Llywelyn ap Gruffudd

This is a new edition of the first full-length English-language study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c.1225–82), prince of Wales. In this scholarly and lucid book, J. Beverley Smith offers an in-depth assessment not only of Llywelyn, but of the age in which he lived. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales is an outstanding work by an author with a perceptive knowledge of the complexities of his subject. This examination of the triumphs and subsequent reverses of a ruler of exceptional vision and vigour is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of Welsh politics and the complexities of Anglo-Welsh relations. The author takes thirteenth-century Wales as a backdrop against which he analyses the relationship between a sense of nationhood and the practical realities of creating a structure to embrace a unified principality of Wales held under the aegis of the English Crown.