The Black Dinner was an infamous event in Scottish history that
caught George RR Martin's attention and inspired him to
write The Red Wedding. Along the way, while delving
into this corner of history, we noticed quite a few other
parallels and possible influences.
Or at least happy coincidences. Happy to us that is.
Maybe not to the people involved, as we'll see these a
lot of these stories are pretty bloody.
Regardless, they make for a great series of stories and
anecdotes which we've compiled for you today.
Much of it will revolve around houses, Stewart and Douglas, and
at one point Douglas splits into the Black Douglas's and the Red
Douglas's. A familiar split, since we're
familiar with red and black Dragons and all.
But also we'll be talking about the kings of England and royal
Scottish figures like Robert the Bruce and some King James's.
Several of them really, but two in particular.
And the actual murders at the Black Dinner occurred in late
1440. But we'll be looking back quite
a bit farther than that to cover the history of the players and
the families involved and other parallel stuff like that.
All that juicy, juicy context in Scottish history that's relevant
today. Then we'll continue a little bit
past the Black Dinner to see what happened in the aftermath
because it's sort of things did sort of come to a close of
sorts. That chapter sort of closed in
some ways. You'll see it does form a bit of
a story, what we've put together here.
Just like the Red Wedding, there was a fallout, right?
But that fall out, like the Red Wedding, was just more violence,
more intrigue, more murder, alliance, betrayal, rebellion,
and some more parallels that'll take us up to the year 1484,
roughly speaking. You may notice how this overlaps
much of what we saw in our recent Wars of the Roses
episode, which somewhat officially ended in 1487, so
only three years apart. It's almost exactly the same
timeline. There's going to be some
overlap, a few of the same characters, some back and forth
impacts. For example, if you caught that
episode, you might recall that Margaret Danjou, who is our
Cersei parallel, recruited a lot of Scots under James the Second
to fight for her and her son Edward, which you know, we
called that Edward, Edward Joffrey.
So when we were talking about the words of the roses, though
we acknowledge that it was famous long before George.
People like Shakespeare in particular made it famous.
In this case, there's been a reverse influence effect of
sorts as the black dinner has grown in popularity because the
word has been out for over 10 years at this point that it's
the inspiration for the Red Wedding and that because Game of
Thrones is so popular, drew a lot more attention to it.
And lots of articles and think pieces have been written about
it. Now, that said, you have to sift
through a lot of takes on those comparisons because they are
kind of shallow. They're just, hey, this inspired
the Red Wedding and then there's not a lot there.
They don't analyze it very well. They just give you some basics.
So for us, it was more work to sift through all this, which was
pretty fun, actually. There's a lot of fun stuff here.
Even though it's more obscure, that doesn't make it less
interesting. In fact, it might make it even
more interesting. So that's kind of a neat thing
that that George and HBO brought this event forward and we in
turn dug deeper to get to some of these interesting stories.
And of course, like the Red Wedding, the black dinner by
itself is not the story. The Red Wedding, it's not the
story of the Red Wedding, A Song of Ice and Fire.
I mean it's that's 60% of the way through the 3rd book.
It's a major event but it's not even the climax of that book,
let alone some end of the series.
It's a big moment to be sure. It's a shocking stand out event.
And the same thing is true. The black dinner.
It's not the whole story but it is a big part of the story.
A shocking stand out event. I mean imagine hearing about the
Red Wedding without knowing who Rob and Catelyn and Roose Bolton
and Jaime Lannister and the phrase are.
It would still sound like a crazy shocking event, but the
context is what makes it so interesting, what makes it stick
with you and what makes you feel it.
And that's what we're going to try to do today as much as
possible by bringing this history to life and enriching it
with a Song of Ice and Fire takes and parallels as much as
possible. We've got all that and more for
you today on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It's another episode of our show.
This is one of our History and Westeros episodes.
Less than a History of Westeros episode certainly has some
Westeros history in it, but it's it's more about the real world.
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Hey Sean, how's it going? We haven't seen you in a few
weeks here. We've been travelling and doing
some other stuff, but good to have you back Branzig as you
are. Yeah, it's good to be back.
I'm jealous of you guys adventures in Spain.
It's probably too much to get into now, especially for how
much we got on this black dinner build up, but there is there are
so many things in this little take we've got here that are
sound fantastic. I'll say it like that.
Yeah. I can't wait to talk about the
Stone of Destiny. It's the stone.
I know, right? The Stone of Destiny.
That's a real thing in an episode that's not about fantasy
or barely has to do with fantasy.
No kidding. Yeah, There's some surprises in
this one for sure. Some things you may have heard
of but didn't recognize as part of this.
And some other things are a little familiar that you might
learn more about. And we have an extra shout out
today. We always shout out Nina right
here, but today's a little different because this is the
last time we're going to call her Nina Freel.
That's right. She's still going to be a good
queenalley.tumblr.com. You'll still be able to find her
over there and all her blog posts, but she's going to be
Nina Krusling going forward. Congratulations to Nina for
getting married. No, she just changed her name.
She. Just changed her name.
No, she as of this recording she's not married.
By the time most you hear this, she will be and her spouse to be
is James Krusling. It's almost funny that his name
is James because there's a lot of James is in this episode.
He has the distinction of being the only James that will mention
today who is still among the living and hopefully will be for
quite some time longer. But yeah, these other James
pretty long dad. So he he's got them all beat in
terms of being alive and. I'd say Nina found her Jaharis,
but she hates Jaharis. Yeah, no, she wouldn't like
that. She would.
Not like that exactly, so do not make that reference to her.
But she is good Queen Al. So that's where that comes from.
Yeah. So once again, Congrats to Nina
and James. And hey, my own grandfather's
name, James, too. So you know, we had James runs
in the family around here. James and my family too.
Oh, nice. Yeah, it is a good name.
And, and in fact, we'll be going over in this episode.
We'll see when it becomes a popular name in Scotland.
This is Topic Smoot, episode number 10.
We've got two more topics moot episodes for the year as we wrap
up 2024. Y'all voted on some episodes.
Y'all who are patrons, that is, and this is the result of that.
If you have questions about this episode or anything else related
to us, you can go to our website and or hit us up at
westeroshistory@gmail.com and we will respond accordingly.
In this episode, you're going to hear some of the following
parallels. Besides the Red Wedding, we're
going to talk about Anise, Blackfyre, Bittersteel,
Bittersteel's skull, Unwin Peak, Tywin Lannister, quite a bit
Blackfish. The whole idea of cadet branches
comes about a lot. There's a whole lot of
illegitimate children. There's revenge murders for
various reasons, the good old fashioned games of Thrones with
the James of Thrones in this case, I guess you could say at
least later in the episode. And if you catch a parallel that
we missed, hey, this is real history and we don't know it
quite as well or not even half as well as we know A song of Ice
and fire history. So, you know, we could miss a
thing here or there. So if you catch something that
we missed, let us know. Let us know for sure.
I mean, that's true always, but I, I feel like it's maybe a
little more likely in this. Let me read the headers we've
got prepared for you. These are the topics we've got
today that we'll get into. We're going to get into the
players. Then the recent history of
Scotland, King Hakand and the Alexanders.
Then Alexander the Third. Then the Great 'cause which yes,
should sound like the Great Council, 'cause it is a lot like
the Great Council. Then the Old Alliance.
The King in the North. King Robert and the Spider of
Braveheart and Bitter Steel. The Scottish Golden Company.
The Flower of Chivalry. The King in Chains.
Scotland's Game of Thrones. The Red and Black Douglas.
Black Douglas versus Fireball. That's right.
Fireballs in here too. Archibald the Grim.
That's a guy's name. Robert the Kinslayer.
That's a name we gave him. James and the Black Douglas.
Not to be confused with James and the Giant Peach, but feel
free to make that comparison if you want a changing of the James
the Black Dinner, the Blackfire Dinner, and the Black Douglas
Death. That's a lot of topics, so let's
get to it. One clarification I want to make
is that that recent Scottish history You don't mean like the
1990s during the recent history of leading up to the Black
dinner I was a little confused at first by.
That Yeah, you're right. Not recent.
You're right. Recent as to the perspective of
the Black Dinner. So recent compared to 1440, Not
recent to us. Yeah, good call.
So, as with our Wars of the Roses episode, this is a story
of the Black dinner as told through the eyes of A Song of
Ice and Fire fans. I'm going to be filling this
episode with all the parallels, not just because they're fun,
but it fast forwards your knowledge of the story by making
comparisons that you're already familiar with.
But shot, even though this is a very similar time to the wars,
the Rosa recovering a similar era, like these things were
happening in concert in a lot of places.
The sourcing isn't quite as strong, is it?
No, it's not. And you know, we're going to go
through a lot of history, you know, like a couple 100 years
worth of build up to the black dinner.
But the the black dinner itself, some of it is a little dubious.
Some of it is like clearly known and certain, right.
But some of the details of like that actual dinner are
potentially, if not probably legendary, you know that a lot
of it is, you know, recounted by people 20 years later and such.
So it, you know, probably mostly true or at least representing of
the truth, but some of it might be a little unquestioned.
But we won't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
That's right. Or lack of facts.
It's, it's not like you invite chroniclers to your murders, you
know, like you're going to commit some awful event.
Let's bring some witnesses to make sure this gets recorded
right. But it's also interesting.
It was something we talked about before the episode and the lead
up to this is looking at different perspectives during
this. We've always, of course, looked
at the Starks as good guys, especially in the perspective of
the Red Wedding. And that's probably the right
way to look at it. I mean, you know, your miles may
vary, but that's a normal thing to do.
But it was interesting for us to look at this from different
perspectives because there isn't in this version, there isn't
good guys and bad guys. There's just a bunch of guys.
There's just bad guys. Yeah, yeah.
And, and some, some, some ladies too.
But they're, you know, they're, they're not as bad or not as
deeply involved, although sometimes they are.
I, I will say, sometimes the lack of facts like got me
digging in different ways or, or considering other potentials or
perspectives, you know, and you know, the, the gist of what the,
you know, very brief spoiler alert, what you know, what
happens in a black wedding is that there's, there's a young
boy who's in a position of power and other people in position of
power worry what might, he might go on to do or maybe want to get
more power for themselves. And they and they kill them,
then they buy them and they kill them, you know, But you know, I
was thinking about it in terms of like, you know, comparing to
the Red Wedding. We think of Rob as like the
protagonist and evil Tywin and Ruse or whatever kill him.
But if you think of it, and from the perspective of Tywin or the
Crown or whatever, Rob was a traitor.
He was a usurper. He started a war.
Now, you know, not the time We didn't also do a bunch of, you
know. Dangerous.
Violent things but you know if you could eliminate a lot of
other stuff time we did and just look at the Red Wedding.
It's still troublesome because he you know so many thousands of
soldiers were killed but but all those soldiers they swore to
follow this traitor. You know there is a perspective
where you could see that this might have been better for the
realm, right. If you think of Rob as this guy
running around with the army starting a rebellion, you know,
maybe there is some argument that you need to kill this guy
in that he didn't get a trial. You know, maybe that's not fair.
But Ned didn't give a trial to that that deserter from the
wall, even that that opening scene, right.
Like it's anyway, it's sometimes it's interesting for me to think
about why did they kill this kid?
Because it so exactly who did it and what their motivations are
they there was there was a mock trial like we we know quote UN
quote know that there was a mock trial, but I I could not find
what even ostensibly they were charged with at the mock.
Trial, I didn't find one thing on that so we'll we'll get to
talk about it. But yeah, it is.
It's vague, like you said, it's not like, well established,
which leads to the idea that's a bit trumped up.
And I love this this this point too, Sean, because, yeah, even
if you don't have to agree with Tywin, of course, you probably
don't like very few of us do. But that doesn't mean it there
isn't value into seeing his perspective because you
understand why he does the things he does.
You don't have to agree with any of it, but you want to
understand, like, the logic behind it.
And that's the case here. Yeah.
How powerful people think. Yeah.
How rude. What What does a ruthless person
do in a spot like this? You know, things like that.
So yeah, that's that's a lot of fun.
That's really interesting. And we'll be doing a lot of that
today. What?
We're going to start here with a quote from the man himself,
George R Martin. Let's go.
The names in A Song of Ice and Fire were something I devoted a
fair amount of thought to. I violated a fair amount of
rules that they teach you when you are a young writer.
When I was younger, I tried not to violate them.
Never have two characters in a story whose names start with the
same letter. People will get confused.
Certainly never have two characters with the same name
because people will get really confused.
I encountered English histories and the names are all Henry's
and Edwards. In French history, it is all
Louise and Phillips. Even the secondary families are
using the same names over and over again.
There were particular names associated with particular
houses. I decided to do that.
To hell with the rules. The readers can pay attention.
I even have characters occasionally get confused about
which Brandon is being talked about.
Go and break those rules, George.
Those rules suck. I'm totally with George on that.
Like we can pay attention. Yes, maybe it eliminates some
people from reading this book, but too bad for them.
You know, to be fair, when people study British and French
history they get confused also. Yeah, I I got confused a lot.
There's so many confused there's.
Yeah, there. We're going to do our best to
keep that from being a problem here by using nicknames and all
that. But yeah, James and Douglas here
are like the equivalent of Edward or Richard or Henry or
there's so many Williams too. I mean, it's crazy.
They, they, there's just so many of them, you know, it's really
fun. And there's so many Margarets
too. We'll, we'll see it again.
You know, the one guy even changes his name to Robert.
And there's so many Roberts here.
It's just also Scottish history is better with nicknames than
English history. We got a lot of colorful
nicknames and that really helps. You know, I, I didn't even think
about it too. You were talking about names,
like family names in your family or talking about James and Nina
and all. I realized that my dad, my dad
and my granddad's names are William, Wallace and Robert and
my sister's name is Margaret. Oh my goodness.
Scottish. They're Scottish powers in play
here. So yeah, Stewart and Douglas are
the major 2 houses we're going to introduce here and follow
throughout this history. Douglas is a lot like Lannister
and Tully, but some Baratheon because they split at one point,
which that's kind of the Targaryen thing.
But they're very often the power behind the Stewart throne and
sometimes before the Stewarts came to power, which is very
Lannister ish. And they're very often the most
powerful house in Scotland at any point in this story.
And they're still around even today.
There's even a Swedish branch of of the Douglass's that's around
and there's a Lord Douglas Hamilton around today.
And yeah, they're still, they still exist.
They're still really powerful and at that time though, there's
just little doubt that they were the most powerful house in
Scotland and held on to that for a long time.
We don't know how long ago they were founded, but the the first
known recorded Douglas who was a Lord was an 1179 and he was a
William and most of the ones coming after him were also
Williams. Douglas has a lot of heart
sigilry around it. So which is a little confusing
because we just compared them to the Lannisters when actually the
Stewarts have the lion sigils. But you can ignore that.
