On the road between Builth Wells and Brecon in Powys stands a tall granite stone on a mound beside the A483. Little visited, it marks the spot where Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known as Llywelyn the Last, was slain in an ambush by English soldiers in 1282.
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was the last native Prince of Wales. The title was claimed by the victorious English King Edward I who gave it to his son Edward as he tightened his grip on the land that his predecessors had failed to subdue. The great castles of north Wales hail from this period – a brutal statement of conquest and suppression. The title Prince of Wales has been given to male heirs to the English and United Kingdom throne ever since.
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Why has there never been a king of Wales?
But why wasn't Llywelyn 'king' of Wales? Scotland had kings throughout the medieval period. To understand, we have to look deeper into the medieval history of Wales and England.
First, it's important to remember that Wales was never unified into a single kingdom in the way Scotland and England were. For most of its history, it was a land united by language and culture but divided between small lordships, each with their own petty kings or princes.
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These included Deheubath (roughly modern Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire), Brycheinog (southern Powys), Powys (most of the modern county of Powys), Morgannwg (modern Glamorgan) Gwent and, usually the most powerful of all, Gwynedd in the north-west.
It was rare that any one king or lord could build enough power to dominate his neighbours and some historians point to the Welsh system of inheritance whereby a lord's land was divided equally between his sons, meaning that power and wealth was frequently dissipated.
The Welsh kings and princes more than held their own during the Anglo-Saxon period but the coming of the Normans saw major changes. Firstly, the early Norman kings granted land to their followers in the borders or 'marches' of England and Wales. These were 'freelance' knights and barons who were given free rein to carve out their own mini-realms.
As England became more powerful and the surviving Welsh kingdoms were crippled by infighting, more and more parts of Wales came under control of marcher lords or the English crown until only Gwynedd held out. Its mountainous terrain and natural wealth made it difficult to subdue and, as it asserted its dominion over other parts of Wales in the 12th and 13th centuries, its rulers started to use the title 'prince of Wales'.
Its fortunes and power rose when England was weak, reaching their peak in the reign of Llywelyn ap Iorweth (aka Llwelyn Fawr - Llywelyn the Great) 1200-1240, but it was never strong enough completely dominate the rest of Wales or to throw off English influence. Finally, Edward I gathered an army strong enough to fully conquer Gwynedd and the last prince was killed in 1282. Independent Wales was no more.
