Lleyn
Lleyn[]
Lleyn is a small kingdom at the North-west of Britain. It is bordered by Gwynedd to the south and east and the Irish sea to the north and west. It is one of two kingdoms conquered and ruled by the Irish, the other being Demetia. Previously, it was called Henis Wyren and is famous for containing the isle of Ynys Mon - a historic centre of druidism.
" From further north, Agricola reported, there came news that Leodegan, King of Henis Wyren, had been driven from his kingdom by Diwrnach, the Irish invader who had given the name Lleyn to his newly conquered lands. " - The Winter King, Page 74
" Lleyn had once been Henis Wyren, Leodegan’s kingdom, of which Ynys Mon, the island of Mona, had been a part. Both were now ruled by Diwrnach, one of the Irish Lords Across the Sea who were carving out kingdoms for themselves in Britain. Leodegan, I reflected, must have been easy meat for a grim man like Diwrnach whose cruelty was famous. Even in Dumnonia we had heard how he painted the shields of his war-band with the blood of the men they killed in battle. It was better to fight the Saxons, men said, than take on Diwrnach. " The Winter King, Page 197.
Lleyn's capital is a fortress called Boduan at the far west of the peninsula. It is suggested that Lleyn is both pagan and cosmopolitan in that no one tribe from Ireland dominates, but the population comes from a variety of different exiles from Ireland. It is a poor kingdom that survives on raiding and slaving its neighbours, with much of its land depopulated by the original British inhabitants.
" Diwrnach, Prince Byrthig told us, had his home at Boduan, a fort that lay far to the west in the peninsula of Lleyn. The King was one of the Irish Lords Across the Sea, but his war-band, unlike that of Oengus of Demetia, was not composed of men from a single Irish tribe but was a collection of fugitives from every tribe. ‘He welcomes whatever comes across the water, and the more murderous they are, the better,’ Byrthig told us. ‘The Irish use him to rid themselves of their outlaws and there have been many of those of late.’ " Enemy of God, Page 68.
" We were also now in Lleyn. We had crossed the unmarked border and the few settlements on the coastal plain beneath us were the holdings of Diwrnach. The fields were lightly covered with snow, smoke rose from huts, but nothing human seemed to move in that dark space and all of us, I think, were wondering how we were to go from the mainland to the island. " Enemy of God, Page 72.
" ...and edged our way down to the first small wind-bent trees in the hedgerows of Lleyn. The road was sunken here and its ruts were frosted hard where it twisted between hunched oaks, thin hollies and the small neglected fields. " Enemy of God, Page 73.
Throughout the book, Lleyn is ruled by the fearsome Diwrnach. Eventually he is defeated by Arthur and the kingdom passes to one of Oengus Mac Airem's sons, as the population is largely Irish.
" and still using the excuse that some of the priest-killers had fled further north, he led his warband over the Dark Road into the dread kingdom of Lleyn. Oengus followed him, and at the sands of Foryd where the River Gwyrfair slides to the sea, Oengus and Arthur trapped King Diwrnach between their forces and so broke the Bloodshields of Lleyn. Diwrnach drowned, over a hundred of his spearmen were massacred, and the remainder fled in panic. In two summer months Arthur had ended the rebellion in Powys, cowed Byrthig and destroyed Diwrnach, and by doing the latter he had kept his oath to Guinevere that he would avenge the loss of her father’s kingdom. Leodegan, her father, had been King of Henis-Wyren, but Diwrnach had come from Ireland, taken Henis-Wyren by storm, renamed it Lleyn, and so made Guinevere a penniless exile. Now Diwrnach was dead and I thought Guinevere might insist that his captured kingdom be given to her son, but she made no protest when Arthur handed Lleyn into Oengus’s keeping in the hope that it would keep his Black-shields too busy to raid into Powys. It was better, Arthur later told me, that Lleyn should have an Irish ruler, for the great majority of its people were Irish and Gwydre would ever have been a stranger to them, and so Oengus’s elder son ruled in Lleyn and Arthur carried Diwrnach’s sword back to Isca as a trophy for Guinevere. " Excalibur, Page 335.