Welsh, like Cornish, dies out as a spoken tongue sometime in the 18th or early 19th centuries in that case.
 

Shiny

I suppose it would be unlikely, but what about sometime AFTER Wales had been conquered by the Normans? Were there any rebellions that may have succeeded?
 

robertp6165

Shiny said:
I suppose it would be unlikely, but what about sometime AFTER Wales had been conquered by the Normans? Were there any rebellions that may have succeeded?
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There were several rebellions, and some of them DID succeed, for a while. The basically insurmountable problems are two-fold...first, the great disparity in population and resources between Wales and England, and second, the disunity of the Welsh themselves. There never was a Welsh Prince of Wales who actually ruled ALL of Wales. Llewellyn the Great (1173-1240) came closest, but even he did not rule all of Wales.

But even if the Welsh managed to completely unite under a single dynasty, the disparity in population and resources would simply have been too much to overcome. It was far worse than that between Scotland and England, and Wales was in a worse position than Scotland geographically to benefit from a foreign alliance.

So I still think that their best chance, post 1,000 A.D. is a Saxon victory at Hastings, and even that is iffy.
 

pompejus

For Wales (and the same is probably true for Scotland and Ireland) to dominate Britain you need to have a united Wales and a divided England. For this to happen after 1000AD is hard and after 1066 almost impossible. I think that a saxon victory at Hastings wouldn't be enough. What you need is an inconclusive victory at Hastings or there could be a civil war in England between the supporters of the Saxons, the Normans and the Norwegians. Wales could take advantage of this situation and grab some English land at their borders.
 

Redbeard

Banned
In case of this Welsh adventure actually happening and the Welsh trying to create a global Empire like their OTL English brothers I will have to make this statement: WE ARE NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE GOING TO HAVE WELSH AS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE OVER HERE!!!

You can do what ever you want over on your own islands, but we are not going to talk Welsh - understand?!

Regards ;)

Steffen Redbeard
 

The Dean

Redbeard said:
In case of this Welsh adventure actually happening and the Welsh trying to create a global Empire like their OTL English brothers I will have to make this statement: WE ARE NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE GOING TO HAVE WELSH AS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE OVER HERE!!!

You can do what ever you want over on your own islands, but we are not going to talk Welsh - understand?!

Regards ;)

Steffen Redbeard
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Been to Wales then, have you?:D
 

The Dean

Max Sinister said:
How could the famous Welsh longbows help?
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The translation of Lioegr, the Welsh name for England, is The Lost Lands. The way for more of Britain to be still Welsh or Celtic would be for less of it to be "lost". There would have to be a way for the Post-Romano Britons to slow down the influx of Angles, Jutes and Saxons.

God knows how that could have happened.
 

Analytical Engine

Redbeard said:
In case of this Welsh adventure actually happening and the Welsh trying to create a global Empire like their OTL English brothers I will have to make this statement: WE ARE NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE GOING TO HAVE WELSH AS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE OVER HERE!!!

You can do what ever you want over on your own islands, but we are not going to talk Welsh - understand?!

Regards ;)

Steffen Redbeard
Click to expand...

What's wrong with Welsh? :confused:
 
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