We don't care about sigils too much today.
Stewart is a lot like Baratheon and Tyrell.
So both of them are like Baratheons.
Yes, this in the case. Is there a new royal house
relatively new in the time of the story and they're descended
from Stewarts Stewart Stewart. Their name even becomes that.
It's like a it's a mix. It gets so confusing that you
just call them Stewart because that's what they are and they're
related to Robert the Bruce who's going to come up big in
this story. They were originally a French
family descended from a guy named Walter Fitz Allen.
He came over in 1136 to serve as high steward for David, the
first king of Scotland. And David even supported Matilda
during the Anarchy. So they were on the Blacks side
basically, while King Stephen was the Greens.
So this guy was around for a while.
He he was steward for three kings, a bit of an auto
Hightower vibe, maybe. And eventually they became Mary
Queen of Scots, this, this line. But and then they became the,
the whole, the whole of Britain became under this umbrella.
So there's are the Tyrell parallels and some of the rest
will come on along here as we're talking.
And Walter was given a lot of lands and from there the house
really took off. So there's there's a lot of
others, of course, but the Douglas family and the Stewart
family are the main ones. We're also going to talk about
House Bruce quite a bit that you might recognize House Bruce from
Braveheart. The movie is not historically
accurate, but it's a very useful reference point because most of
you have seen it probably. And again, while it throws
history out the window, the character portrayals in terms of
their personality, their basic bearing, that stuff isn't too
far off. At least if we stick to the
major characters like William Wallace and King Edward the 1st
and Prince Edward who becomes King Edward the 2nd.
And Robert the Bruce himself is actually the real Braveheart in
Scottish history. He's the guy that they call
Braveheart, not William Wallace Mel Gibson's character.
And he didn't actually betray William Moss in the movie.
So that was kind of a, hey, that's like one of our national
heroes and he's betraying way. Come on, I'll do that.
Anyway, we're going to describe how we got that nickname.
And it's in the Song of Ice and Fire parallel.
So that's pretty cool. There's so many Roberts in this
story, as I said, partly because of Roberts Bruce.
And that's part of where the Robert Baratheon parallels come
in to some some degree. There's no Cersei, but there's a
lot of Margarets. And like I said, there's no
Jamie, but there's James's Jamie.
James. That's the kind of the
equivalent. And if you thought we were done
with all the Edwards, you are incorrect.
There's plenty more Edwards to come.
Because I know you just love all the Edwards.
Yeah. So let's get into it.
Recent history of Scotland, mostly.
This was a long series of struggles against the throne of
England, but it starts with the ousting of the Norse.
Yes, The Norse had long dominated northern Scotland,
especially the aisles around Scotland, because they're a
culture with lots of ships and competence with ships, and so
taking islands makes a lot of sense for them.
But the struggles against the North are how Stewart and
Douglas and some of these others rose to prominence in the 1st
place by defeating them. Yeah, so that's pretty neat.
There's a lot of elements of Dorn in Scotland here.
You're going to think of them as the North a lot because they
are. But the way they behave, the way
they deal with war is a lot more like the Dornish.
So that's an interesting fusion of the North and Dorne, the two
extreme ends of Westeros here in Scotland, and I think that's
really cool. And as the power of Scotland's
throne grew, they became more powerful and the internal
infighting intensified. So we're going to have is a a
series of going from fighting for independence to gaining
power to starting to fight amongst themselves as that power
was shared within the country and accordingly fought over,
Yeah, lots of castles and houses and armies and all that good
stuff. So let's get going with King
Hakon and the Alexanders. King Hakon Hakonsen, yes, son of
Hakon. He was Hakon the 4th, very
formidable guy, living legend. And when he was a baby, his
father was like poisoned and two guys like snatched the baby and
snuck through the mountains in extreme cold and Blizzard.
Just snow hike to save this kid. They still eventually caught him
and and he still refused to call them kings even at 3 when he was
eight. His uncle Hakon the crazy.
How is his uncle named Hakon when his father was named Hakon?
I don't get it. But maybe that's why he was the
crazy. He conspired with the king to
cut Hakon young Hakon out of out of the will out of his
succession and he said no you can't do that.
This 8 year old said you can't do that because my lawyer wasn't
there. And they said who's your lawyer?
And he said God. And St.
O laughs. You've heard the phrase God is
my copilot. Yeah, hack on hack Onsen said
God is my lawyer. So this is interesting too
because Sean, you would expect like you hear about the Norse,
you hear about Norse kings and all this, how did they not just
kill this boy, right? Wasn't that what you would
expect to just kill him and then just take the throne?
Right. But that's not how they did it.
This is not the Norse kingdoms of a few 100 years before.
They're a little bit more civilized.
A little bit more anyway. They were going to kill him, but
he said you can't. My executioner isn't here.
Well played young King Hakan. So that's that's a really
interesting, I think. And it's important for our story
because a lot of these Royals and nobles were treated better
than you would expect, which leads us to the the black dinner
where they definitely were not. And the other neat thing here is
to is to point out that the Scots continue to win their
independence against badasses, like actually strong kings.
Usually countries win their independence when there's a
moment of weakness from the ruling nation.
But Scotland was like, Nah, we'll take on the the big boss
leaders here and and still beat them or at least hold our own.
So again, that's part of what makes this episode pretty fun is
these are these are good stories, very stories of
overcoming adversity and odds. So this this King Hakan was
friends with the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope.
I talk about powerful friends. And he was friends with Henry
the third of England, who was the king at the time, which he
leveraged into power over Scotland.
Like it's like the old boys club.
Henry is like, I'll take the little subparts of Scotland and
you take the islands and we'll just, yeah, we'll split it up
evenly, right. Yeah.
That's pretty much what they did there.
So this is a very dangerous guy and this is who they're going to
take on. First of all, King Alexander the
Second comes into play and he says, hey, how about you sell us
the Hebrides Islands? Those are the islands right off
the western coast of Scotland. They're really close.
It's like an archipelago. There's a bunch of islands
there. And he says something to the
effect of the gold price. Outrageous.
I'm not selling the islands. His son, King Alexander the
Third goes a bit farther and says let's raid the Isles in, in
secret, You know, kind of like how Tywin or maybe the Dornish
raided through proxies, you know, maybe the the Princess of
Dorn. We've got examples of her
encouraging raids without actually supporting them or
supporting them in secret. There's a lot of examples of
when the Dornish rebels or Dornish raids happen and there's
suspicion that they're being supported or funded by someone
much more powerful. Definitely the case here.
But he wasn't done with that. He, he, the raids were just to
kind of feeling things out. His long term plan was to
invade. But King Hakan, again not the
typical Viking king, had spies and informants and learned of
this plan and was able to quickly mount an expedition of
120 ships, 120 ships quickly. Like within weeks he was
sailing. That is crazy.
Very well organized. Like Sean, you remember Bailon
Greyjoy when he's mustering his ships?
What did he do? What do you mean what did?
He, well, he he, he hid like he didn't let anyone know he was
doing it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
He concealed it because it took so long and if anyone found out
they would know what he was up to.
So six months or more that he kept it a secret and people
could. Plan for it and build their own
ships, or attack the ships being built on and on yet or prepare
ships. That's that's a lot.
That's no joke. That's clean enough to like,
embargo a port, transport thousands of troops.
That's a lot. Yeah, So Theon, when he shows up
the Iron Islands, he's like, Oh my God, they're getting ready
for war. I had no idea.
And then we only find out like six months later, the ship that
dropped him off was held there for like half a year to keep
that secret. So he sails to Largs, a place
that actually had a large Norse population on the mainland, to
make his base. Now, he didn't want to fight.
He just wanted to intimidate them because, you know, he wants
the tax revenue and all that. He's not trying to, like, kill
people that he doesn't have to because those are people paying
him taxes. Alexander the Third was really
clever. He's like, oh, what if we
negotiate? We'll negotiate, you know?
And he drags it out. He lets the weather turn to
storms. And once a storm hits, they make
their move. Alexander the Third, his high
steward was Alexander, who was the 4th high steward of
Scotland. And this guy led the attack and
they win. It's a very small army against a
much bigger 1. And that's amazing.
They, they throw out the, the Norse and it looks like the
Norse are just going to come back the next year because, you
know, it was a temporary victory.
But, and then Alexander, the 4th high steward of Scotland, dies
in the intervening year. And the and his son, the James
Stewart takes over. And luckily though, for them,
King Hakan dies too in that intervening year.
So lucky for Scotland, they beat him and then didn't have to
fight him again. His son says, actually, I will
sell these islands to you. I don't care about the gold
price. It's only three years later he
sells it. And Magnus, King Magnus, that's
this guy's name, the son of King Hakkon.
He ended up being called a King Magnus, the law mender, and he
went on to focus on fighting Sweden, who also had a King
Magnus at the time. So but that's the last Magnus we
have to deal with for now. So that's it. 500 years of Norse
rule was overthrown by these pair of Alexander's Alexander
the King and Alexander the 4th High Steward of Scotland.
So that's pretty cool. I think it's worth pointing out
here that the official Norse ruler might be gone, but Norse
influence have become pervasive. Yeah.
So many. People live in England and
France and all over the place. Yeah, so.
So yeah, they were there, their influence was there.
They just weren't ruling anymore.
That's probably a better way to put it.
Yeah, good clarification. So let's talk a little bit about
Alexander the 3rd. When he defeated King Hakan, he
was only 22. So that's a really good start.
And with James Stewart, the 5th High Steward of Scotland's help,
the the son of, of Alexander, his, his reign was very
successful to maintain peace with his southern neighbors.
His father had married him to Margaret of England, the sister
of a certain Prince Edward, who's going to be huge in this
story. This Margaret was a daughter of
Henry the third of England. So he was she was a member of
House Plantagenet. So this is this happened when he
was 11 and she was 10. And eventually when they were
around 20, they had a daughter who's also called Margaret and
she was called Margaret of Scotland.
Now then, they had an Alexander son, so yes, Margaret and
Alexander had Margaret and Alexander.
Then Alexander becomes the heir, of course, because he's the boy.
And then eight years later, there's a son named David.
So the perfect number of children in some ways, right?
You got your heir, your heir to spare and a girl to form an
alliance with to marry to another family.
And that's how they would have looked at it anyway.
So King Alexander and Queen Margaret attend the coronation
of her brother after the death of King Henry the Third.
Now, I'll tell you who that is. Edward Longshanks, AKA Tywin
Lannister. Yes.
George has been very open about comparing him to Tywin
Lannister. He's the number one influence.
And if you think that Longshanks is going to have a peaceful
relationship with Scotland, let me remind you or inform you, if
you didn't know already, that one of his nicknames was the
Hammer of the Scots. Yes.
Not because he was friendly to them.
Yes, Hammers. You don't hammer people you're
friends with. I don't think certain
euphemisms. Maybe it wasn't like the Scots
were using. Oh, hey, good one.
So, Edward, you might remember him from as the English king in
Braveheart. And yeah, you might remind that
might remind you of the kind of guy he was.
And that's fairly accurate. Yeah, very tie when asked.
He'd already conquered whales by the time.
So he was our very, very impressive figure.
He was tall, 6 foot 2. That's where the name Longshanks
comes from. He had become king in 1272,
about nine years after Scotland defeated the Norse.
He was on crusade when he became king, and not long before he
became king he was attacked by the order of assassins.
They tried to assassinate him. The actual original assassins
from Syria, the Ismaili group, and King Edward actually fought
off the Assassin and killed him, but not before the Assassin
poisoned him. Poison didn't kill Edward.
He was able to get home. He was crowned a full year and a
half later after returning from the Holy Land.
So Alexander the third was the brother-in-law, brother by
marriage to Edward Longshanks. And this is good because you
don't want that guy as an enemy. So as long as you have you're
married to his family. That that's a buffer, right?
Unfortunately, this buffer fell apart kind of fast.
Queen Margaret died the year after Edward was crowned.
So, well, his sister's out of the way, but they're still, he
still has, you know, nephews and and and a niece, right?
So there's still that six years later, in the year 12, at 81,
Alexander shored up those relations with Norway by
marrying Margaret of Scotland, his daughter to King Magnus, the
lawmender's son and heir, Eric. So here we see a difference and
a difference in marriages, because she was married a little
later than you would expect, but not a big deal here.
Very soon after this marriage, the the real disaster unfolded
for Alexander's heirs. They'd already lost their mother
in 1275, and though Alexander slept around a lot, he didn't
remarry. So Prince David dies in 1281,
the same year that his sister marries into the Norse throne.
So this is the year 1281. Still the following year
Alexander marries his son Alexander to another Margaret,
Margaret of Flanders. Margaret of Scotland dies giving
birth to her son with Eric and the daughter is called Margaret.
It's already so many Margarets. So that's the daughter.
The daughter-in-law and the granddaughter are all named
Margaret, right? Yeah, yeah.
And there's probably some more Margarets here and there that we
haven't. Yeah.
And the and the other wife of of the brother.
So to son Prince Alexander. So to distinguish her from the
other, She's the Maid of Norway. That's the name very familiar to
A Song of Ice and Fire, Margaret, the Maid of Norway.
The following year though, the heir, Prince Alexander dies, so
he's gone and they waited a little while to see if Margaret
of Flanders was pregnant because if she had a kid then that would
be the heir, but she was not. So this is very much a Jaharis
and Alison situation. Alexander the Third outlived his
wife and all his children, leading to an eventual great
council type situation and which we'll get to in a second.
This is tragic as well for Scotland because all of a sudden
all the people related to Edward Longshanks in the royal family
are dead. So all of a sudden he can go,
no, I can maybe think about invading or come after you in
some way, exercise my authority. And of course, that's exactly
what he did. But Scotland saw this coming, or
at least was worried about this possibility.
So in 1284, Alexander the Third induces the Parliament of
Scotland to accept this granddaughter, the maid of
Norway, as his heir presumptive, even though she lives in Norway,
even though she's, you know, product of the Norwegian
influence and all that. They're like, well, this is this
is the only kid we've got, let's go with her.
And to strengthen that claim and to re establish relationship
with England, they married her to King Edward's heir, Prince
Edward, who would eventually be Edward the Second.
Not for a long time, though. Now you'd say, wait a minute.
I'm sure they're fully in love too.
Right. Oh, they're fully in love yes.
At this at this very early age. She's Margaret of Norway is
about what, 7 at this time 8 so yeah, not very old now you would
seem to you would think wait, did he really just marry his
only heir to the this the Prince of England?
Wouldn't that mean her lands go to their children?
And that gives Edward Longshanks what he wants?
They're just going to give the throne of Scotland through
marriage? No, the the marriage pact had a
specific carve out for that, that it would not pass to
England. The question is, would Edward
Longshanks actually obey this? Maybe, maybe not.
