Maelgwn Gwynedd
A.k.a Mailcun or Maglocunus,‘Dragon of the Ilsand’
Denounced by the chronicler Gildas as beyond redemption, Maelgwn may have been the greatest of British Kings in the years following Arthur.
After the death of Arthur in the early sixth century, Britain fractured into an indeterminate number of small kingdoms. Some of these, mostly in the South and East were ruled by the Saxons, but most were still in the hands of the British Celts. It was a period of constant warfare and strife, where enemies were no longer identified along racial lines, and the Celts were just as likely to war against one another as with the Saxons.
It was during this time that the monk Gildas first set down his chronicles, and provided the only written history from the British islands for this period. One of his main subjects is the evils of the current British kings, and first among these kings is a man named Maglocunus. Maglocunus is the sixth century version of the medieval name Mailcun, which has been passed into the modern Welsh language as Maelgwn. His title, 'Dragon of the Ilsand' likely refers to his power base on the island of Anglessey.
In true history, all that is known of Maelgwn is what is reported by Gildas(1): that he seized the throne of Gwynedd from his uncle, repented, joined a monastery, left the monastery to reclaim his throne, then arranged for the murders of his wife and nephew so that he could marry his nephew’s widow. There is a separate history that states that Maelgwn died in the year 550 of the plague.
Like King Arthur only a generation before, Maelgwn has been created more in legend than in fact. In modern Welsh legend, he was the greatest of Welsh kings, from whom all others were descended. He ruled a vast region and created just laws.
However, what is important about the story of Maelgwn isn’t the factual history of his life, but the statement that his story makes about the politics of succession of the period in which he lived (2). When a Celtic king died, his kingdom was divided among all of his sons. This created a situation where either the kingdoms became smaller and smaller with the passing generations, or, as seems more common, caused constant warfare between members of the same family in order to keep a kingdom together. In such circumstances, it was nearly impossible to form any kind of unity between, or often within, Celtic kingdoms. The same cannot be said of the Saxon kingdoms where succession was always to a single individual (though it was more complex than just primogeniture).
Maelgwn may have been the greatest British King of his age, but the means he employed to secure that kingdom demonstrated the great weakness of the Celtic versus Saxon system of rulership.
(1) In fact, as pointed out by Christopher Gildow (The Regin of Arthur: From History to Legend, Sutton Publishing, 2004) Gildas never states that Maglocunus is the King of Gwynedd, and the connection is only made several hundred years later. However, the evidence does point to the fact that they are one in the same.
(2) As strongly stated by John Morris (The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650, Phoenix, 1993)
