Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon or Cadwaladr Fendigaid ('Cadwaladr the Blessed', , – 682) was the king of Gwynedd from sometime after 655 to 682. Little is known of Cadwaladr's reign, but he later became a mythical redeemer figure in medieval Welsh literature following his depiction in the De gestis Britonum by Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Geoffrey's narrative, Cadwaladr was the last native Briton to be King of Britain, and renounced his throne in 689 to go on pilgrimage to Rome after an angel prophesied to him that he must do so in order for the Welsh to eventually recover their patrimony sometime in the future. However, Geoffrey's account of Cadwaladr's sanctity and visit to Rome is the result of a willing or pre-existing conflation with historical events in the life of Cædwalla of Wessex.
For later Welsh writers, the myth provided hope in a period where the native order was increasingly finding itself encroached upon by and subject to English authority and customs. However, because of the popularity of Geoffrey's work in England, the legend was also used by both the supporters of Edward IV and Henry Tudor during the Wars of the Roses to claim that their candidate would fulfil the prophecy by restoring the authentic lineage of Cadwaladr to the throne of England. From the sixteenth century onwards, the Welsh Dragon has sometimes been conflated with Cadwaladr and referred to as "Red Dragon of Cadwalader" because of the importance of both Cadwaladr and the dragon in the ideology of Henry Tudor's supporters which helped to justify his claim to the throne.
Historical record
There are no contemporary records of Cadwaladr or his reign, and those which do survive are confused and contradictory. Peter Bartrum suggested that he may have been born about 633 AD, shortly before his father's death at the Battle of Heavenfield. The earliest Welsh genealogies contained in the ninth-century manuscript Harley 3859 record him simply as and trace his ancestry as a member of the First Dynasty of Gwynedd back to Cunedda Wledig.