At the time they said, well, maybe the best course of action
is to not tempt fate and just yo, King Alexander, you're not
that old, just remarry. Maybe you can have a son or more
daughters or something. And that, that'll solve this
problem altogether. So that's what he does.
He remarries to a woman named Yolanda of Drew.
Probably said that wrong. She's French.
I don't speak French. But Alexander then pulls a
Baylon Greyjoy slash. Luthor Tyrell.
Oh boy, he was brave, Brave guy. He fought in that war.
He did a lot of stuff, but maybe too brave.
On March 19th, 1286, he rode off at night during a storm because
March 20th, the next day, was going to be Lana's birthday.
He didn't want to miss her birthday, right?
You got to be there for your new wife's birthday, even if you're
riding in the storm and darkness, which his counselors
had repeatedly told him not to do.
So what does he do? I told you, Luthor Tyrell.
I told you. Baylon Greyjoy.
That's right. He went right off a Cliff.
He rode right off a Cliff in the rain and darkness.
Broke his neck in the earldom of Fife at a place called the
Kinghorn. Yeah.
Kinghorn, or in this case, King Fall and break his neck.
So that was a problem. So whoops.
Lots of oopsies here and lots of people dying, and all of a
sudden you've got a big problem. So what happens next?
It's called the Great Cause. At the beginning I mentioned
that the Great 'cause is pretty much the Great Council.
Yeah, that's, that's right. It pretty much is the Great
Council now, because there's no obvious ruler at this point,
you've got the Guardians of Scotland who come forward.
They are Regents. This is very much like the
Regency of Aegon the Third or perhaps some other regencies
where the Regents weren't very kind to each other.
They didn't exactly work together that well.
In some cases, they killed each other or tried to kill each
other. There's a little unwind peak in
here, or maybe a lot. There were six of these guys
with rotations at the top, like, meaning who was in charge of
them changed and changed quickly.
The first primary Regent was Duncan, the third Earl of Fife.
This is exactly the place where the king fell to his death.
So it's just. But that's just a coincidence
now. Well, probably.
Yeah. They they summoned the storm in
darkness that killed him. Yeah, that's right.
Now the they were the second most powerful at the realm of
the time. Eventually that's going to be
the Stuarts. And and they're going to take
more than just their position of promise.
They're going to take their position as the people who are
able to use the Stone of Scone, AKA the Stone of Destiny, which
is a coronation tool or coronation artifact.
Whenever a new king of Scotland was crowned, they would use the
Stone of Destiny, and this stone remains a part of the story
going forward. Real quick, I want to say
something about that. Yeah, do it.
At first I thought this was a stone, like, you know, maybe the
size of a a baseball or something.
It's huge. It's like 2 feet by 1 foot by 1
foot. It weighs like over 300 lbs It's
huge. Wow.
It it still exists today. Eventually it got incorporated
into the British throne that they crowned the king on.
They like, built a chair around this stone.
King Charles last year sat on that stone to be crowned the
king of England. Yeah.
Pretty amazing. I saw a bunch of other stories
around it too. It like got blown up in a
terrorist attack by suffrage rights actually at one point and
it got stolen by the Scottish students to bring it back from
England to Scotland and all sorts of history around.
That I've got a few more details about the Scone of stone, The
Stone of Scone rather, it was called the Scone of stone and
Terry Pratchett, he reversed it. So that's why I said that.
No, actually, I said that by accident and then just kind of
pivoted to that. So, but really the the Stone of
Scone, we'll have a little bit more about that at the end too,
and a little more in the middle now.
But Duncan the third here is on his way to the Capitol to do his
business ruling as this, you know, as the one of the most
powerful men in Scotland at the time.
And his own kin murder him. They just kill him.
They're like, Nope, not, not for you.
That made his baby son Duncan the 4th, the new Earl of Fife.
But you can't be coronating people and wielding the Stone of
Scone when you're a baby. So his responsibilities were
handed off and that was prestige for a different family.
But. We're going to come back to
Duncan the 4th later when he's an adult.
The next head region was a guy named Alexander Coleman.
Now the Coleman's are going to be pretty big in the story too.
He had been Alexander the Third's chief counselor.
So he was our he was in good with the king and was was well
respected. But he was also dead within a
year. So we have a region who rules
for less than a year killed by his own family, then another
region who dies and we're not really sure why.
He may have just died of old age.
James Stewart, the 5th High Steward, now becomes the chief
Regent. So that guy had been around and
had been effective even after taking over for his father, who
was another Alexander. Now, along with James Stewart,
there's another Alexander, rather the son of the Alexander
Coleman that we just mentioned, Black John Common.
So the last four Regents are James Stewart, 5th High Steward,
Black John Common, and two bishops named Robert and
William. And Robert in particular is
going to be important. Now let's talk about the
Douglases for a minute. Let a little Douglas interlude.
We'll say the Lord Douglas of this time was called Sir William
the Bold. Yes.
Not to be confused with Bearish and the Bold.
Or actually go right ahead and confuse him for Bearish and the
Bold if you want to. He had married Elizabeth
Stewart, the daughter of Alexander, this 4th High Steward
who led the Scottish Scottish armies against the Norse.
She seems to have died back in 1288, but not before Alexander
Stewart and her had a a kid named James.
James. A new one.
Yes, that's right. This James is remembered by the
English as the Black Douglas and he's remembered by the Scottish.
He has good Sir James. So it's really all about where
you're sitting because to the Scots he was a hero to the James
he was like to the to the English, he was like a boogeyman
of sorts, like the J The Black Douglas will come get you.
And as we go through the story, you'll see why he has that
reputation. Now a little confusion because
there are the Black Douglases, which is a branch of the Douglas
family that forms from his descendants, but he's the Black
Douglas. It's not exactly the same thing.
Anyway, this guy, after his wife Elizabeth Stewart dies, decides
he needs to remarry 'cause he's only got 1 James as a son.
You need more than that. You need multiple James's and
Williams to survive in this environment, right?
So he needs more kids. He he abducts a woman named
Eleanor de Lovaine and it's a mystery.
It's like how did Aegon the Uncrowned and his wife Reyna,
how did they get their Dragons when they were out in the field
and they snuck back into King's land?
Somehow they got their Dragons to fight against Megor.
We don't know how that happened. It was some some amazing
adventure that George has yet to describe.
Similar case here. This guy marries Eleanor even
though at the time she was besieged by a different army in
a castle, right? She's stuck in a castle with a
besieging army around and he has nothing to do with this army.
Yet somehow she escapes this castle to and is his prisoner
now prisoner. I'm using finger quotes to
describe because it seems like she was in on this or wanted it
or something because a he was punished for it for kidnapping
her but she bailed him out so that tells you something and he
was then allowed to marry her. Which is like, usually you're
not allowed to marry people you kidnap.
But I mean, this is a different time and place, right?
But King Edward Longshanks was not happy about all this.
Even though he has no authority here, he ordered his land
seized, which he did actually have some authority because the
Douglass had English lands and Scottish lands.
So he said, hey, your English lands were taking that and I
want those two delivered to me because he didn't approve of
this marriage. He didn't approve of any of
this. But the Guardians of Scotland
just said they said nothing, actually, they just didn't do
it. So Edward was got mad and and
waited for an opportunity to get his revenge.
And he did get it now with her, with Eleanor the Black Douglas
had a a son called Hugh Douglas who was called Hugh the Dull.
Now it's not very nice to call him Hugh the Dull.
He wasn't stupid. He was a cleric, he was a a
priest. So he was boring.
That was the idea. They called him dull because he
was boring, but more importantly he had a another son called Sir
Archibald Douglas, the man from whom the red Douglas's would
descend. So this again is William the
Bold has the black Douglas, the Red the future red Douglas and
Hugh the doll in between them, right?
So William the Bold had a back and forth relationship with
Longshanks mostly back. As you can see, he's already mad
at him for the kidnapping and this marriage and not being
seized when he was ordered. And this is going to be a thing
going forward. So the, the the Scottish
nobility is like, all right, there's still no more options.
Alexander the third is dead. His his widow didn't have a
child. She, she was, you know, oh,
wait, oh, she does have a child. Wait, no, she doesn't.
She's pregnant, but the child is stillborn.
So that's that's no good. So they go ahead with Margaret,
as in the Maid of Norway, to be the Queen.
Air presumptive. Maybe something will change.
Maybe something else will change.
Not air presumptive, but you know, maybe something else will
happen. But she's the only one they have
so. What's the timing here?
How old is she at this point, do you know?
She's seven, Yeah. Still a child.
Yeah, she's seven years old, very young.
So they agree. And I mean, they a majority of
Scottish nobles, but enough of them are not happy about this,
including Robert De Bruce, Not Robert the Bruce, his father,
Robert De Bruce, right, The Bruce and de Bruce, like there's
the span, the French version and the not one is the father, one
is the son, the famous one is the son.
This is the father, Robert De Bruce and his friends go to the
spot where they're planning to inaugurate Margaret and just
camp out there with soldiers because they aren't going to
allow this to happen. They're like, Nope, you will not
crown her. Turns out they didn't have to
bother because on the on like on the ship or on the road, not
entirely clear where, but on the way from Norway, she dies.
There's just, there's no evidence of foul play.
It's not even suggested. But she rode her horse off a
Cliff. She blown her ship.
She blown her ship off a Cliff. The world was flat back then,
let's not forget. So it's pretty suspicious.
But I don't know that Edward Longshanks could have murdered
her from that far away. It's possible.
Maybe someone loyal to him, I don't know.
It's there. There's definitely reason to be
suspicious. He's the beneficiary and it
throws Scotland into chaos. So here's where it becomes the
Great Council of one-on-one situation because they have to
go, well, who's going to be king now?
And they, they decide, OK, let's not fight over it if possible.
If possible, they try not to fight over it.
And the idea is, OK, we'll just put forth anyone wants to come
forward with a claim can say, all right, I want you all to
examine my legal claim. And then eventually going to
figure out who has the best claim and that person's going to
be king. 14 people came forward. It's a very similar number to
how many came forward in the Great Council of 101.
One of them was actually the King Eric of Norway.
He's like, yeah, my daughter was going to be king or queen, why
not me? Like, well, you have no relation
to any of this anymore, King Eric.
But that's the medieval mindset. And the foremost ones were John
Balliol and that same Robert Debruce.
So you kind of can see why Robert Debruce didn't want
Margaret crowned because he wanted it for himself, right?
So, so did this Jon Balliol character.
And well, let's go back to a quote from George.
Here we go. When Alexander the third King of
Scots rode over a Cliff and Margaret the Maid of Norway died
on route back home and the Scottish Lords called on Edward
the First of England to decide who had the best claim to the
throne. Something like 14 or 15.
I need to look up the exact number.
Competitors came forward to present their pedigrees and
documents to the court. The decision eventually boiled
down to precedence. John Balliol versus proximity
Bruce and went to Balliol. But those other 13 guys all had
claims as well. King Eric of Norway, for
instance, based his claim to the throne on his daughter, the
aforementioned Maid of Norway, who had been the Queen.
However briefly. He seemed to believe that
inheritance should run backwards, and hell, if he had
been the King of France instead of the king of Norway, maybe it
would have. The medieval world was governed
by men, not by laws. You could even make a case that
the Lords preferred the laws to be vague and contradictory,
since that gave them more power. Great insight by George there
both tells you how he operates as a writer and how the real
world operated then and now. Yes, people can be above the
law. Laws are for people who aren't
above them. And usually the nobles are above
them, especially these most powerful of nobles.
There's always ways to get around.
Sometimes it's, it's difficult. You know, you've got the Pope
and, and other Lords and, and, and laws that to, to contend
with, but you can see that those, even those things can be
overcome. So as George said, Edward
Longshanks is invited by many Scottish Lords, not all but many
to administer but not adjudicate the situation.
Right. That's a very fine line They're
walking with a very dangerous, ambitious man.
And indeed, as soon as he's brought in, he's like, all
right, if you want me to do this, you guys will have to be
my vassals. You know, all of Scotland has to
be my vassal. They're like, that's exactly
what we didn't want to do. And he's he tries to force the
issue. And here's where we get the
Harold Westerling on TV argument.
Remember what happened on House of the Dragon?
Harold Westerling is ordered by Otto to go kill Rainier and her
children. He says, I'm a Kingsguard, Lord
commander. The Kingsguard, the only person
who can give me an order is the king.
There's no king. I don't have to listen to any of
you. See you later.
Now, they couldn't just walk away from Edward because they're
in their own country, but they did make a similar argument.
It's like, look, Edward, the only one who can give you what
you want is the king, and we don't have a king.
Only the King's order would be valid.
Only the king can do homage to you.
And we don't have 1:00. So we can't agree to that.
If we make a king and he agrees to that, then maybe, but we
can't agree to that. We lack the authority.
We can't. It's not our place.
It's a pretty good argument, but of course it annoys the heck out
of Edward, and he doesn't exactly give up.
So yeah, it's 1292 that John Balliol is chosen king, as
George pointed out in the quote there six years after
Alexander's death. So they went six years without a
king. And even this doesn't go very
well because a lot of people are like, screw this Balliol guy, we
don't agree with it. Douglas the Bold.
William Douglas the Bold doesn't show up for the first Parliament
and neither does Robert Debruce, which really both undermines his
John Balliols authority and gets them in trouble with John and
with King Edward. One little side note here I
found interesting was the the council, the people making this
decision. It was 40 people picked by
Balliol, 40 people picked by Bruce, and 24 people picked by
Edward. It was 104 people.
I don't know how where they come up with those numbers and how
the other 12 or whatever claimants didn't get to pick any
of the people involved. But I think that would be as
interesting as anything to learn about how and who those
individuals were. But.
Yeah, I agree. So next is the old alliance.
Our next section, Edward Longshanks finally just went too
far. He kept ordering the Scots
around. He made John Bally, I'll go to
court in England over some kind of trivial matter.
Was very embarrassing for a king to be summoned to do a minor
legal matter in another country. But he went because he didn't
want to upset Edward. But finally, Edward ordered
Scotland to just provide military support for his war in
France and they and that finally they balked.
Not only do they balk, they formed the old alliance with
France that was a mutual pact against England.
This was huge. This is like Mance Rayder
signing a deal with Tywin Lannister, right?
Or Baylon Greyjoy with Tywin, because this is a very small
country. Scotland is not powerful.
Scotland at this point is particularly small and and not
well regarded on the international stage, right?
They didn't have a lot of regional power.
They were mostly just controlled by these outside nations.
This is starting to change and there's a big sign of that.
Yes, the the deal heavily favored France as a result of
France being the much more powerful half of this
partnership. But the deal was with Iron King
Philip the 4th. This is the guy that ended the
Templars. This is the guy that starts the
accursed king series that we've referenced so many times.
This was Philip the fair. He was an incredibly powerful
king. So to be dealing with this John
Ballyhol guy who was not even like well invested, like a lot
of the Scottish lawyers weren't even following his authorities.
