Arms of the Prince of Wales: Llywelyn ab Iorwerth Before the
Norman Conquest, Wales was ruled by a number of kings and princes, whose dominions shifted and sometimes merged following the of war, marriage and inheritance. All these kings and princes were ascribed personal coats of arms, often
retrospectively if they lived before the dawn of
heraldry as it is currently known, and these were borne by their descendants in Wales. The two principal Welsh kingdoms were those of
Gwynedd, in the north, and
Deheubarth in the south. Of these, the more successful, and the last, finally, to fall, was that of Gwynedd, and the arms now borne by the Princes of Wales as an
inescutcheon since 1910 are the historic arms of the dynasty of Gwynedd as borne by the last native Princes of Wales, including
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great) and his grandson
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn the Last). These arms have the blazon
Quarterly Or and Gules, four lions passant guardant counterchanged, armed and langued Azure. A daughter of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth was Elen the Younger ferch Llywelyn, Countess of Fife and (by her second marriage) Countess of Mar. Her daughter
Isabella of Mar married
Robert, the Bruce, King of Scots and had one child by him,
Marjorie Bruce, who was the mother of the first
Stewart monarch,
Robert II of Scotland. His direct descendant,
James VI of Scotland became also King of England as James I, and is the direct ancestor of every subsequent English monarch, including
King Charles III, who is thereby (and through other lines also) the direct lineal descendant of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth.
Modern use of the arms When in 1911 the future
King Edward VIII was made
Prince of Wales, a warrant exemplifying his arms was issued. Along with the usual
royal arms differenced by a "
label" of three points, his main
coat of arms included an "inescutcheon surtout" crowned with the heir apparent's
coronet and containing the arms of Llywelyn of Gwynedd to represent the
principality of Wales. It is unclear whether, before this date, they were thought of as the "arms of Wales" or simply as the "arms of Llywelyn". But they had certainly not previously been used by heirs to the English or British thrones; indeed, in his 1909 book
A Complete Guide to Heraldry, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies had written: "It is much to be regretted that the arms of
HRH The Prince of Wales do not include...any allusion to his dignities of Prince of Wales or
Earl of Chester." The only allusion, before this innovation, to Wales in the royal arms had been the inclusion, among many other badges, of
on a mount vert a dragon rouge – the royal badge on which the present
flag of Wales is based. In the 1960s, a banner of the principality's arms, defaced with an inescutcheon of his heraldic coronet, was introduced for the Prince of Wales's use in Wales. In 2007 the
Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales entered into discussions with the Prince of Wales and the
College of Arms regarding a grant of arms for official use by the Assembly. A new royal badge designed by the
Garter King of Arms, Peter Gwynne-Jones, was granted in 2008 based on the arms of Llywelyn. ==Badges with the Welsh dragon==