Welsh coalitions and rebellion politics

Edward's castle program appears here as a response to instability, set against a Welsh political landscape that resists a simple English-versus-Welsh morality play. A Welsh leader seeking French aid might gain the only ally strong enough to challenge England, but that alliance also made an uncompromising English response more likely. English armies could draw heavily on Welsh opponents of the rebellion, whose grievances were local and sometimes rooted in mistreatment by other Welsh forces. That political fragmentation helps explain how rebellion could be defeated without imagining England as an irresistible mass acting alone. Medieval conflicts were coalitions of people with competing interests rather than clean contests between uniformly good and bad sides.