AHC: have the Celtic Britons prevent Saxon expansion after 550

Have the Celts in Britain stop Saxon expansion after 550, pushing the Saxons out of Britain isn't needed, they just have to stop further expansion into it.
 
Have the Celts in Britain stop Saxon expansion after 550, pushing the Saxons out of Britain isn't needed, they just have to stop further expansion into it.
That still leaves the Angle expansion in the Midlands and the North.
(Here's some good mappage of the Angle and Saxon advances)

What you need are repeats of Britonnic unity such as Mons Badonicus which halted Saxon expansion, followed up with similar unified responses to Angle expansion.
Basically what you want is unity among the Britons. That's hard to achieve without changes in postRoman custom.
 
Have the Celts in Britain stop Saxon expansion after 550, pushing the Saxons out of Britain isn't needed, they just have to stop further expansion into it.

AIUI, the Britons followed a system of partitive inheritance, whereby the kingdom would be split between all a monarch's surviving sons upon his death. This, of course, tended towards political fragmentation, and so made it hard to maintain a united front against the Saxons. So replacing this system with primogeniture would be a good first step.
 
Yes you need more unity among the British kingdoms; they also need to get a bit lucky in winning battles. If they can defeat Ceawlin of Wessex at Deorham in 577, and Aethelfrith of Northumbria at Chester in 615/6 (?) then they're in with a chance of holding the English.
 
But Saxons themselves is not United, they have multiple kingdoms who war among themselves. So theoretically, if Britons have "equal" military and political technology, they should be able to fight Saxons in equal terms, even when not united.
 
But Saxons themselves is not United, they have multiple kingdoms who war among themselves. So theoretically, if Britons have "equal" military and political technology, they should be able to fight Saxons in equal terms, even when not united.
If the Britons tended more to political fragmentation than the Saxons or Angles then any unity is temporary and you can see why the latter tended to win out.
 
AIUI, the Britons followed a system of partitive inheritance, whereby the kingdom would be split between all a monarch's surviving sons upon his death. This, of course, tended towards political fragmentation, and so made it hard to maintain a united front against the Saxons. So replacing this system with primogeniture would be a good first step.

Maybe have the welsh use a tanistry system? I know historically thats more of a Gaelic thing, but the britons and gaels are in close enough contact that its not implausible for them to pick up the tradition.

It can lead to inter-dynastic conflicts, but that also occurred with primogeniture
 
I think the focus is too much on what the Britons could do to stop the Saxons. The bigger issue I think is that the push/pull factors that fed into North Sea migration to being with. If the Saxons don't expand, the Angles and Jutes might in their place. A weaker Frankish Kingdom, for example, might allow for more overland migration and acculturation for the Saxons. In addition, the initial Saxon footholds could have been crushed by a more united effort of the Romano-British.

And that of course assumes that the migration model was more broad than the "warrior elite" model that many modern academics are increasingly in favor of.
 
I personally suspect that the 536 event, Fimbulwinter, had much to do with both the migration and the weakness of the Romanobritish.
 
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