Queen of Connacht
Medb was the queen of Connacht, and the greatest war in the Ulster Cycle began because her husband had a bull she didn’t.
She and Ailill mac Máta were lying in bed comparing their possessions — cataloguing their wealth item by item — and found themselves exactly equal in everything except one thing. Ailill had the white-horned bull Finnbennach. Medb had no equivalent. The Donn Cuailnge — the Brown Bull of Cooley — was Ulster’s equivalent, and she wanted it. She sent messengers to borrow it. The negotiations failed. She raised her army and marched into Ulster.
That is how the Táin Bó Cúailnge began. A pillow-talk inventory and one missing bull.
She is the sovereignty goddess of Connacht in human form — which means her sexual and political choices carry more weight than they might otherwise. She rejected any man who showed jealousy, fear, or meanness as a husband, because a jealous or fearful or mean man cannot hold the land. Her requirements for a husband were the land’s requirements for a king. Ailill met them. He kept the kingship.
Her lover during the Táin was Fergus mac Róich — the exiled Ulster king whose sword and generalship she used against his own people. Ailill knew about it and said nothing. Fergus’s generalship was too useful to throw away over it.
She used her daughter Finnabair as a political bargaining chip during the Táin — promising her to multiple champions as an incentive to fight Cú Chulainn. When the deception was discovered, the results were devastating.
Cú Chulainn held Ulster alone against her army while all the Ulster warriors lay under Macha‘s curse, unable to fight. He fought champion after champion at the ford. He didn’t win the war, but he held it long enough.
Her royal seat was Cruachan — Rathcroghan in County Roscommon — which was also the entrance to the Irish Otherworld. She ruled from the mouth of it.
She was killed while bathing in a lake. Forbai, the son of Conchobar mac Nessa, avenged his father with a sling-stone of hard cheese. The woman who had launched the greatest war of the cycle died in a lake, killed by cheese. The tradition is precise and entirely unapologetic about this.
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