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The red dragon of Wales dates back to Roman<\/a> times. Roman cavalry units carried a standard known as the \u2018draco\u2019, or dragon. This took the form of a metal dragon\u2019s head with an open mouth, through which the wind would blow.<\/p>\n The body of the dragon was made up of a tube of fabric, rather like a modern wind sock. The banners were used to serve as markers on which the riders formed into different formations, and to give orders by means of some vigorous waving.<\/p>\n More Welsh history<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The British militias adopted many aspects of Roman military gear, and the impressive looking draco was among those taken up.<\/p>\n Following the fall of Rome, British princes continued to use Roman-style dracos as battle standards. The last recorded use of the draco by a British army wasn\u2019t until about 1250, after which the red dragon of Wales began to be embroidered onto a flag as if it were a heraldic device.<\/p>\n The green and white background, incidentally, comes from the family colours of the Tudor dynasty<\/a> and was added in 1959.<\/p>\n Answered by one of our Q&A experts, historian and author\u00a0Rupert Matthews<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>This article was taken from <\/em><\/strong>BBC History Revealed magazine<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Amir Adhamy Published: Thursday, 24 February 2022 at 12:00 am The red dragon of Wales dates back to Roman times. Roman cavalry units carried a standard known as the \u2018draco\u2019, or dragon. This took the form of a metal dragon\u2019s head with an open mouth, through which the wind would blow. The body of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Amir Adhamy Published: Thursday, 24 February 2022 at 12:00 am The red dragon of Wales dates back to Roman times. Roman cavalry units carried a standard known as the \u2018draco\u2019, or dragon. This took the form of a metal dragon\u2019s head with an open mouth, through which the wind would blow. The body of…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/11157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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