From the Empress of Germany to Robert Bruce

So, in our walk through the history of our island, here we are with Henry Plantagenet sitting on the English throne. His mother, the dowager Empress of Germany, no less. His grandmother  Scots by birth and his father French. A man of mixed race you might argue. Henry’s second cousin, sits on the throne of Scotland, so, when Henry marries the girl from Aquitaine, the family control the Atlantic seaboard from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. Now why was I not told that the Plantagenets had Scots blood in their veins at school? Because we were too absorbed in making sure we were true Scots and nothing else?

If we’d been told, we’d have known we had a connection to Richard Lion Heart, the one who was saved by a medieval Tom Jones, and his brother John, who, as we know, had his little ways, and sometimes no one spoke to him for  days and days and days.

The obvious question is which of them had the stronger share of Scots blood, the galant and ferocious Richard, the man with the Highland temper, or the miserable dour John.

I have , of course, glossed over the fact that Alexander 1 of Scotland had married Hery 1’s daughter, but it is time to mention that Alexander 11 of Scotland married King John’s daughter, and Alexander 111 married Henry 111’s daughter. As a result, by the middle of the 13^th century, and getting close to Robert the Bruce, the  Scottish royal line was well stocked with good English blood.

What price Brucie?

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