Rowena in the Matter of Britain was the daughter of the purported Anglo-Saxon chief Hengist and wife of Vortigern, "King of the Britons". Presented as a beautiful femme fatale, she won her people the
Vortigern and Rowena, by William Hamilton
Vortigern, also spelt Vortiger, Vortigan, Voertigern and Vortigen, was a 5th-century warlord in Britain, known perhaps as a king of the Britons or at least connoted as such in the writings of Bede. Hi
Rowena
…Rowena in the Matter of Britain was the daughter of the purported Anglo-Saxon chief Hengist and wife of Vortigern, "King of the Britons". Presented as a beautiful femme fatale, she won her people the Kingdom of Kent through her treacherous seduction of Vortigern…
Meeting of Vortigern and Rowena painted by William Hamilton
Vortigern's Tower in a 14th century illuminated manuscript of Wace's Roman de Brut
Merlin reads his prophecies to King Vortigern. British Library MS Cotton Claudius B VII f.224, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophetiae Merlini.
Illustration in a fifteenth-century manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136). Vortigern and Merlin watch two dragons fighting. The red dragon represents the British and the white one the Saxons.