This section of our history covers the lives and reigns of all the monarchs of Scotland from the first Scottish King, Kenneth MacAlpin, who emerged from the mists of the Dark ages as the first King of Scotland in 843, to the death of that ill fated seductress, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was beheaded in an English prison on the orders of Elizabeth I.

The MacAlpin dynasty, which ruled Scotland throughout the Dark Ages, united the warring races of Picts and Scots as one nation. Our section on this dynasty includes the reign of Kenneth I himself and covers the bitter blood feud fought out between the two opposing lines of his successors for possession of the throne.

The following chapter, on the short lived House of Moray, includes an account of the reign of Macbeth, of Shakespearian fame, who usurped the throne of Scotland and reveals that the actual history of Macbeth and Duncan was very different to how Shakespeare has presented it to his audiences down the ages.

At the dawn of the Middle Ages, the House of Dunkeld seized the Scottish throne replacing the line of Gaelic Kings which had ruled since the ninth century. It produced such varying characters as the devout David I and Alexander I, known as the Fierce. The House of Dunkeld could also claim a saint in it's midst, in the person of Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore, who was also one of the last representatives of the Anglo-Saxon House of Wessex.

Edward I of England's overbearing attempts to rule Scotland resulted in the Scottish Wars of Independence, which saw the meteoric rise of one of Scotland's most famous sons, the patriot William Wallace, who raised his countrymen to fight for the cause of freedom and was destined to suffer an agonizing death at the hands of his English enemies. After the demise of Wallace, the banner of Scottish resistance was taken up by Robert the Bruce, Scotland's greatest monarch, who lead his country to finally win her freedom from English dominance at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

After the Bruce dynasty failed in the male line, on the death of Robert's only son, the throne of Scotland was occupied by the romantic but ill starred Stewart dynasty, which descended from the Bruce's daughter.

The tragic Mary Queen of Scots was the last scion of their line. Beautiful, but reckless and impulsive, Mary was suspected of complicity in the murder of her ineffectual second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and later alienated the Scots lords by marrying James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, widely believed to be his murderer. She was forced to abdicate and endured a long term of imprisonment at the hands of her English cousin, Elizabeth I. In 1567 she ended her days under the executioner's axe at Fotheringay in Northamptonshire, an action which shocked all Europe. The crowns of Scotland and England were finally united in the person of the son Mary was fated never to see from infancy, James I and VI, the first King of all Britain.