So it was a pretty big deal. And the reason I bring up Tywin,
not only because the deal was with against Edward, but because
Tywin actually says this, remember, there's a council
meeting in, I think a Clash of Kings.
But maybe it's, no, it must be a Storm of Swords.
Definitely a Storm of Swords where they're talking about the
fact that Mance Rayder is invading the North and they're
like, maybe we should have a deal with him.
And Tywin's like, we don't have to have a deal with him.
He's doing what we want. We'll just let him do that.
We don't have to have a deal. Why give him anything?
He's already doing what we want. And then he made the same point
about Bailon Greyjoy. He's like Bailon Greyjoy's
attacking the North. He wants to deal with us.
Let's see how well he does. If he gets a little farther,
maybe then we'll make a deal with him.
Which eventually Tywin does suggest marrying Cersei to
Bailon, which of course Cersei and many others are like, no,
please don't do that. And then Tywin dies so it
doesn't happen. But similar point here, Iron
King Phillip maybe didn't really need Scotland as an ally, maybe
didn't really care. He couldn't really hurt him, but
it could only help. It's it's the same thing they're
going to they're totally willing to use Scotland and if it got
more out of it, great. If not, no big deal, they're
still going to have to fight England.
So here's a line from George. Just a single line.
He said. Certainly the policies Edward
followed, Tywin would have approved of.
So yeah, this goes to show, right?
So Tywin, Tywin rather Edward responded to the old alliance by
invading and he takes the town of Berwick on Tweed.
Berwick on tree Tweed, where he killed a lot of citizens, a
massacre. This was actually portrayed in
Braveheart. It just so happens that Berwick
was governed by William Douglas the Bold, the very guy that
Edward had ordered seized but was not seized.
So he goes right for his lands when he invades.
This time Edward had him though, because Douglas was brave and he
wasn't going to abandon his lands.
He defends the city and is captured.
He is forced to sign a new oath to Edward and then he just kind
of breaks the deal. He the battle of Dunbar happens.
England wins that easily, takes the capital and takes the Stone
of Destiny. No, Edward seizes the Stone of
Destiny. James, the 5th high steward of
Scotland at this point, who's still around?
He's going to be around for a while.
He says this is going very badly, We can't beat Edward.
He surrenders. The rest of the Scottish
nobility basically follows his lead and says, yeah, well, if
he's not fighting and we're not, we're not fighting either.
King John Balliol has is forced into a very humiliating
surrender. He has to stand in front of
Edward with his coat with all its sigils and and all the
heraldry in front of all these English nobles while they RIP
the sigils off his coat. To this day, he's known as empty
coat Tomb Tabard. Yes, people still call him that
to this day. He was eventually imprisoned in
the Tower of London and then eventually after that sent to
live out his days as a rich but obscure person.
And he's out of the story. Worth noting, this is another
example of someone that you almost just expected they would
execute, but they didn't. He's an adult, he's the king,
but they want to remove him. You would think they want to
remove his line. They might even kill his kids.
You can imagine all kinds of butt.
Nah, just go. Just don't bother.
Just out of the picture and everything will be OK.
And indeed, his son is going to enter the picture at some point.
But before that, Edward says, all right, I, I conquered
Scotland's. It's done.
It was not done, however. He did take the Stone of Destiny
to London and then went to France where he continued
warring and ordered many Scottish Lords who he considered
his vassals now to follow him there.
Most did because they were still scared of this guy for good
reason. He was intimidating, capable and
had a lot more soldiers and money than they did.
But some of them still just didn't obey.
William the Bold just said no, he just didn't show up.
He just said I'm going to stay here and we'll see what happens.
Bishop Robert, that same Bishop Robert who was one of the
counselors, he also refused, just didn't show up.
Another little footnote. I think I meant to mention this
earlier, but that's part of why Douglas the Black got that name,
because Scotland was usually fighting from a disadvantage.
Like England just had way more supplies, population,
infrastructure and so on. And so Scotland would use like
Grilla tactics, right? They wouldn't like March up
troops in middle of the field to fight at 9:00 AM.
You know, they would attack on the roads, little skirmishes and
Grilla tactic type stuff. And it was like Black Douglas.
It was like unfair, like, you know, he's a bringing us doom,
you know, of course, the Scotland Ziggy with Douglas the
Good. Yeah, you're beating the
English. You know, Yep, it's very true
that guerrilla tactics were what they had to work with.
They couldn't face the English directly.
Kind of like America. We couldn't face the English
either directly. We had to do guerrilla tactics.
Different style of guerrilla tactics, gunpower era, but
similar line of thinking. This is very much Aegon the
First or dare on the 1st thinking, hey, I conquered Dorn,
I installed some people, now I can go elsewhere.
But as soon as he left, they rose up.
And that's exactly what happened here.
As soon as Edward went to France, they were like, aha,
he's embroiled with the French. That's a really powerful army.
That's a really powerful nation He's fighting.
This is our chance to rise up. Edward, of course, would not
forgive or forget that they rose up while he was engaged.
So they rise up. This is when Andrew Moray and
then William Wallace emerges as leaders.
The movie was accurate in one way in that William Wallace did
start off by killing a sheriff. The the reason for killing that
sheriff is was not because they killed his wife, but whatever.
Edward was too busy in France. He orders Robert the Bruce to go
back to England or Scotland rather and deal with the
Douglas. So Robert the Bruce gets some
men together, goes to the Douglas lands, and when he gets
there, he's like, I'm here to join you.
So he just flips and says I'm on your side.
His head's like, it's we're told he had like a crisis of
conscience. Who knows what really happened?
Maybe he planned all along. He's like, all right, here's my
chance. It's portrayed that he was, you
know, conflicted about it until he got there.
But who knows what really happened anyway?
The first noble supporter of William Wallace and Andrew
Moray. It was William the Bold.
He immediately broke that oath of fealty.
He's like, yeah, I had an oath to, I took an oath to the king
of England, but my oath to Scotland is stronger.
It's very much a Jaime Lannister like a oath conundrum.
He's like, yeah, I took an oath, but I took that.
I took this oath too. And they, you know, so yeah, I
love that the, the conflicting oath comes up big here.
I don't suppose he was really that conflicted about it, but
he's able to say that, you know? So Robert De Bruce is only 22
years old at this point. He's one of the first other
nobles to join. And quickly Moray and Wallace
win the Battle of Sterling Bridge, which is portrayed in
Braveheart, though without a bridge, it's just the Battle of
Sterling. I don't know.
They didn't call it anything anyway, they wouldn't have
battle. But shortly after, Lord William
is captured again. This time he doesn't get out of
prison. They mistreat him in jail and he
dies the following year in 1298. But his heirs would cause all
sorts of problems. This is this is the remember,
this is the father of the black Douglas, not the black Douglas.
Now the black Douglas is going to get going.
But back in 1298, Edward won a political victory.
He actually got the king of France to agree to a truce.
And in that deal, they just cut Scotland out.
They're like, well, see what I said before, Like the king
didn't have to necessarily give Scotland what he wanted because
they were the more powerful end of the partnership here.
And in fact it was no longer the Iron King in charge anyway.
So Edward just reinvade Scotland under now that he has a truce
with France. This was happens at the same
time William Wallace is knighted.
William Wallace is named guardian of the Kingdom of
Scotland. There's some evidence actually.
William was ruling in a non non military capacity.
See this title over the whole country.
But interestingly, when Edward later conquered it again or won
several battles, he destroyed a lot of the records.
This is maybe why we're missing some of the other other records
as well. Anyway, Edward defeated William
at Falkirk. William escaped but resigned his
post because no one trusted him as a military leader anymore.
He had, he had failed. And they're like, well, we got
to go with somebody else. The Pope said, Edward stop, stop
doing this. But he didn't.
Wallace instead goes to France, starts trying to recruit
instead, since he's no longer a general, he's a recruiter.
Robert the Bruce and John the third common.
We had John the second common in the black.
Now we have John the third Common in the red.
We're now the joint guardians. But they just couldn't get
along. Finally another letter from the
Pope came and Edward backed off a little bit and then Robert
resigned his guardian of Scotland.
And then John the Red resigned his guardian of Scotland.
So things are really changing quickly here.
Edward again invades a few years later and brings his son, Prince
Edward, the future King Edward the Second to get him some
experience to win him some glory.
He gives his son the bigger army.
He's like, go do this. And it doesn't work.
He's just not he he's in many ways, Edward the second was
considered a great Prince, but he was a horrible military
leader and horrible politician. So I, I don't exactly know what
they were talking about now. He's just, he was good at like
non, he's like courtly behavior and music and other stuff, but
he wasn't good at ruling or managing other nobles and stuff
like that. So he's still fighting even
though Edward does a poor job. King Edward does a good job
continuously. And Robert just finally says, I
got I give up, I give up, I surrender.
He he we don't know why. Maybe it was a stratagem.
Maybe he was tired of seeing his people die.
His father, remember the old guy that's giving Robert the Bruce
advice and telling him what to do that that was fairly
accurate. The things he was telling him to
do weren't accurate, but Robert De Bruce was still alive, he was
just infirm. So Robert the Bruce was out
there doing stuff while his father is still lying in bed.
But in the movie he's like we, we got to bend the knee and then
we can come back, which is pretty much what happens.
So that that at least is semi accurate.
Now Edward wanted to make examples out of some of the
leadership and that was William Wallace.
William Wallace is the guy that was made an example of at one
point he ordered the Scottish nobles.
He's like look, you guys hand over William Wallace or none of
you get your lands back. Like I'm going to take all your
lands away. So this this included the 5th
high steward, James and John Coleman the Red.
It's not super clear whether they participated or how much
they participated or just acted like they were helping flush
Wallace out. Wallace was a controversial
figure even amongst Scott's, especially the nobility.
He was captured in 1305 and executed actually more brutally
than they showed in the movie. I was like, wow, he was.
It was worse. Now, just prior to William's
execution, Robert the Bruce secretly engaged Bishop William
Lamberton and they had a pact. They're like, all right, we're
going to free Scotland one day and we're going to bide our time
until Edward dies. He's old.
We're not going to go up against that guy again.
He's too formidable. So we'll just divide our time,
work together behind the scenes, and when he died, we'll rise up.
Now, this isn't exactly how it went, but that was the idea.
Now, John the Red finds out about this and he says, hey, you
guys making a deal without me? I want in.
And so Robert's like, OK, OK, I'll make a deal with you, too.
Let's support each other's claims.
One of us is going to become king.
The other one gets the other's lands.
Now there's some evidence that John took this deal and maybe
decided to go tell King Edward about it to get his side to work
out and to kind of cut Robert back out of the deal.
Robert found out about it and didn't let John know he found
out about it. He arranged to meet John at a
church because they needed neutral ground.
The two of these guys didn't really like each other that
much, even though they had this deal.
They had fought before. There was a lot of bad blood and
mutual ambition. You know, they'll maybe too much
alike in some ways. That church is neutral ground.
They'll be safe. Yeah, yeah, right.
What could go wrong? They're in a church.
Like no one ever kills someone else in a church.
Robert kills John Common in the church stabs.
Him to dead music, yeah. Exactly.
And this isn't he would have been excommunicated really like
this. That's what should have
happened. The Pope like basically ordered
this, but Bishop Lamberton and and Bishop Robert Wishart are
like, no, we're not going to excommunicate Robert.
He's our hero. He's the guy that's going to be
our king. And that's still their plan.
So that's what happened. Instead of being excommunicated,
he's crowned. They make him Robert the first
of Scotland. Yay, Robert, King Robert.
Now what does England say about this?
They say that's not a king. He's Robert the Bruce.
He's he's he's not a king. No, we don't recognize Robert as
king. So this is the year.
What is it 13 O 5 or 6? Anyway, so he declares himself
his first campaign is a disaster.
He gets a lot of men. He loses the Battle of Methven
and his family is captured like his his sisters, his daughters,
everybody. His brothers were caught and
those three were hanged, drawn and quartered.
Bad news. Awful.
They got the William Wallace treatment and his his other
family are treated in a variety of embarrassing ways.
One of them was put in a cage outside a castle and left there
every day for four years. That's his.
This is sister Marjorie. Marjorie is going to be
important later. So this here's we get the spider
story, though this is a little bit like Ned Stark.
Remember when Ned Stark was in prison and virus comes to talk
to him and and he won't bend until Santa is brought up?
Well, there's no spider in that one except virus himself.
Here there's an actual, we're we're told there's an actual
spider and it's an, it's probably a legend, but Robert
saw this. He's hiding in the, in the
Scottish forests. He's he's penniless and, and
decrepit at this point and doesn't know if he's going to
got any future left. He sees this spider making a
web. The spider's web gets broken by
the wind or the rain and the spider just starts over again.
He just perseveres. He keeps going.
He just keeps on going. Like Var said, keep on paddling
right? Robert is apparently inspired by
this. He's like that spider didn't
give up, neither am I. I'm going for it.
A year later he reemerges from hiding and again the Scots
flocked to his banners. This time it does goes really
well because Edward is sick. They know he's going to die.
It's unlikely he's going to recover.
And then as Robert gains momentum, winning some battles,
Edward does finally die. And more men join Robert like,
oh, it's going even better. Let's join up now.
Edward died and it was placed in his tomb.
And his tomb to this day contains a vow to revenge
himself on Robert the Bruce. And this is where the the
nickname Hammer of the Scots comes from.
Around this time was the incident of the Douglas Larder.
OK, this was maybe 13 or O 7 or maybe 13 O eight.
It was on Palm Sunday. So again, using the religious
holidays or the church or this moment to attack when it's least
expected. So the black Douglas is now
becoming prominent. Remember, this is the son of
William the Bold, the oldest son of William the Bold, also known
the Black Douglas, also known of course, as Good Sir James, as
Sean pointed out, right? So when everyone's at church, he
bursts in with his men and they're, they shout a Douglas, a
Douglas, which is, you know, like a Griffin.
A Griffin like the Conningtons, right?
They killed the English soldiers of the Garrison, cut off their
heads, threw them all in a pile and burned the pile.
And then they put salt in the wells and dead horse parts in
the wells to ruin the wells. So why was this called the
Douglas Larder? Was it because the Douglass did
it? Well, yes, partly, but it was
against his own castle. The English held his castle and
he did this to his own castle. He's like, no, if I can't use
it, neither can you. That's the kind of an enemy
you're dealing with here. This is what Edward has to deal
with. And this is the man that is good
Sir James, AKA the Black Douglas.
He is not willing to give an inch.
And this becomes very characteristic of Scottish
warfare against the English. It kind of already was, but it,
it, it goes up a notch or several notches in that their
goal is to deny the English anything.
