Welsh History: Please explain this Polandball comic to me.

by texaround

Here is the comic entitled "Wales Through the Ages".

A general walkthrough would be nice, but I am particularly interested in frames 4 and 9 wherein the ball representing Wales seems to get a new identity (or at least a new flag). I am an American and have not studied Welsh history, so please bear with my ignorance.

dream_face

I'm neither a Welsh historian nor a meme expert, but I can at least shed some light on the flags.

The first flag is the Interceltic Flag, designed in Brittany in the 1950s. It's basically two interlocking triskellions in a circle, with the six points representing Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man.

The second flag is actually a coat of arms. It was the arms of the Princes of Gwynedd, some of whom also had the title of Prince of Wales. It was revived as a symbol of the Prince of Wales in the 20th century, and since 2008 it's been included on the Royal Badge of Wales.

The third flag is of course the modern Welsh flag, officially adopted in 1959. It's based on the royal standard of Henry VII.

So it seems like the author of this comic is using these flags to represent different periods of Welsh history. The Panceltic flag is for up until the end of the Roman era, the Gwynedd flag is for until the conquest of Wales by England (that last panel I think is the Glyndŵr Rising?), and the modern flag is everything after that. This is obviously a very broad, arbitrary, and anachronistic use of these symbols, so don't read too much into it.

welshman2495

Not quite sure why the vikings got much of an appearance in this, to my knowledge Wales had very little experience with the vikings. I may be wrong but I think Wales only really experienced raidings around certain coastal parts.