Welsh Flag

 

The Welsh flag has two equal horizontal stripes in white and green. has a large red dragon passant. The dragon on the flag must face to the left, be centrally sited and cover equal parts of the white and green panels. The dragon standard was perhaps first seen in Britain in the shape of a standard carried by the cohorts of the Roman legion - the "draco". The Romans were inspired by the dragon standard carried by their Parthian and Dacian and enemies and had adopted this device by the third century. When the Roman legions withdrew in the 4th century, the British were left to face Saxon attacks, the dragon would have been a symbol for those who wanted to preserve their Romanised way of life. The ancient poets Aneirin and Taliesin use" draig" - the Welsh word for dragon in the sense of "leader" or "warrior" and this usage remained till the Middle Ages. In the sotry of the red dragon battling with the Saxon white dragon around 800 AD in the Historia Brittonum, the dragon was seen as a symbol of national independence. The dragon symbol seems to hav been used by both sides at the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Tudor ancestors of Jasper Tudpr amd King Henry VII. Edmund had a dragon as crest and supporter to the arms granted them by Henry VI. When Henry Tudor faced King Richard III in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth, his battle standards numbered three. One standard carried the arms of St. George of England, another the arms of the house of Beaufort and another was a "Red ffyry dragon peyntid upon white and Grene Sarcenet". It is said that this dragon banner represented Henry Tudor's claim to be a true representative of the ancient Kings of Britain and that it served as his tribute to the Welsh people who had made his victory possible.