AHC: An Indepedent Wales.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it is for Wales to remain an independent nation until at least 1800. A difficult one, but surely possible.
 
What kind of date of POD do you want?
It become highly implausible after about 1000 and virtually impossible post-Glyndwr I'd say.
 
What kind of date of POD do you want?
It become highly implausible after about 1000 and virtually impossible post-Glyndwr I'd say.
Is it? Llywelyn the Great and his grandson even moreso held significant sway over most of Wales and the grandson was even recognized as Prince of Wales by the King of England. Doesn't strike me as terribly implausible for Llywelyn ap Gruffydd to further solidify his power by having Simon de Montfort be more successful in the Barons' War. I actually started a TL along that premise that involved there being more Welsh support at the Battle of Evesham which turns into a disaster for both sides and ends with England being in a state of virtual anarchy, as the King and Prince Edward were both present and could plausibly have both been killed in battle alongside Simon and other powerful barons. This would leave Prince Edmund as king of a country where the baronial rebels are still holding out and royalist forces suffered a horrific blow, with the Marcher lords now being under assault by the united Welsh forces under Prince Llywelyn. By the time England manages to be at peace once more they might not be in a position to invade Wales so often, which might now be completely free of English lords. And since Llywelyn followed in his grandfather's footsteps of changing traditional Welsh laws in the name of stability (Llywelyn the Great didn't want to have his lands be divided between his sons as was tradition), Wales might no longer be as vulnerable to the old English method of divide and conquer in that country. Hell, the King might have to treat with Llywelyn as an equal.
 
Hmm, you have a point. Sounds like an interesting TL!
Unlikely might have been a better choice of word - you just need to have more luck than would be reasonable, is what I mean.
 
July 1403, battle of Shrewsbury. Owain Glyndwr's forces link up with Percy's Northumbrians in time to inflict a crushing defeat on the royal army. Henry IV and the Prince of Wales (the future Henry V) are both killed. The most senior surviving son of Henry is the 16 year old Duke of Clarence who is apparently in Ireland at this point and fairly helpless to do much when Owain and Hotspur declare his family to be usurpers (which they are) and recognise Edmund Mortimer, the heir presumptive of Richard II, as the rightful king. As Mortimer is only 12 years old a prisoner, his uncle, also called Edmund - and a prisoner of Glyndwr - is declared regent.

Mortimer is being held in Berkhamstead Castle in Herefordshire by a Lancaster loyalist, Sir Hugh Waterton. Waterton will probably want to get Edmund as far away from Glyndwr and Percy as possible (Shrewsbury is only a couple of day's hard riding north at this point) but he has the problem that the commander of Lancastrian forces in Herefordshire at this point is Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge who is not a loyalist - he's the son of the Duke of York and the one who the Yorkist claim to the crown was transmitted through for the Wars of the Roses and may well by this point be mulling over the possibility of making a grab for the throne himself.

So we have three claimants to the throne - one a prisoner (and his regent and likely replacement if he gets shot trying to escape is a Welsh puppet), one in Ireland and one a nonentity. England collapses into the Wars of the Roses fifty years early and spends most of the 15th century tearing itself apart. Glyndwr uses the opportunity to consolidate his position in Wales (purging the marcher lords, basically) and calls a parliament and issues his own legal code. He basically sits out the war in England, maybe intervening occasionally if someone looks like winning, and passes on an independent Wales to his son, probably one that's somewhat larger.

That would get you to about 1500 or so, but to get to 1800 you probably need the war to break England up completely so none of the bits are strong enough to take down Owain's state - a final solution to the wars that ends up with England looking more like the Holy Roman Empire, with the king directly ruling only a small area around London, perhaps?
 
No, we'd need a far earlier POD to get an independent Cymru. I can think of three separate PODs that might get us there. The battle of Brunanburh is one - kill Athelstan and you might just roll things back enough to destabilise the North enough. Then there's the battle of Deorham, which severed the link between the Cymry of the West and the South-West, and the battle of Chester, which severed the link between the Cymry of the West and the North.
 