If you, if they can't take a castle, they're going to burn
that castle. If you're, if they're going to,
if you're going to come into our territory, we're going to burn
the land. So you can't have any farmland.
If we're going to leave these wells behind, we're going to
poison them so your men can't drink out of them.
If we can't have it, no one can. Yes, that's the idea.
That was, I think that was Edinburgh Castle if I remember.
Correctly. Apparently it's we're supposed
to pronounce it Edinburgh. Edinburgh.
It has a very story history. It's one of the most assaulted
locations on Earth over the centuries and one of the most
continuously occupied locations in Europe.
So. Now the following year in 13 O
9, our good friend James Stewart, the 5th High Steward of
Scotland, who's still around after all this.
Well, he finally isn't. He passes and his son Walter
became the 6th High Steward of Scotland because it's a
hereditary title like the Tyrells.
This is a problem though, because this Walter was 13, the
High Steward of Scotland during a time of war, is 13 years old.
He didn't actually carry out his duties.
He's had the title and other people kind of did it for him so
that they did have a solution for these kind of issues.
Now Fast forward four more years.
Robert the Bruce declares that any Scottish Lord who still
supports John Baliol or anyone else 'cause even even though
Baliol was out of the picture, there are people still loyal to
him or holding out for his family or whatever.
He says if you don't support me, your lands are forfeit.
So that really got a few people off the couch to join him and a
few others to go deeper into Edward's side, shall we say,
Because again, we're we're in Edward the second now, it's
still Edward. Now remember we had Edward the
4th as the Robert Baratheon parallel and we have Edward the
first here. We're going to get all the way
back to that. Not not that Edward the 4th will
be in here, but we're going to have Edward the 2nd and Edward
the 3rd. So all the Edwards are covered
here. In 1314, the famous Battle of
Bannockburn was won by Robert. In this battle, John Common the
4th. We already had John the second
the black, John the third the red.
Robert had stripped his lands back when a while back because
they're still enemies and John Common fought was for the
English in hopes of getting his land back but he was killed in a
cavalry charge and they cease to be a player in in this game.
Robert himself fought very hard. At one point he was charged by a
certain Sir Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford.
It's a real strong bellwass moment.
Robert only had an axe and Henry had a Lance.
The guy comes right at him with a Lance and Robert stands his
gag. He was actually on a small
horse, but he still stood his ground on that horse.
So with the Lance coming right at him like Osnac Zopal coming
right at him, he does the strong bellwass movement.
He just dodges the point of the Lance and then axes Hugh in the
in the face or sorry, Henry, not Hugh in the face.
He was very nonchalant about it. He just cuts this guy's head.
He chops this guy's face with his with his axe and he's like,
I broke my favorite axe. Dang it.
Some of this, this guy's real quite a tough one.
Now they so they beat Edward the Second's army.
He has to retreat. And there's this guy named Gia
de Argentin. He's another Frenchman whose
name I have butchered, probably. He was considered the third best
knight in all the realm, in all the realms, in all of Europe.
He was a Norman fighting for Edward.
His job was to make sure the king was safe.
So the king is retreating. He helps the king retreat, and
he says, you know what, king, your retreat appears to be safe.
I don't retreat, so I'm going back.
So he goes back and dies. The point of this is to because
it's a crazy story, but also well, who are the other two
greatest Knights? Well, you said third greatest.
Well, who are the top 2? Henry the Holy Roman Emperor,
not a part of the story other than this moment and Robert the
Bruce. Robert the Bruce was that famous
that well regarded even before his strong bell wasp moment.
Apparently so after all this, Robert wins this, this stirring
victory. And it gives him negotiating
power because he captures a lot of nobles and he's able to get
his family out. Plus Bishop Wishart.
He gets all these people freed from prison, including Marjorie,
the one who was had four years of solitary confinement.
And Marjorie is released from prison and she's picked up by
escort by Walter Stewart, this man who's now a few years older.
He's no longer a 13 year old. He's only about maybe 17 now.
And they get to talking and then they get to marry him.
So Walter Stewart marries Marjorie Bruce.
You can see how they're getting into the royal family now,
right? Here's another little parallel.
Even though the Battle of Bannockburn is maybe the most
famous battle in Scottish history, certainly the most
famous in this period of time, they don't know where it is.
They don't know where it happened.
There's there's monuments. They're not exactly in the right
spot because they don't know where that was very similar to
the red grass field of of Black Fire Rebellion fame.
We don't know where that was. We have some ideas, we have some
guesses, but we don't actually know.
There was some campaigning in Ireland.
Robert tried to install his brother, another gosh darn
Edward, Edward Bruce, as the High King of Ireland.
But Edward Bruce was a real glory hound maybe, or maybe a
guy who didn't like the Stewarts.
Maybe he would didn't like the fact that his sister or his
niece was married to a Stewart, the brother of 5th Stewart
James. So the uncle of this current
Walter Stewart, Jon Stewart brings an army to Ireland to
help Edward Bruce win against the English.
But Edward's like I don't want your help and he starts his
battle before Jon arrives and loses.
So he really should have waited for that help.
Even though Edward Bruce was killed in this battle, it was
still effective for the Scottish because Ireland was just used as
a recruiting ground for soldiers to send against Scotland.
And that stopped with this. Edward Bruce was also a
Lieutenant to Robert, his brother and with his death the
new guardian of the realm, the new Lieutenant to Robert the
Bruce is the black Douglas. Meanwhile, while this all this
Irish business is happening, Marjorie was thrown from her
horse but pregnant with Walter Stewart's son.
She either died right after falling or during.
It's not clear either way. The better version of the story,
meaning the more interesting, is that her the fall from the horse
triggered the premature birth of her son.
Of course, they named the son Robert after Robert the Bruce,
and this boy became the presumptive heir to Robert the
Bruce 'cause he didn't have any actual sons of his own.
So he now has a grandson, and that's his presumptive heir for
a few years. In late 1318, the Black Douglas
becomes this young Roberts tutor.
Yeah. And just before that, the Black
Douglas fought a guy named Sir Robert Neville, the Peacock of
the North, and defeated him in single combat.
His skills, as Sean mentioned earlier, how guerrilla warfare
was becoming a Scottish thing, They just kept getting better
and better at it. Eventually by the end of the
story, they're going to have, like, hundreds of years of
practice at this. You got to imagine they were
really, really good at. Yeah, the American
revolutionaries were good at it, but they only had to be good at
it for a few years, and then they won.
And that was it. And you got America.
And that's it's done. Like they don't have to do that
kind of guerrilla fighting anymore.
These guys did it for generations.
They must have been amazing at it.
Yeah. But it was also really a brutal
style of war because, yes, this this scorched earth policy was
pretty tough on the locals too, right?
You're like, you're burning. Those are our own farms were
burning. Our own wells were denying.
So this is where I compare the Black Douglas to the Black fish,
because that is what the Black fish wanted to do.
He wanted to burn all the land around River Run so that the
Lannisters wouldn't have a lot of food to besiege them.
And that it. Well, he didn't just want to.
He did do that. There's a lot as you can see the
combination of skills that the Blackfish has.
Blackfish was amazing at scouting and raiding and sneak
attacks. Same thing with this guy, right?
Hit a career, made a career out of it.
Brendan and James very much cut from the same cloth here.
Same black cloth that is now in 1324, Robert had a son, his own
son, a David. So that makes this Robert
Stewart now second in line to the throne.
So he's pushed down a spot, right?
In the 1320s, in general, King Edward the Second, again, not
nearly as effective as his father gave power to the
dispenser family and he dispensed power to the
dispensers. That's right.
They were marcher Lords. You know, marcher Lords, a
familiar term. And in Westeros, the marches
are, well, it depends. There's a couple different
marches, the marches, the Dornish marches in in the
Stormlands. There's Dornish marches also in
the Reach. Basically just the borders, the
marchers in England are the borders of Wales.
So Wales was also for a very long time, you know, a separate
country that was ruled as a vassal ship.
But eventually, you know, Edward Longshanks conquered them and
they became fully part of, of England at that point.
So the dispensers were really bad.
They were awful. They were rapacious.
They stole lots of land. They their, one of their tactics
was to take land from widows who were unable to fight the claims
or they didn't have enough help to stop this from happening.
This is the kind of thing that the, the widow's law introduced
by Alison was, was designed to combat against this sort of
thing. In 1326, the old alliance was
renewed. In 1327, Edward the Second was
deposed and killed by his own wife and her lover Rodger
Mortimer. Such a thing would never have
happened to the Long Shanks. Even though in the movie they
portrayed the same woman is sleeping with William Wallace
the same Isabella didn't happen. She was like 12 in that moment
in real real life. So no, she was not sleeping with
William Wallace. So Edward the second dies,
Edward the third becomes king. Thankfully, it's just another
Edward. Actually, is that good or is
that bad? I don't know.
This Edward would rule for 50 years, so he's going to be in
the picture for a while. And of course, he's going to
make war on Scotland again. In fact, Isabella and Rodger
thought, hey, what better way to legitimize our rule than by
attacking Scotland? Everybody, all the English will
love us if we win victories over the Scots.
Yeah. Anyway, now Edward the Third, we
don't need to talk about him very much, but I do want to draw
a connection to our Wars of the Roses episode because Edward the
Third children include Edward the Black Prince and John of
Gaunt. John of Gaunt is the guy that
both York and Lancaster houses come from, so that's pretty big
little connection to our previous episode.
Now, Walter Stewart died even though he was young.
So his son with Marjorie Bruce, that young Robert Stewart
becomes the 7th high steward, even younger than his father
was, who became High Stewart at 13.
He's 11. And of course, he also has Sir
James Stewart as his guardian. The black James or the the black
James, the black Douglas, Yeah, Black James.
That works. So Edward Third is he is a
formidable king eventually, but at this point, he's a teenager.
He's inexperienced and he's nominally in charge of his army
when they invade Scotland, but not really.
They just, they say he's in charge, but really it's his
advisors. The Black Douglas just
completely run circles around them.
Edwards invading army is there. They they go here, they go
there. The Black Douglas ambushes them,
leads them away from where they can get supplies, burns the
supplies, burns the countryside. They're all they're all at wit's
end. Eventually he leads a night
assault against them when he seems to have a strong position.
They're not expecting it. They're like, well, if you're
sitting up there, we're going to hold out.
We can't attack you, but you're going to run out of food.
He says, OK, yes, I am running out of food, but I can attack
you at night because I'm the black Douglas.
So they attack and they almost actually capture Edward the
Third. They get as far as his tent and
cut some of the poles out. His own pastor, his personal
pastor, the King's pastor dies trying to defend him.
So good pastor, I guess if your pastor's going to take one for
you, I guess they had chose well with that guy, but he's dead
now. Well, all these guys are dead
now, but he was dead then. This is followed by Robert
counter invading. Robert the Bruce leads an
invasion into England. It's very successful because of
the embarrassing loss they just suffered.
And finally, in the year 1328 or 1327, the English throne finally
recognizes that Robert the Bruce is King of Scotland.
And like fine, you win, you proved it.
All right, it took 20 some years, but OK now.
This included marrying that new son David to Edward, the third
sister Joan AKA Joan of the Tower.
This is the daughter of Isabella who was the she Wolf of France.
Now I said married and I meant married not betrothed.
Even though David was four and and Joan was seven.
Yes. Married and not betrothed, yes.
So peace at last 1328. It only lasted 4 years, but
before that we get our Braveheart and Bitter Steel
example. Robert died in 1329, so you
might have thought peace would last even less time because
they're powerful. King dies.
He was only 55. We don't know why he died, it's
not clear. Anyway, his dying wish was very
bitter steelish. He wanted his heart to go to the
Holy Land, either to be buried there or to be carried.
While people holding his body, his heart, were fighting against
God's foes, one or the other. So who decides to do this for
him? None other than the black
Douglas. He takes Roberts heart, removes
it from the corpse. Well, not personally.
That was done by other people. He puts it in a silver casket.
A small silver casket around his neck.
Hey, I'm wearing Gray and silver, sort of.
And here's the heart. Yeah, I have Robert the Bruces
heart right here. No, it's a Stannis.
That silver cascade was originally intended for finger
bones. Nice.
That's right. So he could he took Roberts
heart with him on crusade, just like Bitter Steel's skull was
carried in front by the Golden Company when they returned to
Westeros. What's extra wild here is that
even though the Black Douglas was the most bitter foe of
Edward the Third, of course they were cousins.
Because all these folks are related, right?
Edward the Third wrote the black Douglas a letter of
recommendation. He's like, yeah, take this guy
on crusade. On the surface, that's a little
weird because they were bitter enemies.
On the on the other hand, it's like, well, you're going to go
to a crusade down. There, you're not coming after
me. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, Go to the Holy Land, by all means, go.
But way the hell over there, it's so far away.
So the black Douglas goes on crusade.
He wants to go on crusade with the English or the French or the
Scots, but they couldn't get their act together.
So he goes to Castile and goes on crusade with King Alfonso the
11th AKA Alfonso the Avenger AKA Alfonso the 11 because he had
even though he was Alfonso the 11th he had 11 children only one
of whom was legit. Now this is where we give a
little shout out to Sevilla. Ashea and I were just in Spain.
We went to buildings that King Alfonso the 11th and other
Alfonso's lived in and and or built and, or restored and it
was great. So we're going to have lots of
pictures in a future episode and maybe we'll talk a little more
about Alfonso the 11th and Alfonso the 13th, Ashea's
favorite, the porn king. That's right, Alfonso the 13th.
Guy, I support his proclivities. Unfortunately for the Black
Douglas, it didn't go so well with King Alfonso.
He and his men at one point were cut off from their allies and he
bravely stood his ground and they were overrun by by the
Muslims. I suppose the body was recovered
and went back to England along with Robert Hart.
Robert Hart was recovered and to this day Robert Hart rests in
Melrose Abbey. Probably there.
Maybe there's some doubt, but not not much.
Now all Scottish monarchs period since Robert De Bruce are
related to Robert De Bruce. All British monarchs in 16 O3
are also related to Robert De Bruce.
Nina reminds us that Kit Harrington is in that club.
Kit Harrington was descended from Charles the second son, the
Duke of Lennox. And Rose Leslie is also
descended from Charles the 2nd through a different branch of
Scottish aristocracy. So yeah, Kit and Rose incest.
Oh my gosh. No, no, it's extremely far
apart. They're not even like trackable
cousins, just like 20th cousins or something like that.
Anyway, O'Shea and I's trip to Spain was amazing, But of
course, when you travel and fly long distances and Dr. long
distances, you can get a little out of sorts with your sleep
schedule and your jet lag can be a factor.
You can kind of easily get sick when you're overseas.
Both of Shay and I have been sleeping a little funny when we
came back. And by funny I mean extra longer
periods of time recovering from all that.
