Feel better now!?sandman67 wrote:Wales, as a long conquered county, now part of the UNITED KINGDOM, doesn't have a capital. They gave that right up somewhere in the middle ages.....somewhere around "Proud Edward" Longshanks's time I think.....[/img]
Actually, the Act of Union was in 1536, a mere three centuries after Edward Longshanks and some time after the end of the middle ages, which is generally considered to have ended in Britain in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth Field, at which the English throne was taken by the Welsh house of Tudor.
To cut a long story short, it (and a subsequent Welsh Act of Union) was principally enacted under pressure from the Welsh gentry, who had supported the house of Tudor in it's successful bid for the throne, so they could benefit from the same land & political rights as their English counterparts. The red dragon on a white & green background - the national flag of Wales - was Henry Tudor's standard at the battle of Bosworth.
Between then and Edward Longshanks' time, the Capital of Wales had moved according to the power struggles of the time but had most famously been located at Machynlleth - chosen by Owain Glyndwr because of its difficulty to pronounce by the English....
Cardiff is of course, the national and administrative capital of Wales, after the ballot of 1954. The official government statement read in Parliament in 1955 went as follows:
The government have been impressed by the volume of support in Wales for the view that Cardiff is the city which should most appropriately be regarded as the capital of Wales and, in deference to these views, the government are prepared to recognise Cardiff as capital of the Principality.
Sadly, most of the information that they get from news or documentaries are pretty pictures of Hill Tribes and elephants, or the sleezy Patpong scene.