Would changing the Welsh succession laws allow a Welsh state to consolidate better than in OTL?

teg
 
Could Wales emerge to dominate England, and then the rest of the British Isles? It would be fun to have Irish Revolutionaries fighting the Welsh Empire...Welsh India...I dunno, just a question.
 
Could Wales emerge to dominate England, and then the rest of the British Isles? It would be fun to have Irish Revolutionaries fighting the Welsh Empire...Welsh India...I dunno, just a question.

Not unless the Wales you are talking about includes a very big chunk of England as an integral part of its territory. Wales is simply too mountainous, too small and too sparsely populated to dominant the British Isles, let alone the rest of the world.

teg
 
Not unless the Wales you are talking about includes a very big chunk of England as an integral part of its territory. Wales is simply too mountainous, too small and too sparsely populated to dominant the British Isles, let alone the rest of the world.

teg


So you would need a super early PoD then? Thanks, British history is not my strong suit.
 
Issue is that Wales would have to win each and every war with England to stay independent, while England merely have to win one war to conquer them
 
And the term Welsh or even Cymry would not be likely to be used - it'd still be Brythonaid.
On the winning every war thing - it took centuries to conquer Wales from a position with all the advantages OTL - they don't need to win every war, just often enough that they're always in a position to recover. There's also always the possibility of a divided England (I believe Glyndwr intended for the rump England to be divided between the Percies and the Mortimers). Really I think it's quite difficult for Wales to be independent if England's not divided, but if it is, the problem is more preventing Wales being divided.
 
Would changing the Welsh succession laws allow a Welsh state to consolidate better than in OTL?

teg
This happened OTL, under Llywelyn the Great.
Issue is that Wales would have to win each and every war with England to stay independent, while England merely have to win one war to conquer them
Not necessarily. Many English victories ended with a Welsh prince "merely" becoming a vassal. The problem the English have is Wales is very unfavorable land for campaigning, being rocky, stormy, mountainous, and all that jazz. Actually taking the time to consolidate conquests, remove the important Welsh vassal lords, and all that was simply too difficult to be worth it, assuming their army was actually successful at all which was very often not the case, Welsh leaders tended to recognize that a big decisive battle was not necessary and would simply harass the invaders and draw their people and herds away from them until the English gave up. And as Owain said, even in defeat all the Welsh have to do is be in a position to recover, which happened from time to time. Take the defeat of Dafydd ap Llywelyn. The one time the conditions didn't favor the Welsh, Dafydd was defeated and died of an illness leaving his realm in northern Wales split in half, and the remaining half not under English rule being divided between his three nephews. But one nephew not only took over all that half of Gwynedd, not only took back the other half, but conquered or vassalized most of Wales and forced the king to recognized him as Prince of Wales.

So really, a big part of the equation is the personalities at hand. The English king who ended up stamping out Welsh independence was one of the most aggressive, tyrannical, and militarily adept monarchs in English history. But there is a litany of easy PoD's with which to remove him, leaving his incompetent father or untested brother as the king whereas Llywelyn would then be free to further consolidate his rule and initiate more reforms along the line of what his uncle and grandfather wanted, as in a more stable succession law, further integration with the outside world, etc. This leaves Wales in a much more likely position to survive the next few centuries against Saxon aggression. And this is just centering around my preferred 13th Century PODs, I don't see the other suggestions revolving around Glyndwr to be any less plausible. Talking about how Wales would need luck is irrelevant IMO, especially on an AH forum. There's a good deal of plausibility and many opportune chances for better chances and that's really what matters most.
 
Ummm...

It would be better to say Llewelyn Fawr ATTEMPTED to change the law of succession, not entirely successfully.

Note, too, that the change did NOT involve giving all lands to a single son, but rather giving the land only to 'legitimate' sons. This change had the support of the Church, not just the weight of his word. Presumably, had he had more than one son, the land would have been divided.

Also, when Llewelyn died, his chosen (legitimate) heir didnt manage to hold the rest of Wales, but only Gwynedd.
 
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