Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill

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Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill (died 2 September 1022), sometimes called Máel Sechnaill Mór or Máel Sechnaill II, was king of Mide and High King of Ireland. He was a contemporary of Brian Boru, who deposed him as High King in 1002.

Máel Sechnaill belonged to the Clann Cholmáin sept of the Uí Néill. He was the grandson of Donnchad Donn, great-grandson of Flann Sinna and great-great-grandson of the first Máel Sechnaill, Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid. The Kings of Tara or High Kings of Ireland had for centuries alternated between septs of the Uí Néill. By Máel Sechnaill's time this alternating succession passed between Clann Cholmáin in the south and the Cenél nEógain in the north, so that he succeeded Domnall ua Néill in 980. This system, which had survived previous challenges by outsiders including the kings of Ulster, Munster and Leinster, and the Viking invasions, was ended by Brian Boru's overthrow of Máel Sechnaill.

By the intervention of his warriors at the end of the battle of Clontarf on Good Friday, 1014, Máel Sechnaill sealed the fate of the Vikings as a political force in Ireland. Because of the death of Brian Boru, his son, and many other clan leaders, on the battlefield, he succeeded in regaining the titular High Kingship, with the aid of his northern kinsman Flaithbertach Ua Néill, but effective High Kingship, albeit with opposition, did not reappear until Brian's grandson Toirdelbach Ua Briain rose to power in the 1050s. Clann Cholmáin provided no further High Kings, but the northern Uí Néill of the Cenél nEógain provided two: Domnall Ua Lochlainn and Muirchertach MacLochlainn.

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