Age of Empires 2 does a fantastic job of evoking a medieval English aesthetic: Yeomen, Norman-style architecture (notably the Chichester Cathedral), recognizable English monarchs and the audio voices in Middle English. Because of this design, the in-game “Britons” civilization feels intuitively English to most players. However, looking at how the terms Briton, Brittones, and Brythoniaid were actually used in medieval sources shows that the label belongs to a completely different group of people. It referred to the island’s original Celtic, Brittonic-speaking inhabitants, not to the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman polities that later established control over England.
1. The original Britons were native Celts
Britannia derives from the Common Brittonic Pritanī, a name first recorded by Greek authors and later adopted into Latin as Britannia. Julius Caesar used the form Brittani for the island’s inhabitants during his campaigns, and Tacitus likewise employed Britanni when describing Roman operations in northern Britain, including conflicts with the Caledonii. Ancient writers therefore treated the term as a broad ethnogeographic label encompassing peoples across the whole island, applying “Britons” not only to southern groups but also to communities in the far north, from Caledonia down to the southern lowlands.
Late antique and early medieval writers continued to use forms of the Latin Britanni exclusively for the island’s Celtic inhabitants. After the end of Roman rule and the arrival of Germanic groups such as the Angles and Saxons, the native population retained this identity across several regions, preserving the ethnonym Britons well into the early medieval period.
Gildas clearly identifies the Britones as the native population fighting against the invading Saxons. Nennius in his Historia Brittonum explicitly lays out the history and genealogies of the native Celtic inhabitants as the true Britons of the island. The English monk Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People makes a clear distinction between the Angli and the Britones as two different peoples. The Anglo‑Saxons called the native inhabitants either Wealas (meaning foreigners) or Brettas (derived from Britonnes).
Medieval Welsh literature and genealogies consistently used Brythoniaid as a self-designation. Primary sources illustrate that this was an active, lived identity. Welsh bards like Taliesin and Aneirin composed poetry celebrating the Brythoniaid. Up through the 12th century, Welsh princes framed their territorial defense as the preservation of the original British nation against Anglo-Norman expansion. A clear example comes from Owain Gwynedd during Henry II’s invasion in 1165: in his diplomatic letters to Louis VII of France, he asserted his sovereign status as ruler of the island’s original people, while his court poet Gwalchmai ap Meilyr celebrated his victories as the defense of Prydain (Britain) by the legitimate Brythoniaid against English usurpers.
This usage extended beyond the borders of modern Wales to include several distinct Brythonic groups:
- The Bretons (Breizh): During the Anglo-Saxon migrations of the 5th and 6th centuries, large numbers of Southwestern Britons fled across the sea to Armorica. They renamed the region Brittany (Little Britain) to reflect their origin, preserving their Brythonic language and referring to themselves as Britons for centuries.
- The People of Strathclyde (Alt Clud): In the north, the kingdom centered around Dumbarton Rock remained a Brittonic realm well into the 11th century. Nearby Gaelic, Irish, and English texts consistently described it as a kingdom of the Britons. The Gaelic name for Dumbarton, Dùn Breatann, literally translates to “Fort of the Britons.”
- The Picts: Welsh sources called them Prydyn and their land Prydain, terms closely related to Briton and Britannia, showing that Welsh writers understood the northern peoples within a Brythonic conceptual framework. Early Welsh material, such as the Gododdin and the Harleian genealogies, places the Picts among the wider Brittonic world. Gaelic and Irish authors likewise referred to the Picts as Cruithni, a name widely interpreted as deriving from the Common Brittonic Pritanī, preserving an older association between the Picts and Brittonic-speaking populations. Taken together, Welsh Prydyn and Gaelic Cruithni demonstrate that neighboring cultures consistently regarded the Picts as part of the broader Brittonic continuum.
2. How English monarchs used and eventually adopted the idea of “Britain”
While native Celtic groups retained the identity of Britons for centuries, the rulers of England did not identify themselves or their kingdom as “British” for the vast majority of the Middle Ages. The earliest engagement with the term by English kings was imperial rather than national. In the 10th century, Anglo-Saxon monarchs like Athelstan adopted grand Latin titles such as Rex Anglorum et Basileus Totius Britanniae (“King of the English and Sovereign of All Britain”) following victories like the Battle of Brunanburh (937 AD). However, this was not a claim to be a Briton, it was an imperial assertion of dominance over the other distinct peoples of the island, namely the Welsh, Scots, and Strathclyde Britons. Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, Anglo-Norman monarchs defined themselves through their continental holdings, feudal status, and French-speaking court, maintaining a clear distinction between the Angli (or Normanni) and the conquered Britones of Wales.
The closest medieval English kings came to engaging with “British” identity was pure political co-option. In the 13th century, Edward I weaponized Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Arthurian mythology to legitimize his bloody conquest of Wales and invasion of Scotland. Edward staged Arthurian round tables and staged the exhumation of Arthur’s supposed tomb at Glastonbury specifically to tell the Welsh that their mythical protector was dead, and that the English Crown was the rightful heir to the island. Edward was not identifying as a Briton, he was hijacking Brythonic folklore to justify destroying the actual remaining Britons. The actual adoption of a “British” identity by the monarchy only materialized under the Tudor dynasty in the 16th century, who leveraged their own Welsh ancestry to claim descent from King Arthur and legitimate their authority. This ideological shift culminated in 1603 when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I. Desperate to unite his two realm-states, he proclaimed himself “King of Great Britain,” formally creating the political identity we know today.
For the medieval period depicted in Age of Empires 2, calling an English kingdom “Britons” projects a 17th-century unionist identity backwards onto a medieval power that saw itself strictly as English and Anglo-Norman.
3. The case for a civilization split
The development team has successfully reworked broad or misnamed umbrellas in past expansions. Breaking up broad groupings into more accurate regional factions has consistently improved both historical representation and gameplay variety.
A similar approach would work well here:
- Rename the current faction to “The English”: Retain the Longbowman, the Yeomen tech, the archer range bonuses, and the Middle English audio. This keeps the existing gameplay balance intact while correcting the naming issue immediately.
- Add a proper Brythonic civilization (“the Britons”): Introduce a dedicated faction representing the native Celtic and Brythonic realms, spanning the Romano-Britonnic kingdom of Dumnonia, the kingdom of Strathclyde, the Picts, and the Welsh principalities (such as Gwynedd and Powys). This civ could focus on mobile infantry, skirmishers, or guerrilla tactics, using authentic Welsh voice lines and Celtic architecture. Moving the Woad Raider from the generic Celts (which is a more Scots/Gaelic-leaning civ) over to this new Brythonic faction would also solve another long-standing historical anomaly, as painted foot-warriors like the Picts and ancient Britons fit this unit concept far better.
Renaming the current civilization to the English and introducing a genuine Brythonic faction would honor the actual history of the British Isles while adding rich new options for the community.
