Flag of Wales

How to read it

The present design became official in 1959. On 23 February that year the Minister for Welsh Affairs, Henry Brooke, told the House of Commons that the Queen had directed that only “the Red Dragon on a green and white flag” should fly on government buildings in Wales and, where appropriate, in London. It replaced a version approved in 1953, which put the dragon on a green mound inside a ribbon reading “Y ddraig goch ddry cychwyn” (“the red dragon advances”). The Flag Institute calls it the national flag of Wales, one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, and gives the proportions as 3:5 with white, green Pantone 354 and red Pantone 186. The dragon is the four-legged dragon of heraldry with bat’s wings; Fox-Davies wrote in 1909 that the red dragon on a green mount in the royal arms, the badge of Wales, was known as the red dragon of Cadwallader. Its history has its own page on oldsymbols.com, the red dragon of Wales.

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Wales and the Union Flag

Wales has no part in the Union Flag. The Union Flag combines three crosses, St George’s for England, St Andrew’s for Scotland and St Patrick’s for Ireland, and nothing in it stands for Wales. Wales is also the only one of the home nations whose main flag is not its patron saint’s cross, the Flag Institute notes. St David’s flag, a yellow cross on black, is flown on St David’s Day, 1 March.

The legend and the Tudor kings

The Flag Institute’s account dates the red dragon to the Roman occupation of Britain or to Arthurian legend, in which Merlin prophesied a battle between a red dragon, for the Britons, and a white dragon, for the invading Saxons. English kings fought under dragon standards too: Richard I on the Third Crusade in 1191, Henry III at Lewes in 1264, Edward III at Crécy in 1346, Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 and Henry Tudor at Bosworth in 1485. The red dragon was a supporter of the royal arms under Henry VII, Henry VIII and Edward VI, Fox-Davies records.

Where it flies

The National Assembly for Wales, now the Senedd, said in 2014 that it flies Y Ddraig Goch every day outside its buildings in Cardiff Bay and Colwyn Bay, beside the Union Flag, the European Union flag and its own flag. When the Assembly was set up it followed UK protocol, which gave the Union Flag precedence; on 10 October 2002 the First Minister decided that the Welsh flag should take precedence over the Union Flag on the Welsh Assembly Government’s building in Cathays Park.