One of the tools that I find very useful for recovering from
fatigue and any sort of situation where whether I'm sick
or just tired are good friends. Magic mind, we've seen anecdotal
evidence from comments, lots of them, that people have used
magic mind to recover from long COVID or or short COVID too, I
suppose. I haven't had long COVID, at
least not that I know of, but I have noticed that Magic Mind is
is great for that. Now.
I didn't drink Magic Mind when we were in Spain.
I took a break because I didn't want to carry it around with me.
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So I'm very happy to be back to it.
And I could immediately tell the difference.
There's a little bit of a boost for me as I'm trying to get back
to normal, so let's have a shot together, shall we?
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How 20? Big shout out to Minotaur on our
Discord. One of our listeners, Scottish
Gentleman, and I say gentleman because his help was so valuable
to this episode. He's from the town of Hoyk,
which is spelled Haywick, which is a house in the Song of Ice
and Fire. He wants me to mention as well,
Lem Len Lawnmuth, who of course, that's a a name from our discord
as well and a reference to a, a character in A Song of Ice and
Fire. He's the one who pointed out to
Minotaur that house Haywick exists in A Song of Ice and
Fire. Now it's Hoyk.
You say it like really fast. That's how you say Hick in
Scottish. I don't suppose the Song of Ice
and Fire version is pronounced that way and House Haywick?
The song of Ice and fire version are married into House Frey from
from Haywick's from Saltpans. So good job that.
That's very helpful. Minotaur gave me a ton of
references and little Nuggets to look into for this episode.
A large portion of these were at least encouraged by him or
suggested. I might not have found some of
them without him. Some of them definitely wouldn't
have. Here's one more anecdote from
him. Scottish nicknames are great.
As I said, he pulled this one for me.
People from a place called Galashiels probably said that
wrong are known as pale mercs. What's a pale Merc?
Well, it's, it's a saying that references the fact that this
was the last region of Scotland to get indoor toilets.
So they used to sit on buckets and that would leave a mark on
your butt. So that's the pale mark, The
mark from a bucket on your butt. It's not like pale white.
It's like a pale, but a bucket is moving on.
Yeah, it's kind of bucket. He said, just thought you might
find that amusing. You are correct.
I did find that amusing because I do have the sense of humor of
a nine year old. You will see more of that sense
of humor later in this episode. So the thing I learned about
medieval, this medieval period, I don't know how long this rule
existed, is you can't get knighted until you're 21.
We have kings operating at age 1617 eighteen, but you can be
knighted till you're 21. This is very much like in the US
where you can't drink till you're 21, but you can vote and
go to the army when you're 18. Like what?
We can give you this responsibility that you die or
help rule the country, but you can't have a drink until you're
21. Anyway, I rented a lot of other
funny names. Not funny names, but similar
names that I recognize from A Song of Ice and Fire while doing
this. It's probably a ton more that I
missed, but what a couple that I wanted to mention was Harlow.
There's a Battle of Harlow that we'll mention later.
There's a place called Harlow in northern Scotland and there's a
castle called Hermitage that has a dark reputation that of course
reminds me of High Hermitage where Dark Star lives.
So dark reputation, Dark Star, High Hermitage, etcetera.
That's of course the cadet branch of House Dame back to it
with an A portion called the Scottish Golden Company.
This is the second Scottish War of Independence.
The first one was one when Robert defeated Edward the
second finally or defeated Edward the third, I guess
because Edward the Second was dead right before that.
Either way, he defeated England, but things came back around.
So even though Isabella and Rodger Mortimer, who overthrew
Edward the Second rebelled, one of the reasons they rebelled was
against Edward the 2nd and overthrew him was because they
weren't sure that her son, Edward the Third would be
allowed to rule. But then ironically, after
making sure he could rule, they held on to power for themselves.
So they didn't actually let him rule, they ruled on their own.
But Edward the Third, again, competent, much more like his
grandfather than his father. He pushed his mother out and had
Rodger executed. So she was able to keep her
wealth and her status, but she was out of politics.
So that was that. Now, this is amazing.
Remember when Tyrion is sneaking through the walls and he hears
them talking about him and they're like, you know, I think
Tyrion's going to die like a coward and they're guys.
No, he's going to die like a Lannister.
And he's like, I like that guy. The one who thought I said I was
going to. Who's going to die like a man?
Well, of course, Tyrion didn't die at all.
But anyway, so Lancastrian supporters actually helped here.
They helped Edward the 3rd and and a guy named William Montague
LED about 20 good men through a secret tunnel.
Think Red Keep tunnels. We're told that an active
council session was going on, and the topic of the council
session at that moment was what to do about William Montague,
the very man who was sneaking through tunnels into their room
at that very moment. He jumped in and got rid of
them. And Edward the Third was able to
assume the throne, as was his right.
And in 1332, a little while after that, Edward allied with a
group of Scottish exiles called the Disinherited.
Yes, the Disinherited. They were Scottish nobles who
lost lands during these previous conflicts.
They wanted their lands back, very much like the Golden
Company exiles, where they're like, hey, we're famous
families. We have names of prominence, but
we lost our lands. We want them back, give our
lands back. This is very similar to that.
And yeah, that's what happens when you fight on the losing
side. But in their case, these are
nobles who get second and third chances and all that.
But to be the Golden Company, to complete a Golden Company
parallel, you need a pretender at the head of their ranks,
right? A king, a pretender to the
throne. Someone like a son of Rhaegar or
someone purporting to be the son of Rhaegar.
Exactly what they got here. Not a guy named Rhaegar.
Not a son of Rhaegar. His name wasn't Aegon.
But remember we said Jon Baleyall Empty coat was out of
the picture, but his son was not.
Here comes the son, little darling.
I also told you that the Scots weren't done dealing with
Edwards. Now we got Edward the Third
here, so that's one Edward. Now what do you suppose Jon
Baliol's son was called? Yes indeed, Edward.
I had a 20% chance of guessing that because there are only 5
names. There are only 5 names.
That's right, Edward Balliol had been betrothed.
None other than Isabella, daughter of Margarita Anjou, the
very Cersei parallel that we talked about, who married into
House Lancaster. And of course she had a son,
Edward as well, who was killed. But this marriage never actually
happened. This was a betrothal.
That betrothal was broken because Edward ultimately wasn't
successful. But before that, he was involved
in a plot to depose Robert the Bruce that also didn't succeed.
When Robert the Bruce's son David ascended as David the
Second, he was only 6. So this is when Edward Balial
took his shot. He's like, OK, we got a six year
old on the throne. We've got secret support from
Edward the Third. Not that secret because, hey, we
know about it now, several 100 years later.
It's like the most obvious scooby-doo reveal ever.
Like, who's under this mask? Who's helping support this
invasion of Scotland? An Englishman named Edward.
I can't believe it. Right.
And of course, like, a year later, he's just openly
supporting him anyway. There was no need for all the
secrecy in the 1st place. Yeah.
And just as obviously, when there's a foreign power
supporting Scotland, especially against England, it's France.
So, yeah, so the old alliance, but also because it's pragmatic
for France, constant enemy of of England, to have someone to
attack England from another front or to make to draw English
resources away from them. So Edward Baliol landed in Fife,
the same place where Alexander the Third rode off that Cliff to
his death, and the same place ruled by that former Duncan the
Third who was murdered by his own kin on his way to execute
the business of the Regency. That little baby who inherited
Duncan the 4th was an adult now, and he also brought Robert the
Bruce's bastard called Robert Bruce.
Like come on, this guy helps the Earl of Fife fight Edward
Baliol. You can't complain about that
too much. That's a sixth name.
We've got Bruce now. That's right.
So this battle is called Duplin Moore, not Dublin Moore.
Duplin Moore. And Edward wins.
Edward Balial wins this battle and Robert Bruce is killed.
Balial then claims the throne. But it's kind of like, you know,
Aegon claiming Sun Spear or Darren claiming Sun Spear, like
the rest of the country doesn't really recognize this.
They're like, yeah, you took the throne, but we don't have to
follow you. It's just a, it's just a seat,
bro. So he loses control of the
country within the same year. Then with Edward the Third
openly helping him, he regains it in 1333.
Then he loses it in 1334. Then he gets it back in 1335,
Then he loses it again in 1336. I'm not joking.
It really went like that. Just what the hell?
So no, we don't have to go through the detail of all that.
It's just the back and forth is the story there.
And during all that back and forth, Edward the Third pledges
the hand of his sister, Joan of the Tower to Edward Baliol.
But Aziz, didn't you just tell us that Joan of the Tower,
despite being so young, was married to David, Not betrothed,
you said. You said married.
Yes. Edward fully intended to just
undo that marriage. I don't exactly know how, but
you can guess that lack of consummation was part of it.
I mean, they were, you know, 8 years old or whatever, so they
definitely hadn't consummated it.
But this didn't happen. It's ironic.
Of all the things that were options that did happen, undoing
a marriage was not really one. Like that's the thing that like
of all the different things that might have killing a kid or
taking a castle, whatever. Like when I read that they were
going to undo this marriage, like, well, that's not going to
happen. Like be easier to kill him.
Right, that's going. To happen.
You're right, there was it didn't.
So David was actually captured at one point during this back
and forth too. So they captured the King of
Scotland. You would think that's the end.
Nope, it wasn't. Again, the killing of nobles and
Royals was pretty rare. We saw that with in Norway.
We saw that's in other examples. And again, this is me setting up
why the black dinner was shocking, because this sort of
thing was actually unusual. And I repeat it because it's
probably hard to get in that mindset of actually these
medieval, late medieval folks. Sure, they were brutal and
ruthless, but less so than people who came before them.
They were a lot less willing to kill.
This was the burgeoning influence of the church, I
think, in a lot of ways. A church that was never so
powerful in Westeros. I think that's part of why that
never really Westeros never got to that point because that this,
this cult, that culture never developed in Westeros.
Maybe it will someday, but certainly didn't certainly
hasn't yet. So David's new guardian, while
captured, there's none other than Sir Archibald Douglas who
is half brother to Black Douglas.
This Archibald Douglas is the guy who the Red Douglases will
descend from. So, So keep an eye on him.
Even though there's going to be a lot of Archibald, it's going
to be hard to keep track of all the Archibalds.
Now Archibald was killed that same year, so you don't have to
keep track of this particular Archibald anymore.
The same city, Berwick, Berwick, Berwick, Berwick on Tweed where
Edward the First massacred citizens.
The same one where William the Bold was captured.
The father of both of the Black and the Red Douglases, Archibald
Douglas was killed leading the defense of that same place in
1333. So that that the black Douglas
died in on crusade. And now Archibald Douglas has
died. They have a middle brother
called Hugh now. His nickname was Hugh the Doll.
The real reason Hugh is called the Dull, as I said, was because
he's a priest. But my theory is Hugh was pushed
out of the lordship, which is what happens next, because his
name was Hugh. If you look at all the list, if
you look at the list of the Earls and Lords of Douglas,
they're all William, James or Archibald.
There's only three names among all, the Lord Douglas of the
Black Line and the Earl Douglas's and the Lord
Douglas's. Before that, only three names,
except for Hughes, a fourth name, and he's the only one that
didn't get to keep the titles. I think that's the real reason.
You chose the wrong name, Hugh. What were you thinking?
That's right. So in 1337, Hugh the Doll had
given their cousin another William Douglas, the Knight of
Liddesdale, AKA the Flower of Chivalry, which is I'm going to
call him from now on because there's too many William
Douglass. He's the command of the family
now. He doesn't have the title, but
he sort of muscles his way into it over Hugh the Doll.
And Hugh the Doll says, sure, I'm a priest, go ahead.
I don't want to do military commands.
Anyway, we're not sure. This Flower of Chivalry guy,
it's an ironic nickname, to be clear.
It's like like a skinny guy named, you know, Kevin the Fat
or something like that. And there's going to be there is
going to be a James the Fat later in the story.
This guy is also besides the flower of chivalry was called
flail of the English and wall of the Scots.
Like he's a wall, but we'll call him the flower of chivalry.
He continued the Douglas guerrilla tactics, very good at
it, as good as the black Douglas most likely.
And it's where he got his nickname, the flower of chivalry
by being a guerrilla war leader. Very, like I said, very ironic.
It was he who commanded half of the forces in the 1335 defeat of
Edward Baliol during all that back and forth.
So he was, he was really, really good commander, but not a good
man. He was like an evil Barrack
Dondarian. We'll see.
Kind of. In the early days he was good,
the the Scots respected him, but over time, maybe power went to
his head, I don't know. His men lived in a network of
forests and caves in effective poverty, ambushing and raiding
especially. He's very much like the Brother
without Banners and him being their leader.
Yeah, Barrack Dondarian, the Flower of Chivalry in this case,
But again, not nearly as noble as Barrack and definitely didn't
die multiple times. I don't know about flaming
swords either, and maybe they had flaming swords.
They definitely used fire though.
A lot of burning happened. Alright, let's let's focus on
the Flower of Chivalry here for a minute.
In 1341 he recaptured Edinburgh Castle after it had been lost
during all that back and forth in 1335.
Now of course this castle will change hands a lot of times and
I kid you not, the flower of chivalry did this in a Victorian
Greyjoy at Slaver's Bay type method, AKA the Trojan Horse
method. The Edinburgh Castle needed lots
of supplies to feed the Garrison, to get arrows and
Flint for their swords and scat, all the stuff they needed.
Lots of stuff. One day the flower of Chivalry
and his men hid in hay wagons and were brought inside the
castle. They jumped out of the hay
wagons, held the gate open while more Douglas men rushed inside
and took the castle. Amazing.
In early 1342 he was made an Earl.
But then he had to give that up to Robert Stewart, which was the
Robert Stewart, son of Marjorie Bruce and Walter Stewart, who is
now second in line for the throne behind King David.
So there's a pattern developing here.
We have the flower of chivalry, just keeps kind of getting land,
maybe muscling his way into it and then losing it because it
really shouldn't have been his in the 1st place.
He also held title over Roxburgh Castle, another important castle
that changed hands a bunch of times during all these
conflicts, but he wasn't able to get it back.
He tried several times and failed.
And he was annoyed by this because, well, he held the
title. He wanted it back.
Now, this is the same place Robert the Bruce's daughter
Mary, was hanged. Not hanged not to death, but
hanged in a cage outside to embarrass her.
This is, yeah, bad. So in 1313 or 1314, on the night
of Shrove Tide, which is a religious holiday, again,
they're attacking on a religious holiday, following in the
footsteps of the Black Douglas. And indeed, since we're talking
about before the Black Douglas's death, this is 1313, remember?
Now we're in roughly the year 1340.
The Black Douglas had LED a night attack on this Roxburgh
castle with 60 men dressed in black cloaks who were mistaken
for sheep, or rather cattle. Cattle climbing the walls.
They were cattle climbing the walls like those cattle are
climbing the walls. That seems unusual.
