King of Connacht
Ailill mac Máta was the king of Connacht and the husband of Medb — the man whose possession of the white-horned bull Finnbennach, the one item in which he exceeded his wife, was the direct cause of the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Finnbennach had originally been born in Medb’s herd. It transferred itself to Ailill’s because it refused to be owned by a woman. The bull’s decision to move herds on grounds of sex is the war’s ultimate first cause. The greatest cattle-raid in Irish myth began with an animal’s preference.
Ailill held the kingship of Connacht because he met Medb’s requirements: no jealousy, no fear, no meanness. He passed her test and she took him as husband. He knew about her affair with Fergus mac Róich during the Táin and did not rage against it — his equanimity was strategic as well as temperamental. Fergus’s generalship was essential to the campaign. A jealous reaction would have cost the war.
He killed Fergus mac Róich after the Táin. In a lake, at night, with a spear thrown in the dark, guided by Medb’s description of the swimming figure. Whether that was jealousy finally breaking through, or a cold calculation that Fergus’s usefulness was finished, the tradition leaves open. It is the one act in his story whose motive cannot be cleanly assigned.
He was a genuine king of considerable ability — neither a cipher for his wife’s ambitions nor a simple follower. He navigated the specific difficulty of being married to the sovereignty goddess of Connacht, which required a particular kind of steadiness. He was steady. It cost him, eventually, in a lake.
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