Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn the Great ruled Gwynedd for forty-five years, married King John's daughter, fought King John, put three clauses about Wales into Magna Carta, and left a principality that his grandson would briefly make a state. He was born about 1173, a grandson of Owain Gwynedd, and spent his youth taking the kingdom back from the uncles who had divided it, holding all of it by 1200. He made peace with John and in 1205 married Joan, the king's illegitimate daughter, and for six years was the king's ally against the other Welsh princes. In 1211 John turned on him, marched into Snowdonia, took Anglesey's harvest and made him give up everything east of the Conwy and thirty hostages; in 1212 the princes of Wales, who had submitted to John, rose together under Llywelyn, and John hanged the hostages at Nottingham. The rising coincided with the barons' war, and Llywelyn took Shrewsbury in 1215 as the barons took London. Magna Carta, that June, promised in three clauses to return the Welsh lands and hostages John had taken and to judge Welsh cases by Welsh law. He held what he had won under the child Henry III by the treaty of Worcester in 1218, and spent the next twenty years as the overlord in fact of the other princes, who did homage to him and not to the king. In 1230 he hanged the Marcher lord William de Braose, publicly, for being found in Joan's chamber, and took Joan back within the year. He wanted a single succession and got the princes and the church to accept his son by Joan, Dafydd, over the elder Gruffudd, whom he imprisoned. He had a stroke in 1237, entered the Cistercian house he had founded at Aberconwy, and died there in April 1240. The kingdom he left did not survive his sons, but the claim did, and the grandson who carried it was Gruffudd's son.
- Lived: 1173 CE – 1240 CE
- Nationality: Welsh
- Roles: prince, monarch
