Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: The Life and Death of a Warrior Prince

Llywelyn narrates his own story in this historical novella based on the life and times of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c. 1223-1282), 'Llywelyn the Last'.

ISBN: 9781784611392

Price: £6.95

Department: Fiction, Welsh History

Format: Paperback

Language: English

More information

Reviews

Carefully researched, the novel closely follows the historical events while capturing the atmosphere of acute danger, politics and intrigue of the period. For the non-Welsh reader it provides some interesting insight to the general disinterest, hostility even, of the Welsh leaders towards the Crusades. They saw them as an excuse for plunder, rape and murder. - Gwyn Griffiths, Morning Star

Table of Contents

The hidden future

The end of an era

From internecine strife a new leader is born

Llywelyn ventures forth

The battle of Cymerau

The spoils of victory: Llywelyn rules

The ford at Montgomery

Llywelyn humiliates Roger Mortimer and meets Simon de Montfort

Triumph at Lewes but disaster at Evesham

Llywelyn attains his goal

The leopard bares its claws

Llywelyn sows the seeds of defiance and reaps a bitter harvest

Excommunication and humiliation

Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still

Llywelyn claims to be a direct descendent of Kamber, son of Brutus

Edward suffers a reverse

The final solution

Epilogue

Blurb

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's life and death confronts us with a puzzling contradiction - he was the only Welsh leader to be officially recognised by the English as Prince of Wales, yet, within a year of his death, Wales lay crushed beneath the iron heel of the rapacious English.

Llywelyn narrates the brutal history of his attempt to free Wales from English hegemony. It is a tale full of battles and beseiged castles; patriotism and treachery; triumphs and defeats; all leading to ultimate disaster and despair.

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