Owain ap Cadwgan
After returning from Ireland in 1110, Owain spent the rest of the year and a good part of the next raiding the lands of his father’s enemies with his cousin, Madog ap Rhirid. We don’t know how well they got along, but they did a considerable amount of damage to Norman-controlled territory.
However, in 1111, Madog ambushed and killed Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, his uncle and Owain’s father, possibly out of a hope that he’d be made king of Powys. Not so much. The English king, Henry I, acknowledged Owain as king of Powys, and Owain spent at least a few years enjoying royal favor. In 1116, he was slain near Carmarthen, but the chronicles don’t agree on who killed him. One says it was Flemish settlers, another that it was Gerald of Windsor. Depending on how much you like Owain, you can decide for yourself how clean to picture his death.
Cadwgan ap Bleddyn
For over twenty years, Cadwgan was a leading force in the kingdoms of Wales, and it is tempting to speculate how the long-term future of Wales would have been different had he not been ambushed and killed by his nephew, Madog ap Rhirid, less than a year after the events of 1109-1110. Cadwgan was probably in his forties, with a long career ahead of him, and a formidable figure to Welsh kings and Norman lords alike. Owain was his oldest son and heir apparent, but he had six other (recorded) sons and a number of daughters whose names have not come down to us.
Madog ap Rhirid
Working out birth order among people who’ve been dead for eight hundred years is tricky, but chances are pretty good that Madog’s father, Rhirid, was the oldest of Bleddyn ap Cynfan’s sons. Madog seems to have spent much of his adult life with a chip on his shoulder and a firm belief that he should be king of Powys. Sometimes we see him burning and raiding with Owain, other times we see him allying himself with the English.
At any rate, his family finally gets sick of him in 1111, after he ambushes and murders his uncle, Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. Another uncle captures Madog in 1113 and hands him over to Owain, who has him blinded. Madog disappears from the record after this, as being blind means he could no longer legally inherit anything, much less a kingdom.
Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr
The last mention of Nest in the account of her abduction in the Brut y Tywysogion is her convincing Owain to return the children to their father. Since she has another child with Gerald of Windsor, we know she survived her ordeal and was reunited with him. The child born later is (probably) Maurice fitz Gerald, who joined Strongbow’s 1169-1171 invasion of Ireland.
After Gerald’s death, Nest marries two more times. (Probably) firstly, she marries Hait, the sheriff of Pembroke; they have a son named William. Later, she marries Stephen, the constable of Cardigan, and they have a son, Robert, who joins Strongbow’s invasion of Ireland with his kinsmen. These years were also complicated by the return of Nest’s older brother, Gruffudd, from exile in Ireland, and Gruffudd’s accidental, doomed foray into rebellion. Her grandson, Gerald of Wales, wrote extensively about a lot of things and name-dropped many members of his large, complicated Cambro-Norman family, but he never mentions Nest. Which is a serious crying shame.
It’s worth noting that many (mostly male) historians have not always characterized Nest’s experiences in the best light. They assumed a lot about her sexual appetite and her personality based on the fact that she had an illegitimate child with King Henry I when she was (probably) in her teens, got abducted by an enemy of her husband, was married three times, and had at least seven other children.
She has been called “the Helen of Wales” because of the assumption that Owain’s abduction of her triggered a war, although it’s pretty likely the war was planned well in advance of the abduction. There have been suggestions that she colluded with Owain, or at least went with him willingly, possibly because of a modern perception that any arranged marriage can’t be a happy one.
Medieval women didn’t have a lot of freedom of motion, especially highborn ones like Nest, but it’s also true that we prefer to imagine Nest entering into these relationships cheerfully and with full control rather than being constrained by culture, economics, and circumstances to “choose” to form them. Regardless, it’s unfair to assume that men in the middle ages were monsters. There’s no harm in imagining Nest happy with any or all of the men she married.
William fitz Gerald
Not much is known about the (probably) oldest son of Gerald of Windsor and Nest. He grew up to be the lord of Carew (and depending on the sources, Emlyn), married Marie de Montgomery, and lived a quiet life. He’s best known for being the father of Raymond le Gros, who went with Strongbow in the 1169-1171 invasion of Ireland and founded the fitzGerald dynasty associated with the earldom of Kildare.
David fitz Gerald
When David grew up, he went into the Church and became the bishop of Saint David’s. One reason he was elected to that position was the fact that he was half Norman and half Welsh, and his peers felt that he could be counted on to be neutral. Turns out that even churchmen couldn’t resist a land grab, and a singular controversy of his tenure there were boundary disputes with other members of the clergy. He also had a hand in the early education of his nephew, Gerald of Wales.
Angharad of Windsor (fitz Gerald)
Like many medieval women, Angharad gets a raw deal and we don’t know much about her beyond the men in her life. She married William de Barry (or de Barri) of Manorbier, and the most famous of her children is named Gerald, probably after his grandfather. He’s best known by the Latin version of his name, Giraldus Cambrensis, which can be translated as both Gerald of Wales and Gerald the Welshman.
Gerald had a dynamic and lengthy career in the Church, and wrote almost constantly. Because of him, and the fact that he was related to so many influential people, we have a number of readable, lively accounts of the twelfth century as well as histories, legends, and religious tracts. While Angharad left no records of her own, her son is clearly proud of his Welsh heritage, and that is something that must have come from her.