Center for the Study of Ancient Wales (original) (raw)

Among the issues we have recently researched are:

* Do the legends and old pedigrees of Maxen Wledig all refer to a single man?

* Which families were derived from Anwn Dynod ap Maxen, and do they include the Hael cousins?

* Was Vortigern the founder of the Royal Family of Powys which reigned over 600 years?

* Did Cyngen ap Cadell, King of Powys in the first quarter of the ninth century, have any sons to succeed him?

* Are the stories which claim Rhodri Mawr inherited Powys from his mother Nest, a sister of Cyngen ap Cadell, actually true?

* Who ruled Powys during the years 823-1000 when it is mostly absent from the accounts of historians?

* What was the ancestry of King Gruffudd ap Llewelyn, and which kingdom did he first rule over?

* Was the Gwynedd dynasty from the sixth to the ninth centuries actually descended from Maelgwn Gwynedd?

Other projects underway include a fresh look at all the old sources to create major family pedigrees which are chronologically stable both standing alone and when correlated with those families connected by marriage.

Particular emphasis is given to pedigrees which are cited extensively on modern family websites which contain palpably false information about the ancestry of various well-known men of ancient Wales. Other cases selected for study are family patriarchs whose ancestry is unrecorded but whose known land-holdings may provide clues to their identity.