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Ambrosius Aurelianus (Emrys Wledic in modern Welsh) is a Breton warlord of the High Middle Ages on whom we have only few elements, all close to legend.
He appears in the sources as active from 460 to 480. He galvanized and organized the defense of the Breton troops against the Saxon invasion in 455. This soldier from the Romanized Breton aristocracy and trained in Roman military techniques, began the war against the Anglo-Saxons in 460, a conflict that gave his successor, Artorius (Arthur Pendragon, or King Arthur), the notoriety he has today. Ambrosius Aurelianus does not know such recognition, despite the fact that he contributed greatly to the defense of the island of Britain, as well as to many events on the continent during his strategic withdrawal to Armorica and the Gallo domain. -romain.
He would have been related to Pol Aurélien, the evangelizer of Léon in Armorican Brittany.
It is interesting that he is the only character to intervene (or exercise authority?) on both sides of the Channel. He is even cited as a king of the Franks and the Armorican Bretons both in the Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius and in the Irish Lebor Bretnach.
Léon Fleuriot thinks he is even Riothamus, a character who would have been defeated near Déols in 469 by the Visigoths, but would have reigned over the Franks. Riothamus is, in fact, not a name, but the title of "Supreme King", which explains the deference Sidoine Apollinaris shows him in one of his letters