Richard I's troop withdrawals and Llywelyn's rise

Richard I's preoccupation with France and the Holy Land immediately weakened royal control on the Welsh frontier. Lord Rhys attacked Norman lordships in South Wales, prompting Richard to send Count John to negotiate a temporary peace. The crown then stripped troops from the March for overseas campaigns, leaving its client Dafydd without enough soldiers to resist his relatives in Gwynedd. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth emerged from the resulting civil war, defeated and captured Dafydd, and began the expansion that later earned him the name Llywelyn the Great. The sequence shows how commitments far from Wales could remove the military support on which client kingship depended.