Nuada Airgetlam

Lore: Nuada is the original sacred king of Irish myth — and the foundational case study in Celtic theology of sovereignty. At the First Battle of Mag Tuired, he loses his arm to the Fir Bolg champion Sreng. Celtic kingship law demands a physically perfect king (his body is a metonym for the land’s wholeness), so Nuada is forced to abdicate. His brother-in-law Bres, half-Fomorian, takes the throne and rules so badly the Tuatha rebel. Meanwhile the chief physician Dian Cecht crafts Nuada a silver arm that moves like flesh — earning him the epithet Airgetlam (Silver-Arm). Dian Cecht’s son Miach goes further, regenerating Nuada’s actual arm; jealous Dian Cecht murders him for outshining the master. Nuada returns to the throne and leads the Tuatha to victory at the Second Battle of Mag Tuired — where he dies fighting Balor. His sword is one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danann.

Parallel: Tyr (Norse one-handed god — the parallel between two Indo-European one-handed sovereign-gods is central to Georges Dumezil’s “Mitra-Varuna” thesis); the Fisher King of Arthurian legend (whose wound makes the land barren — the same Celtic principle of king-as-land); Jacob wrestling with the angel and walking with a permanent limp afterward (Genesis 32:25-31) — a divinely-mandated wound transformed into authority.