For historical kings who used or upon whom was bestowed the title "King of the Britons", see King of the Britons.
Illustration of Cadwaladr Fendigaid from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Cadwaladr was also a historical king.
The following list of legendary kings of Britain (Welsh: Brenin y Brythoniaid, Brenin Prydain) derives predominantly from Geoffrey of Monmouth's circa 1136 work Historia Regum Britanniae ("the History of the Kings of Britain"). Geoffrey constructed a largely fictional history for the Britons (ancestors of the Welsh, the Cornish and the Bretons), partly based on the work of earlier medieval historians like Gildas, Nennius and Bede, partly from Welsh genealogies and saints' lives, partly from sources now lost and unidentifiable, and partly from his own imagination (see bibliography). Several of his kings are based on genuine historical figures, but appear in unhistorical narratives. A number of Middle Welsh versions of Geoffrey's Historia exist. All post-date Geoffrey's text, but may give us some insight into any native traditions Geoffrey may have drawn on.
Geoffrey's narrative begins with the exiled Trojan prince Brutus, after whom Britain is supposedly named, a tradition previously recorded in less elaborate form in the 9th century Historia Brittonum. Brutus is a descendant of Aeneas, the legendary Trojan ancestor of the founders of Rome, and his story is evidently related to Roman foundation legends.
The kings before Brutus come from a document purporting to trace the travels of Noah and his offspring in Europe, and once attributed to the Chaldean historian Berossus, but now considered to have been a fabrication by the 15th-century Italian monk Annio da Viterbo, who first published it. Renaissance historians like John Bale and Raphael Holinshed took the list of kings of "Celtica" given by pseudo-Berossus and made them into kings of Britain as well as Gaul. John Milton records these traditions in his History of Britain, although he gives them little credence.
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of as a conglomeration of various Celtic rulers, Celtic warlords, and mythical heroes. If the lists ofkingsofBritain are legendary, then the list of...
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produced a listoflegendarykingsofBritain that remains influential.[page needed] The modern territory of Wales was briefly united under the rule of Gruffydd...
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11th century to "Prince of Wales" in the 13th. Bretwalda List of legendarykingsofBritain Pendragon Stuart Laycock (2008). Britannia: The Failed State....
The kingsof Dumnonia were the rulers of the large Brythonic kingdom of Dumnonia in the south-west of Great Britain during the Sub-Roman and early medieval...
Mabinogion (Oxford 2007) p. 193 and p. 205-10. L Thorpe trans, History of the KingsofBritain (Penguin 1966) p. 238-40 and p. 252 H Cooper ed, Le Morte Darthur...
called Brute of Troy, is a fictional character who is depicted as a legendary descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas, known in medieval British legend as the...
Taliessin through Logres. Albion Prydain Geoffrey of Monmouth (1966). The History of the KingsofBritain. Translated by Lewis G. M. Thorpe. Harmondsworth...
Conquest ofBritain written c. 540, Gildas makes an allegorical condemnation of five Britishkings by likening them to the beasts of the Book of Revelation...
Redon was a legendary king of the Britons as accounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He came to power in 149BC. He was preceded by Eldol and succeeded by Redechius...
of Bodh Gaya There is much uncertainty about the succession ofkings and the precise chronology of Magadha prior to Mahapadma Nanda; the accounts of various...
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a legendary king of the Britons as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical work Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kingsof Britain)...
2nd-century king of the Britons traditionally credited with introducing Christianity into Britain. Lucius is first mentioned in a 6th-century version of the Liber...
Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (1991, 2000), pages 71–72. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the KingsofBritain, Part Eight: "The Saxon Domination...
chronicle Historia regum Britanniae ("History of the KingsofBritain", c. 1138) as the eldest of the British king Lear's three daughters, alongside Regan...
Pir was a legendary king of the Britons according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the KingsofBritain. He came to power in 125BC. He was preceded...
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