Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (146 page)

3
.
Y Gododdin:
a page from the medieval Book of Aneirin, the seventh-century Old Welsh epic preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript.

4
. Bird, Tree, Fish and Ring: symbols from the legend of St Mungo (sixth century), portrayed in Glasgow’s coat-of-arms.

5
. William Wallace (1272–1305) – known to filmgoers as Braveheart and to his Gaelic contemporaries as
Uilleam Breatnach
, ‘William the Briton’.

BURGUNDIA

6
. Rheingold: an episode from the legends of the
Nibelungen
, medieval tales based on echoes of the first Kingdom of the Burgundians (fifth century).

7
. A rare coin showing the head of the Merovingian King Dagobert (
c.
603–39), ‘who pulled on his trousers inside out’.

8
. Guntram or Gontran of Burgundy (
c.
525–92), the ‘Battle Crow’, king and saint.

BURGUNDIA

9
. Frederick Barbarossa (r. 1162–90): German emperor, king of Italy and king of Burgundy, crowned at Arles in 1172.

BURGUNDIA

10
. Philip the Good and Charles the Bold: Duke-counts of the fifteenth-century States of Burgtundy.

11
. Charles le Téméraire, a.k.a. Karel de Stoute (r. 1467–77): duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, margrave of Namur, etc., etc.

12
. Duchess-Countess-Margravine Mary of Burgundy (1457–82), heiress.

ARAGON

13
. The Aljaferia Fortress: constructed in the tenth century in Iberian-Islamic style for the Muslim emirs of Zaragoza, captured in 1118 by Alfonso El Battalador, king of Aragon.

14
. The Catalan galley fleet anchored off Naples (fifteenth-century miniature).

ARAGON

15
. Queen Petronilla of Aragon and Count Rámon Berenguer IV of Barcelona, whose marriage in 1137 joined Aragon to Barcelona for nearly 600 years.