Rhodri ap Merfyn (788-877)

Known as: Rhodri Mawr (Rhodri the Great)

Born: Caernavron, Wales

Died: Battle of Sunday, Anglesey, Wales 

Spouse: Angharad ferch Meurig (825-900)

Children: Cadell ap Rhodri, Anarawd ap Rhodri, Gwriad ap Rhodri, Mefryn ap Rhodri, Nest ferch Rhodri, Tudwal Gloff ap Rhodri

My 34th great grandfather. 

From Wikipedia:

Rhodri ap Merfyn, later known as Rhodri the Great, was King of Gwynedd from around 844 until his death. He is called "King of the Britons" by the Annals of Ulster. In some later histories, he is referred to as "King of Wales", although the title is anachronistic and his realm did not include southern Wales.

Rhodri was the son of Merfyn Frych, who had claimed Gwynedd upon the extinction of Cunedda's male line. Rhodri then inherited the realm after his father's death around 844. Merfyn hailed from "Manaw" which may either refer to the Isle of Man or Manau, the ancestral homeland of all Gwynedd's kings since Cunedda.

According to later genealogies, his mother or grandmother was Nest ferch Cadell of the ruling dynasty in Powys. Although surviving texts of Welsh law expressly forbid inheritance along the maternal line, Nest and Rhodri's supposed inheritance was later used to justify Gwynedd's annexation of Powys after the c. 855 death of Cyngen ap Cadell in preference to Cyngen's other heirs.

Similarly, Rhodri's marriage to Angharad ferch Meurig was used to explain his supposed inheritance of her brother Gwgon's kingdom of Ceredigion after that king's death in 872 via a principle of jure uxoris that does not survive in our sources for Welsh law.

Now the master of much of modern Wales, Rhodri faced pressure both from the English and, increasingly, from Vikings, called the "black gentiles" in the Welsh sources. The Danish are recorded ravaging Anglesey in 854. In 856, Rhodri won a notable victory and killed their leader.

The Chronicle of the Princes records two victories by Rhodri in 872: the first at a place given variously as Bangolau, Bann Guolou, or Bannoleu, where he defeated the Vikings on Anglesey "in a hard battle" and the second at Manegid or Enegyd where the Vikings "were destroyed".

The Chronicle of the Princes records his death occurring at the Battle of Sunday on Anglesey in 873; the Annals of Wales record the two events in different years and Phillimore's reconstruction of its dates places Rhodri's death in 877. According to the Chronicle, Rhodri and his brother Gwriad were killed during a Saxon invasion (which probably would have been under Ceolwulf of Mercia, given that the Wessex forces under Alfred the Great were fighting Vikings in East Anglia at the time); after their death, the distraught women of the island grabbed their men's weapons and forced the Saxons to retreat. The Annals record no great details of the death, but where the B text calls Gwriad Rhodri's brother, the A text has him as Rhodri's son instead. It is likely he was killed in battle given that all the sources call his son Anarawd's victory over the Mercians at the Battle of the Conwy a few years later "God's vengeance for Rhodri".

Merch ap Gwriad (750-844)

Born: Caernavron, Wales

Died: Battle of Cyfeil, Ketell, Wales

Spouse: Esyllt verch Cynan (770-831)

My 35th great grandfather.

From Wikipedia: 

Merfyn Frych ('Merfyn the Freckled'), also known as Merfyn ap Gwriad and Merfyn Camwri ('Merfyn the Oppressor'), was King of Gwynedd from around 825 to 844, the first of its kings known not to have descended from the male line of Cunedda.

Little is known of his reign, and his primary notability is as the father of Rhodri the Great and founder of his dynasty, which was sometimes called the Merfynion after him. Merfyn came to the throne in the aftermath of a bloody dynastic struggle between two rivals named Cynan and Hywel – generally identified with the sons of Rhodri Molwynog, despite that putting both men well into their 70s or 80s at the time – at a time when the kingdom had been under pressure from Mercia.

The Annales Cambriae say Merfyn died around 844, the same year in which a battle occurred at Cetyll, but it is unclear whether those were two unrelated events or he fell in battle.

Merfyn was linked to the earlier dynasty through his mother Esyllt, the daughter of King Cynan (d. 816), rather than through his father Gwriad ap Elidyr. As his father's origins are obscure, so is the basis of his claim to the throne.

Extremely little is known of Merfyn's father Gwriad. Merfyn claimed descent from Llywarch Hen through him, and the royal pedigree in Jesus College MS. 20 says that Gwriad was the son of Elidyr, who bears the same name as his ancestor, the father of Llywarch Hen, Elidyr lydanwyn. Supporting the veracity of the pedigree is an entry in the Annales Cambriae, which states that Gwriad, the brother of Rhodri the Great, was slain on Anglesey by the Saxons. That is to say, Merfyn named one of his sons after his father Gwriad.

The discovery of a cross inscribed Crux Guriat on the Isle of Man and dated to the 8th or 9th century raised the question of whether Gwriad's possible connection to "Manaw" was to Manaw Gododdin, once active in North Britain, or to the Isle of Man. John Rhys suggested that Gwriad might well have taken refuge on the Isle of Man during the bloody dynastic struggle between Cynan and Hywel prior to Merfyn's accession to the throne, and that the cross perhaps does refer to the refugee Gwriad, father of Merfyn. He goes on to note that the Welsh Triads mention a 'Gwryat son of Gwryan in the North'. Other locations for "Manaw" have been suggested, including Ireland, Galloway and Powys.

While Rhys' suggestion is not implausible, his reference to Gwriad's father Gwrian contradicts the royal pedigree, which says that Gwriad's father was Elidir, so this may be a confusion of two different people named Gwriad. Gwriad's name does appear with northern origins in the Welsh Triads as one of the "Three kings, who were of the sons of strangers" (sometimes referred to as the"Three Peasant Kings"), where he is identified as the son of "Gwrian in the North".

Merfyn allied his own royal family with that of Powys by marrying Nest, daughter or sister of King Cadell ap Brochwel.

Precious little is known of Merfyn's reign. Thornton suggests that Merfyn was probably among the Welsh kings who were defeated by Ecgberht, king of Wessex, in the year 830, but it is unknown how this affected Merfyn's rule.

Merfyn is mentioned as a king of the Britons in a copyist's addition to the Historia Brittonum and in the Bamberg Cryptogram, but as both sources are traced to people working in Merfyn's own court during his reign, it should not be considered more significant than someone's respectful reference to his patron while working in his service.

In the literary sources, Merfyn's name appears in the Dialogue between Myrddin and his sister Gwenddydd, found in the mid-13th-century manuscript known as the Red Book of Hergest. The dialogue is a prophecy of the future kings, and lists among them Merfyn in the passage "meruin vrych o dir manaw" (English: Merfyn Frych of the land of Manau).