Ireland has continued as a patchwork of…
676 CE to 819 CE
Medieval Irish literature portrays an almost unbroken sequence of High Kings stretching back thousands of years but modern historians believe the scheme was constructed in the eighth century to justify the status of powerful political groupings by projecting the origins of their rule into the remote past.
All of the Irish kingdoms have their own kings but are nominally subject to the High King.
The High King is drawn from the ranks of the provincial kings and rules also the royal kingdom of Meath, with a ceremonial capital at the Hill of Tara.
The concept doesn't become a political reality until the Viking Age and even then is not a consistent one.
Ireland does have a culturally unifying rule of law: the early written judicial system, the Brehon Laws, administered by a professional class of jurists known as the brehons, whose members may be men or women.
Locations
Subjects
Regions
North Europe
View →Subregions
