Hotty From History #36 - Gwenllian Ferch Gruffydd (1097-1136)
I’ve been putting off writing this entry because quite frankly I love this woman, and feel she’s part of my cultural heritage and possibly a distant ancestor, but all the pictures related to her were either horribly dowdy or some D&D player’s wet dream, all chainmail bras and swords with too many spiky bits. So I chose a painting by Charles Keegan, which seemed to fit the bill.
Gwenllian Ferch Gruffudd, hereafter know as Gwen, was born to Prince Gruffydd of Gwynedd, in 1097. At this time Wales was ruled by a number of Princes, who were at war with the English, and Normans after 1066, which as every British schoolgirl and schoolboy knows, was the date of the battle of Hastings (in which King Harold got an arrow in the eye).
At the age of 16, a delegation of Princes from the South visited her father’s court and several of them noticed the young, startlingly beautiful Princess. However, it was the 20-year-old Prince Gruffydd who caught her eye - not content with declarations of love from balconies and duelling with her hankie pinned to his lapel, they cut the courtship short and eloped.
Because The Welsh Princes were at war with pretty much everyone else on the island who had the audacity to come over here, rape, pillage and take their land, and Gruffydd’s princedom was one of the most contested, Gwen’s in-laws spent the next 23 years moving from stronghold to stronghold, hill to fen. Gwen had been brought up a shieldmaiden, and so was a match for her husband and his men, and accompanied them when living in the forests of south Wales and leading a group of soldiers herself for the odd ambush, variously while pregnant or with a small child on her hip. They harrassed the Norman and English colonists and redistributed their wealth and land amongst the local people, whose land had been taken by the colonists.
Historians believe it’s Gwen and Gruff’s reputation that filtered through legend to produce the story of Robin Hood and Maid Marion. She is also believed to be one of the sources for Guinevere in Arthurian Legend and Eówyn in Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, and is set to be the subject of a Hollywood film, dubbed “the Female Braveheart”.
In 1136, while her husband was in the North, drumming up support for an attack against a Norman strongpoint, a Norman-English force marched on Gwen’s princedom. She quickly roused and army and led the several thousand-strong force against their attackers at Kidwelly Castle, but was captured and beheaded as a warning to the other Princes, along with two of her sons.
Rather than pacify them, however, Gwen’s death enraged them out of their complacence, and a unified Wales was able to stand up to their Norman invaders. Throughout this “Great Revolt”, and for a further 300 years, the battle-cry of Welshmen was Ddail Achos Gwenllian! - Revenge for Gwenllian!
We at HFH always support women who defied the expectations of women from their time, especially if it involved a sword.
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