They wore all black and used like Spears to, with long Spears
to raise like a rope ladder up over the battlements.
And they climbed over and they took the castle.
Then they destroyed the fortifications because they were
pretty sure they'd lose the castle again, which they did.
So this is. And now that brings us back to
here where he's unable to recapture it because the British
across the English rather had rebuilt those defenses.
Now in 1342, a certain Sir Alexander Ramsey spelled like
Ramsey Bolton, but not much like Ramsey, although it's done to
him, is very like Ramsey. He recaptures it in another
night assault and he's rewarded by King David, which made the
flower of chivalry mad 'cause he wanted to be the one to take
that castle back. And he'd already had a rivalry
with this Sir Alexander Ramsey. So later that year, the 1342
Flower of Chivalry just rides with some men to to Hoyke,
seizes Alexander Ramsey, ties him to a mule, and takes him to
that castle Hermitage that I mentioned earlier and starves
him to death. Yikes.
Hugh the Doll also died in 1342, and the Flower of Chivalry
became not just Lord of Douglas, but tried to rule and become
the, you know, tried to hang on to power and this didn't go so
well. By the way, that that ties into
a mule part I find so odd I've been trying to figure out what.
Just to embarrass him or I don't know, keep.
Him from running is it dangerous maybe being said the mule might
kick you or the smell of the mule poop is around all the time
I was thinking about the about the the heart hanging around
your neck too. It's got a smell.
What's the reality of that? How much does it?
Does it? Smack you in a chin when you're
riding your horse. Like sometimes I just try to
think about the day-to-day reality of some of this stuff.
It's so odd to me. So there was an offer in 1336
made by Philip the Fortunate, the new king of France.
This is king. This is Philip the 6th.
The offer is OK. Edward Bally all gets to become
King David. You get to become his heir, but
you have to give up that jone of the tower to Edward.
They say no, it's like, no, I'm not doing that.
No, no, no deal. No, definitely no deal.
One of the reasons this deal was rejected was because of Robert
Stewart, who was in charge of things.
He was. He was Stewart, even though he
was also second in line to the throne.
He wasn't about to accept any deal that pushed him out of the
line further down the line of succession either.
So this was not only unpalatable to David, but to him.
So there's a lot of opposition to this.
The next year the 100 Years War begins.
Scotland is not deeply embroiled in it, but Scottish people are
like a lot of nobles fight over there, either for the French or
for other reasons, but usually just as allies to the French,
mostly to fight against England. Now by 1338, Edward Valiola is
still trying to win, but he's just losing popularity and he's
being seen as more and more English because more and more of
his support is English and not Scottish, and he is considered a
usurper by this point. So in 1341, the year before this
incident with the starvation of Alexander Ramsey, David was 17
and takes over the government, even though he's younger than
you can be, than you can be a knight.
And but things were tense. There's lots of feuds.
Scotland was in a tense place and this is an increasing
problem as Scotland becomes a more powerful Kingdom, more and
more nobles getting more power. They have more to lose, more to
fight over. It took David a good four years
to kind of calm things down and all the while the war is still
happening against England. But the war is also happening in
France during the 100 Years War. So England's divided and I
turned their attention is in 1346, Edward the Third is
Stillwell embroiled in France and doing well.
So France needs some help. They're like, David, you're old
enough now, why don't you invade, go invade England to
draw some attention back over there.
He does it. He's we're told he happily did.
So he brings a lot of men, like 12,000 men.
He brings 3 armies, 1 he leads himself.
One is led by the Flower of Chivalry and one is led by
Robert Stewart. OK, so he allows his men to
rampage through Durham. They're kind of pillaging and
looting the countryside. And then he's surprised by an
English army. They didn't expect resistance so
fast, but the English mobilized quickly and the three portions
of the army all unite to fight the Battle of Neville's Cross,
which was a disastrous loss for Scotland.
Robert Stewart and his men flee, and King David the second is hit
twice in the face by arrows. He lives though and is such a
bad ass that when they come to seize him, he breaks the teeth
of one of the guys who grabs him with his mailed fist.
And the Flower of Chivalry was captured as well.
Now many of the nobles caught in this battle are ransomed because
Edward the Third constantly needs money for this war in
France, but he doesn't release those two, they're too
important. Now.
The Flower of Chivalry was such an established leader at this
point, even though he was operating above his titles, he
actually ordered a hit from prison like some kind of mafia
boss. Some knight killed his brother
while he was in prison and he ordered that knight killed.
And it happened while he's in prison, but in England.
So that's pretty wild. This next section is called The
King in Chains, and of course, it refers to David the second.
So Edward Balliol is still, we're trying to win and still
failing here many years later. And eventually things are going
to come to a head shortly here. But in the meantime, Robert
Stewart, who escaped, he was the one leader who escaped that
disaster, was calling the shots. He's the 7th high steward.
He's grandson of Robert the Bruce.
He has a lot of political clout and he's he's basically ruling
in David's name. And he's just a teenager.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Robert's very young too.
Yeah. He's a little older than David,
I think. He's not a teenager anymore, but
he's just, he's a young 20s at this point, I think.
Anyway, another offer comes by that same John of Gaunt who
Lancaster and York descend from. They are like, hey, what if you
make John of Gaunt your heir, David?
And he's like, no, again, no, Robert Stewart says again, I'm
David's Eyre. So no, I'm not.
We're not going with that. So again, that was pushed aside.
In 1348, things came to a head for the Flower of Chivalry.
Not only had he seemingly forced his uncle to give that lordship
to him. So that wasn't exactly legal.
He had held Archibald's air, the the true Lord of those lands, of
the Douglas lands. He hailed him as his ward.
It was like one of the situations where the ward is the
the legal owner of the titles, but the powerful guy in charge
kind of keeps the stuff for himself.
Problem is this William guy who's his ward.
Remember, they're both Williams. The Flower of Chivalry's name is
William Douglas also, So this is Archibald's heir, William
Douglas. He had been educated in France.
He was kept over there and was getting a good education.
But finally he's old enough to come home.
So he immediately comes back and follows in the footsteps of all
the other Douglases of this era who were war leaders guerrilla
style, and immediately goes to war with the English who were
squatting on his lands. So he wins over a lot of those
men that had fought for the Flower of Chivalry become his
men. All the while, the Tower of the
the Flower of Chivalry is imprisoned at the Tower of
London. Three years later, Edward the
Third says, all right, time has come.
I'm going to go ahead and ransom King David and the Flower of
Chivalry because I really need more money.
The ransom is £40,000, just an absurd amount of money in this
era. He released them.
He releases them to go collect them.
It's like, OK, I'm gonna let you guys go, go collect the money.
Give me the money. And again, you see the kind of
odd culture that is happening here, though, the belief that
they adhere to. They failed to collect the money
and just report back for imprisonment.
They didn't just try to run off that.
But you're not going to catch us.
We're out of your hands now. They just go back to prison.
But like the idea that they expected them to leave, get the
money and come back and then be let go again, like on both
sides, it's so crazy to me. Like say they say they had got
the money. I'm just trying to imagine how
how do they physically deliver it?
How much like do it, you know, like how do they not get robbed
by bandits on a way? There's so much about that just
blows my mind. Like.
Right. It's it is really hard to
believe, but that's what's what happened.
So since it didn't work, Edward tries a different tactic.
He's like, all right, flower of chivalry.
You're a chivalrous guy. Ironically, what if I give you
lands and title in exchange for bringing your men over to my
side? And I'm also going to keep some
of your people as hostages, just in case you don't.
Just in case you don't go with this plan.
In case you try to double cross me.
Back with 40,000 lbs Yeah. So another word and and the
flower of chivalry agrees to this.
This is agreeing to treason. He this is, this is a treasonous
deal. So but he he thought it was his
play. He still did it.
This is what I'm saying. Like he's an evil Barrack
Dondarian because he he was the good guy.
He was leading his man. But then when he then he kind of
turns English, sort of, and he'd been in prison for 11 years.
Let's keep that in mind. Much had changed, though.
Remember what did I say? The his men had turned to this
other William Douglas, the one that was ward of his for a
while. So when he gets back to his to
Scotland, he's trying to bring these men over to Edward.
They're already following this new other William Douglas, the
actual true Lord of the Douglas lands.
So a very odd event happens two years later.
Edward Baliol, still squatting in Scottish lands, hasn't exited
the picture yet. He's having no success
whatsoever, but he's still in the picture.
So many years later. He he was raided by the new Lord
William here, who was trying to get Baliol to leave.
He's like, I'm going to attack your forces and get you to
leave. He's sitting, he's squatting in
his territory, and on his way back with his from this raid, he
encounters the flower of chivalry who is hunting Earl.
William is very resentful over, well, he's not Earl yet, He's
about to become Earl because it becomes an Earl in five years.
I'm calling Earl William to distinguish him from the flower
of Chivalry. William.
He's resentful over lots of the things the flower had done,
being a traitor, trying to steal his men, keeping him as a ward.
We're not sure exactly, but he kills him.
William Douglas kills William Douglas straight up, right?
So Lord William kills the flower of chivalry.
That's, that's wild. So that's that happened.
Then two years later, more scorched earth tactics, more
ambushes. Edward the Third is driven back
to his country and a new truce is signed.
Scotland immediately breaks the truce with help from France.
England gets mad, reinvades again.
The following year, Edward Balliol finally gives up, even
though he's still on the English side and England is doing well
this time. He's like, all right, I'm done.
He surrenders his claim to Edward the Third in exchange for
money. Like, can you do that?
You can sell your claim. It declined in value, but he got
good money for it. I wish they had all bought and
sold their claims instead of going to war and killing each
other over the claims honestly. So Edward Baliol ends up like
his father John. Remember, John just goes and
retires on his lands, lives out his days in obscurity.
Edward does the same. He gets his second, third, four.
I don't know how many chances he got.
Just the ultimate rich guy's exit from the story.
Like he fails all he's having. He still gets to go live on his
rich lands and just dies in obscurity.
This time though, no children. So it's, it's actually done.
The Baliols are actually done this time.
So Edward the 3rd may have been like, yeah, I'm, I'm going to
make myself king of Scotland. Screw all this other business,
screw vassals, screw overlordships, direct controls,
what we're after. But the weather messed up this
campaign and some other things, but especially the weather and,
and the scorched earth and all that other stuff.
So he had to go back again in 1357.
The war ended, though. Edwards had enough, in part
because of the the 100 Years War had a huge battle, the Battle of
Poitier I think it was, where the French suffered a humongous,
humiliating defeat. Their king was captured in
battle, and William Douglas was there.
He had been knighted by King John the second.
He had barely escaped as he couldn't bear to be captured by
the English. But his first cousin, Archibald
the Grimm was captured. Archibald the Grimm, he's going
to be important too. So finally they agreed on an
actual ransom for David. Remember it before it had been
40K. They couldn't collect the money.
So what if you do? When you can't collect 40K, you
increase the ransom to 100K. Like you can't get me 40K, you
have to get me 100K. They actually only paid about 20
K of it. So, you know, now Joan of the
Tower, even though David refused to give her up, he wasn't like,
I'm not going to give away my wife.
She didn't want to be with him because during his eleven years
in prison, he had lots of conjugal visits and took a
lover, but he had no children. So that's interesting.
He didn't have any with her or his lovers, so he was maybe
sterile, maybe like an egg on the Conqueror situation.
But a king without an air is an interesting thing and a
dangerous thing. Who is his heir, though?
Robert Stewart, grandson of Robert the Bruce, through his
daughter Marjorie, and the son of Walter Stewart, this guy
who's still kind of running England, meaning Robert Stewart.
So Scarlett and Feist fought off England after driving out the
Norse. And this is again, this is
really reminds us of Dorn. Isn't this like Dornish more
than anything? They just, they just won't give
up. They burn their own stuff.
The local population often often helps and just they just won't
guerrilla. Tactics.
Yeah, very Dornish. Really.
I think a lot of Scottish people would identify with Dorn.
Maybe not today, maybe, but certainly in this era.
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Let's now move into the final phase of the episode, Scotland's
Game of Thrones. Now is when we turn from outside
wars to internal wars, for the most part because Stewart and
Douglas, after their long rise to prominence, fighting in all
these wars of independence, all these wars against England and
before that against Norway, as they gain power through these
conflicts, they start to fight each other more and more.
Such is the way of power. You can see the elements in
place already at the start of this phase of the episode.
You have an ancient realm, an old Kingdom with new power and
pride over what they've overcome, what they've beaten.
That would give you a sense of pride.
We beat the English we many times.
That's hard to do. And they're the smaller country.
It is something to be proud of. But there's so many rivalries
and blood feuds within Scotland that date back to who knows
when. Prior to their trouble with the
English, before the English even existed really.
And that's where we get a nice Blackwood Bracken parallel
because by now Stewart and Douglas have been intermarried
many times. Douglas is intermarried.
Douglas is going to fight itself.
Stewart's going to fight Douglas, just like Blackens.
Blackens. I keep doing it.
Bracken and Black would fight each other at this time.
Also, the king is the son of a famous hero king and has no
children or brothers. That nothing could go wrong,
right? Of course the succession will be
smooth, right? Yeah.
He didn't even have nephews from the male line.
Because that Edward Bruce character died in England
without Stuart reinforcements. He had no kids either.
And worse, King David hated Robert Stewart, his heir, the
7th High Steward of Scotland. Why?
I don't know, but there's a lot of reasons to guess. 1 is
because maybe Robert, well, maybe because Robert escaped the
same battle where David and the Flower of Chivalry were
captured. Maybe Robert was cowardly in
escaping that. Maybe he should have fought
harder to save David. He's also the one that forced
David to resume captivity because he wouldn't agree to the
deal, pushing himself farther down in the line of succession.
Maybe he was jealous David was that he had zero children and
Robert had nine, and then 13 and then 25.
Yes, Robert Stewart, 7th High Stewart of Scotland had 25
children and David had 0. How many different wives was
that? Only two, but he had a lot of
illegitimate children. Yeah.
So he had nine with his first wife, four with the second, and
12 illegitimate children. Blowing my mind, jeez.
I know right? What the F now?
David tried many times to disinherit Robert Stewart but
just couldn't do it. The most obvious way he tried to
disinherit Robert Stewart was by having kids, but as we already
said, that failed. Now in 1358 it went from the
lordship of Douglas to the earldom of Douglas.
So their Earls from now on. In 1960, the Earl of Angus
murdered David's lover, Catherine Mortimer.
We don't know how Catherine Mortimer was related to Roger
Mortimer, the lover of Isabella the the one who overthrew Edward
the Second, but the Earl of Angus is going to very soon
become the title of the Red Douglas's.
Not quite yet. In 1363, Robert rebelled with
the support of the Douglases against David, but they came to
terms. Apparently David threatened to
remove him from the line of succession.
Like, well, didn't you see that coming?
