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.These date from the same period as the Annales, and may be related to them, though they do not appear together in any other manuscripts.The first of the genealogies is of Ouen, tracing his descent through his father Higuel (Hywel the Good) and the Kings of Gwynedd, back to Mailcun, Cuneda(g) and beyond.In the Annales, Higuel’s death is recorded three years after Edmund of England, that is in 950.Mailcun is shown as the ancestor, five generations back, of the King Catgollaun (Cadwallon) of Gwynedd, the adversary of the Northumbrian kings.In the Annales, his death is recorded as c.631, and is dated by Bede to 634.This seems a plausible span of time.The linkage of these characters to Higuel’s dynastic line is uncertain.Our first impression is that there are too many generations.Death dates for Higuel’s ancestors are given in the Annales six generations back to Rotri, who died 196 years previously – a reasonable average of 32.66 years per generation.Rotri, however, is given as the great-grandson of Cadwallon.If the same average is continued back seven generations beyond Rotri to Mailcun, we would expect to find Mailcun dying around 470, much earlier than his position in the Historia or Annales.The genealogy of Higuel seems to have been constructed by combining his well-attested ancestors back to Rotri with some famous early figures from the Annales: Cadwallon and Catgualart, Iacob son of Beli and Mailcun.Where there is a long gap between Annales records, another figure (Iutguaul, Catman and Run) not mentioned in the Annales is inserted in the genealogy, a process which has apparently inflated the number of generations.The genealogy creates the illusion that a single hereditary dynasty has been ruling Gwynedd since at least the time of Mailcun and that Higuel and Ouen are its lineal descendants.We know this is not actually true.After the death of Rotri, a Caratauc was king of the region.A different genealogy is given for him, tracing his lineage back to Mailcun’s grandfather.Disjunctures like this make it difficult to place too much value on the genealogies.Some are demonstrably false.It is extremely unlikely that Hywel’s wife was descended from an unattested Dimet (‘Dyfed man’), son of the Emperor Maximus, and totally untrue that Maximus was the descendant in eight generations from Constantine the Great.Much weight has been put on them, because of the importance of genealogy in medieval Wales.Then, Welshmen were usually named with their father’s name used as a surname.However, this does not seem to have happened in the sixth century.None of the tyrants Gildas denounces are given patronymics, nor does one feature on Voteporix’s memorial stone.In the Gododdin, many of the warriors do not have patronymics.In the Historia only Vortimer, ‘son of Vortigern’, is named in this way.In the Annales, the first Briton to be given a patronymic is Selim, son of Cinan, in year 169.Before him only the two Irish leaders, Gabran, son of Dungart, and Aidan map Gabran have them.Even the seventh-century Cadwallon’s father’s name is not given in early sources.The genealogies of Higuel, his wife Elen and Caratauc have similar plans.Mailcun is given in the same generation as Cincar son of Guortepir (Vortiporius) and of Cinglas (Cuneglassus).This information, that Mailcun and Cuneglassus are contemporaries and that Vortiporius is a generation older, harmonises with what is recorded by Gildas, and could derive from him.The names ‘Arthur’ and ‘Outigirn’ do appear in the genealogies, but in contexts which make it clear that these are not the same as the warleaders of the late fifth and sixth centuries.Arthur is listed much more recently than Mailcun, and Outigirn much earlier.The importance of this information is that Mailcun was indisputably a real person from the generation following Mount Badon.He was a contemporary denounced by Gildas, using the sixth-century version of his name, Maglocunus.Maglocunus and Maelgwn Gwynedd –Double Standards in the Dark AgesPractically every historian studying the period, no matter how sceptical about Arthur, takes it for granted that Maglocunus is Mailcun or (in modern Welsh) Maelgwn Gwynedd.That is, they accept that Gildas’s Maglocunus was the sixth-century ruler of Gwynedd, and probably an ancestor of the Gwynedd dynasty.Even the most sober historian is prepared to construct complex arguments about Gildas’s location or the government of sub-Roman Britain based on that equation.Unequivocally, Maelgwn Gwynedd is a figure of ninth- and tenth-century historical writing, exactly as Arthur the warleader is.He is found in exactly the same sources, Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae, with all their limitations.Gildas does not mention the Kingdom of Gwynedd at all; still less does he say that Maglocunus is its king.That information is derived from exactly the same sources that tell us Arthur was the leader of the Britons at Mount Badon.In the case of one, Gildas names the man, Maglocunus, without naming the place, in the other he names the place, Mons Badonicus, without naming the man.The logic – that Maglocunus must have been king of somewhere, and that Gwynedd must have had a king, therefore there is no reason not to accept the ninth-century tradition that Maelgwn was king of Gwynedd – can be applied with equal force to Arthur.Somebody led the united Britons at the siege of Mons Badonicus.The only person the Britons said was the leader was Arthur, and we have no reason not to accept that tradition either.On the contrary, the arguments in favour of Arthur leading the victorious Britons are far stronger than those which make Maelgwn Gwynedd Maglocunus.The fact that Maglocunus is named in Gildas while the leader at Badon is not adds nothing to the force of the argument
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