The first mention of Albina is in the Anglo-Norman poem
Des Grantz Geanz, which dates to the late 13th or early 14th century, and has been tentatively dated no later than 1333. An abridged form of the poem was appended as a prologue to the
Brut Chronicle. In the poem, Albina and her 32 sisters are the daughters of Diosclesian, King of Syria. At a grand
feast, they are wedded in
arranged marriages to neighbouring kings. However, the women refuse to submit to their new husbands, believing themselves to be of nobler blood than they. At a second feast, Diosclesian chastises them for their disobedience, but Albina still refuses to comply with her father's orders of subservience. That night, she and her sisters murder their respective spouses. As punishment for their mass
mariticide, the princesses are exiled to an uninhabited island, which Albina names Albion after herself. They survive by
hunting and gathering, which is depicted as barbaric and a result of their fall from civilisation.
Demons from hell then seduce them, and they give birth to a race of giants. The text identifies these giants as the ones that later
Brutus of Troy encounters and slays when he arrives in Albion in
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, paving the way for permanent human settlement and the creation of the civilised
Kingdom of Britain. ==See also==