I have been putting this off, because the whole tangle is difficult and wicked and Makes Me Sad, but apparently the time has come wherein we must deal.
We have here at present St Brychan and, let's see...6 wives, and 86 children.
Ok, not thousands.
Here are the issues:
Brychan appears in several traditions, and many manuscripts. Different traditions give him different wives and various children.
We have him here as a saint, but he's not, so we should take that out, probably.
The Wikipedia article, which of course is what users hit first if they go looking for information, is, as usual and alas, not very helptul. It doesn't list all the traditions; it says that in Christian tradition he had three wives, and then names them, but it's Ribrawst and not Gwladys who shows up in the sources if you go looking, and anyway Gwladys is Brychan's sister, or maybe his daughter, in the Welsh tradition; it has references to works that are not useful, if they are online and accessible.
Some of the children attributed to Brychan surely existed -- Arianwen, for instance, who was married to Idnerth ab Iorwerth -- St. Arianwen verch Brychan -- but she can't actually be his daughter, since she lived hundreds of years later.
Brychan himself appears to be legendary.
Here is what I suggest:
I suggest we handle Brychan the way we did the Arthurian material; in this case, we can keep ONE Brychan, but label his various wives according to the manuscript tradition they come from: the Welsh, the Breton, the Irish, the Cornish, etc. And label all the legendary people "Legendary," or "Mythological," so that users stop trying to make the genealogical lines make sense.
Then we end up not fighting over to whom the children belong, because we can give each wife all the kids the tradition she is in gives her. If any children show up more than once, it won't matter, because with a few exceptions, they are also probably legendary.
In the case of Arianweh, for instance, we should disconnect her from Brychan, and add in curator's notes explaining that later tradition attaches her to him, but even if he actually existed, he couldn't be her father.
So.
If this is agreeable (and I DO trust you that you will all tell me your objections, if it's not!), then I will indeed need some help.
Menedog . ferch Custennin comes from the Breton tradition.
Banhadlwedd . verch Banadl comes from the Welsh tradition.
Ribrawst verch Gwrtheyrn -- I don't know what her manuscript tradition is, though it looks like she might be from the Cornish tradition
Prawst verch Tudwal -- not surprisingly, given her name, she is from the Welsh tradition
Proistri . of Spain I don't know what tradition she comes from.
Now, we DON'T have Gwladys, who IS his wife, in the Cornish tradition, or Dina, his wife in the Irish tradition.
So.
Is this plan acceptable? And does anybody have access to manuscript traditions, as opposed to all these annoying precis that slam everybody together?
Tagging
Erin Ishimoticha
Justin Durand
Alex Moes
