Custennin Fawr was an early king of North Wales who may or may not have existed. The only mentions of him are in unreliable royal genealogies and medieval Welsh legend, especially the cycle of folktales contained within the Mabinogion. According to the myths of the Mabinogion, Custennin was the youngest son of Magnus Maximus, the Roman Emperor, and his British wife, Elen Lwyddog, otherwise known as St. Elen of the Hosts. The royal genealogies show that after the collapse of Roman power in Britain, Custennin and his brothers, Anwn Dynod and Owain Finddu, were granted kingships in Wales by their powerful father. At least two of his sisters married powerful kings in other parts of Britain; Gratiana married Tudwal ap Gwrfawr of Dumnonia and Severa married Vortigen, King of Powys and later High King of Britain.
The royal genealogies for the early Dark Ages in Britain are seriously tangled due to inventive medieval genealogists who, desperate to claim descent from Romano-British power, played havoc with names, dates and lineages. It is entirely possible that neither Elen Lwyddog nor her children existed at all. The existence of Custennin is particularly doubtful. Custennin Fawr is Welsh for Constantine the Great and there appears to be almost willful confusion between him and the Roman Emperor Constantine I whose mother was St. Helen.
If Custennin did exist. then he may have been a dux, a provincial Roman governor, who took on a role of kingship as Roman administration faded in the early fifth century. Alternatively he may have been an opportunistic Romano-British aristocrat who seized power in the wake of the Roman withdrawal. Whatever the case, his deeds as King of North Wales and how he earned the epitaph "the Great" have been completely forgotten by history. By the 430s, Cunedda Wledig and his warband of Romanised Picts had carved out a kingdom in North Wales so it is presumed that Custennin was either dead by this point or gave up his kingdom with little resistance.
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