Robert, You're the second in line.
You're you're next in line to the throne.
You go to war against the guy who's ahead of you and he
threatens you to that You won't be king.
Wait, aren't you rebelling against him?
Can't you just force him? No, I don't know.
It didn't work. Whatever happened, they just,
they said stop and went back to normal.
But then the very next year William supported the removal of
Robert Stewart from the succession in exchange for the
removal of that huge debt and the return of the Douglas lands
in England. But it meant giving the Scottish
throne to a certain Prince Lionel, a different son of King
Edward the Third. Even though they put a clause in
that contract to say that, yes, after Lionel, the throne will go
back to Scotland. The plan failed.
They're like, I don't trust you. We can't trust you to keep to
give the throne back. So a bunch of back and forth
again, that kind of resulted in nothing.
In 1371, David was only 46, but he died.
Doesn't seem to be foul play, but it was definitely.
And it seems to have been a surprise because, you know, he
was kind of young. Robert ascends the throne as
Roberts a second. It finally happened.
The stewards had become kings and the Douglasses were, if not
even more powerful than the Stewarts, close enough.
So the Stewarts and the Douglasses have really arrived
at this point. Now Robert starts making music.
They like, like a Bloodraven type of thing or a Tywin
Lannister kind of thing with the reigns of Castamere where they
they create music and ballads to glorify their reign.
They can, they connect themselves to the Bruces
because, well, he is. Bruce was his grandfather, but
he has the name Stewart. So they got to make that clear
to everybody else. They glorify Good Sir James, AKA
the Black Douglas and Walter the Stewart who was the father of
Robert Stewart, right? There were still problems, of
course, but it was pretty good overall this this early period
of Robert's rule, because there wasn't a lot of war and Robert
was a decent administrator or maybe even a good administrator.
Wool, the wool trade, which is still to this day a big deal in
Scotland, really took off and the ransom payments ended.
So Scotland was way better off financially and they started to
recover and rebuild and a lot of the scorched earth damage was
undone. There were still raids, lots of
fights on the border but it was mostly confined to that.
Except for one case where the same John of Gaunt, that same
guy that Lancaster, NY descend from, he raided Scotland and got
as far as Edinburgh before going back.
Now the red and Black Douglas, let's get into that.
This is when that really comes to a head and the two halves of
the family really distinctly split.
It's it's not 100% clear in reality when the split was
official or when people started calling them.
The red and black Douglas is doesn't really matter for our
purposes, but it certainly happened.
William still in charge. Lord William, first Earl of
Douglas, married Isabel, one of Robert Stewart's daughters,
showing the growing closeness of the two.
One of those 25 children. But this is one of the
legitimate children. Now, to be fair, legitimate and
illegitimate and this time didn't mean as much as it did as
as dozen Westeros bastards in this era.
For in medieval England, Scotland, France, they weren't
shunned. They weren't looked down on
nearly as much. They often got titles.
They often got lordships, earldoms, what have you.
So still, they were they were lower, but they weren't like,
oh, bastards are only conceived of lust and and like it wasn't
really like that. So keep that in mind that that
the illegitimate children aren't aren't look down on nearly as
much as they are in Westeros. That's an important distinction.
Now we get a little romance on the side.
Around 1380, same William Douglas begins an affair with
Margaret Stewart, who was a widow by this time, but also his
brother-in-law because Margaret's deceased husband was
William's wife's brother. Yeah.
So you have a William married and a Margaret married, his
brother, Margaret's Williams brother dies, and then William
also hooks up with Margaret. Yeah.
Anyway. And Douglas also had a Stewart
grandmother. So there's just so much Stewart
and Douglas mixed in now, you can't even keep track anymore.
And you don't have to just know. Douglas and Stewart are just
dominating everything now. They would have two children,
George and, of course, Margaret. George is the one who inherits
the lands from his mother because Margaret actually
inherited the land, the Angus lands, possibly because of that
incident where the Earl of Angus assassinated David's lover,
Catherine Mortimer. He was maybe punished for that.
And then the lands went to the Douglasses.
Like, yeah, give the Douglasses more power.
That's a good solution. So Douglas inherits.
So George inherits the Douglas, the Angus lands from Margaret
and this is the Red Douglases. That's official now, like or at
least official enough for our purposes.
So the red Douglases are the Angus lands, whereas the Douglas
lands become the black Douglas lands.
The the, the bigger branch, over time, the branches would start
to grow closer in power because it becomes like a, like a, a
scale. It's like, well, we can't have
the black Douglases being too powerful.
We need the red Douglas to counterbalance them.
So instead of like you have the the Tyrells to balance out the
Lannisters, whatever, you know, it's all just the Douglases, the
red Douglas balancing at the black.
It's just so much Douglas. You can't even you can't even
understand. You can't even can't even count
it all. There's just so much Douglas
now. William Douglas, first Earl,
finished his life sort of the way it began, making and
repelling border raids, very Darnish.
Again, just a life of raids back and forth.
He dies in 1384. James, second Earl of Douglas
takes over and it's even more officially the Black Douglas
lands at this point. Now we have the incident of
Black Douglas versus Fireball. Fireball, you all remember
that's the famous commander who died the day before the red
grass field, one of the men who was crucial in encouraging game
in Black Fire to rebel. His real life parallel is Sir
Henry Percy AKA Hotspur. Hotspur, Fireball, you see the
connection? Hotspur was also very rash, very
aggressive commander like Fireball was.
I think they both had red hair. Remember his supposed son?
You know the the the kid that is the hero in the mystery night
doesn't have red hair but claims to be descendant of him.
That's house ball, right? Supposed son.
Glendon Ball for this injustice. He won his trial by combat.
He can prove now. Anyway, James launches his
earldom because it's now an earldom and he's just taking it
over by writing the English. What better way to celebrate
becoming the the the Earl of the Black Douglas lands by writing
the It's a very Scottish thing to do write the English just
like it's a very English thing to do to write.
Exactly. And France shows up in Scotland
like a bunch. A big French delegation shows up
in Scots negotiate a truce with the English.
They they they have it in this sort of semi neutral ground.
There were a lot of extra Frenchmen there.
Some of them were just weren't happy about the idea of a truce.
So they're like, hey, these French Knights, a a gang of
them. And I'm calling them a gang on
purpose. They're like they they float the
word to the Scots. They're like, we like fighting
English. You like fighting English.
Yeah. They're trying to negotiate a
truce, but what if we had gang up together and go into England
and raid it? What, Wouldn't that be cool?
You can help us. We'll help you.
They're basically sell swords, saying hey, or just opportunists
or adventurers, pick your term. So James is like, yeah, let's do
that. James, second Earl of Douglas,
is like, let's do it. He brings his buddy Sir David
Lindsey. This is 1484.
They attacked Northumberland. Remember this Northumberland is
the territory that is York Territory or was York Territory.
And of course it's also associated with Utred, son of
Utred and son of Utred, son of Utred, son of Utred.
Yes, lots of Utreds. So the French and, and James and
David, they raid Northumberland. It's very successful.
They carry off loot and stuff and meanwhile the truce is
successful. Despite all this, they still
call it truce despite this raid. It's like 11 raid isn't going to
throw ruin the whole thing. It's kind of weird to they just
they got away with it like there was no penalty for any of this.
Apparently the French Knights are like, OK, hey, we got to go
back to France, but we had such a great time.
Let's do this again. So that's what happened the the
next year the truce expires. It was a short term truce.
I said 1484. I meant to say 1384.
My bad. So in 1385, the truce expired
and the French Knights came back.
They're like, yeah, we said we'd come back for more partying.
We're back. They again raid England, but
this time Richard the Second is in charge of England, and he had
a bigger army. Richard's army chases the Scots
French army back into Scotland, and he ravages the countryside.
And the Scots ravaged the countryside to deny him
supplies. It's backfired pretty badly.
Yeah, especially for the common folk.
Meanwhile, Archibald the Grimm, who remember had been captured
in France, was free by this time and he was counter rating still
in England, while England is rating in Scotland.
So we're back to all the rating. This rating includes a place in
England called Cockermouth, which I only mentioned because
of my aforementioned 9 year old sense of humor.
Yes, I probably know her. In 1388, King Richard the Second
of England was having troubles and they took another shot,
meaning the Scots to avenge the raid of 1385 that they started.
Like we raided your territory, you raided us back, we want
revenge. Wait, they were never mind.
So this is when Earl William, still second Earl of Douglas,
faced Sir Henry AKA Hotspur in an actual duel.
They fought A1 on one duel with Lances, and Douglas wins.
He beats Henry and captures his pennon, which is his flag.
So yes, he captured his flag. Supposedly he bragged.
He's like William says. I'm going to display your flag
on my tower so all of Scotland can see it, and Hotspur's like
you'll never leave north Umberland alive with my flag.
Well, it's debatable whether this is it depends on which.
Well, I'll elaborate here. Then came a battle that had two
great names, The Battle of Otterburn, where no otters were
actually burned, or the Battle of Chevy Chase, where.
Where otters were burned. Otters were burned at Chevy
Chase was involved. Now it's the same battle.
So Hotspur tries to surprise attack.
It wasn't very effective, and this is where some of the
argument that he was a rash commander came from, because
maybe it wasn't the best idea. Archibald the Grimm was one of
the leaders of the Douglas contingents, and it was a defeat
for the English. Hotspur was captured, but Earl
William was killed. So it was another one of these
kind of Pyrrhic victories. So he wins.
He doesn't actually get to carry that flag back.
I think the flag actually did go back, but not with Earl William.
So it was like he the flag. He did lose the flag, but Earl
William was killed. So yeah, the ransom for Hotspur
was so big that this guy named Sir John Montgomery Montgomery,
not Montgomery Montgomery, built a whole ass castle with it.
It's called Paul Noon Castle and it's still there.
Now let's talk a little bit about Archibald the Grim,
because what a cool name. And he's the going to become the
third Earl of Douglas after the death of William.
Well, William had no heirs. So Archibald the Grimm takes
over. Now he's not, this is a little
bit of chicanery here because there's no obvious heir, but
Archibald's the most powerful Douglas, so he claims it.
This is going to start a bit of a pattern that's going to lead
to the black dinner of well, the Douglas lands are so big and
powerful and occasionally there's going to be fights over
who inherits them. And that's going to be pretty
much the state of the fairs for the rest of this episode, which
is not a whole. We've got 5 pages of our 31 page
document left. So we're getting, we're getting
near the end now. Archibald actually escaped from
prison in France. We said he was in prison, but I
didn't tell you how he got out. He did it by pretending to be
someone lesser. He had he and a buddy like
staged a prison fight. We've seen this in so many
movies where two prisoners get into a fight and they use it as
an excuse to do something. In this case, they used it as a
way to make him look like he was a nobody.
Like he, he, he was captured. He had this great armor.
And they were like, wow, look at that armor.
And they took it from him and, and sold it and, but, but they
kind of forgot who he was because he'd been in prison for
a while. So he pretended to be kind of a
nobody and was let out for 40 lbs.
Remember, David was ransomed for 100,000 pounds, 40 lbs.
That's it. 40 bucks. Well, not bucks, but that was
worth a lot of money then. But it's still kind of like,
that's tiny. So yeah, this could have been a
huge amount of money for Edward the Black Prince, another guy
with the nickname Black. This was Edward the Black
Prince, son of Edward the Third, a very capable military leader.
Anyway, he's not a big part of the story, but he's in this
little spot. So Edward the Black Prince was
deprived of a massive ransom by this conniving of Archibald, who
became the third Earl of Douglas.
Now this of course, is setting up, like I said, our main
course, which is a black dinner. And that main course is a black
bull's head. Yes, it is.
Robert the Second dies in 1390, aged 74.
So he actually lasted quite a long time.
He lived to a ripe old age. That's older than a lot of these
folks make it too. David only made it to 46.
Robert Bruce only made it to 55. There's some evidence that his
sons, Robert the second, who was also, you know, his, his, his
family still had the stewardship and the kingship.
So there's a lot of power there. And some of his sons, there's
some evidence they started to usurp some of his authority.
Despite all this, he reigned for 19 years was pretty good.
One of his sons was nicknamed the Wolf of Bedknock.
Pretty cool. The other thing about bastards
that is in that's relevant here is they all had the last name
Stewart. All his 12 bastards were.
Blank Stewart. So that's another interesting
difference. They weren't like, I don't know,
what would you call if it had OS?
They wouldn't be like Heather or Hill or something like that.
What's the Scottish like last name?
Moore, Locke. It'd probably be William or
James. William.
William.
James. James James.
Oh my God. No.
No at all. A good thing Sean wasn't in
charge of the names. So Robert was succeeded by his
son, Jon Stewart. But John's, like, I don't want
to be John. John Balliol sucked.
I don't want to be associated with him.
So what? Am I going to change my name to
Robert, even though he already had a brother named Robert?
So they're just Robert and another brother.
It's like this hack on thing all over again.
You got a king hack on, uncle, hack on, son, hack on.
Yeah. And of course, there's going to
be another son Robert, too. Now, Robert the Third wasn't
healthy, though. He inherited, but just like his
grandmother Marjorie Bruce, he fell from a horse.
He didn't die like she did, but he was permanently injured by
it. And he was not a very good ruler
either. Not a strong ruler.
So by the combination of his infirmity and his bad politics,
his authority was limited and somewhat shared with his son and
heir, another David. Archibald the Grim was more
powerful than the king. The Douglas more powerful than
the king is going. It is and was a common thing, in
fact. And the guy named Archibald more
powerful than the king happened a few times because Archibald is
going to be succeeded by Archibald, who's going to be
succeeded by Archibald. This is when things get very red
and Black Douglas and the families really start to be
defined as halves and start to fight against each other more
and more. The Red Douglas power was
increased by Robert the 3rd to counterbalance the Black Douglas
power. He also married his daughter
Mary to George Douglas, the guy who basically founded the Red
Douglases, the the ones who ruled the Angus lands rather
than the Douglas lands. Another daughter of the Flower
of Chivalry was married to another James Douglas at this
time to shore it all up. This is another Red Douglas, so
he died in 1400. The Archibald the Grim that is,
but was able to kept keep this this strong power by passing it
on to Archibald the 4th 4th Earl that is next we talk about
Robert the kinslayer. That's my nickname for him.
And you'll very quickly say why term kinslaying?
I don't think they use that in Scotland.
If they did, I never heard it. So it's just but it's it really
explains things. This Prince David died in 14 O2
probably killed by this Robert the kinslayer, his uncle Robert
the the Robert who had his name taken by his older brother who
changed his name to Robert. So he was maybe he wasn't happy
about his name being stolen. I don't know.
The other brother Robert also died young.
So David and his younger brother Robert were both died and that
made James the heir. Yeah James right.
James would eventually James became James the 1st, but Robert
the kinslayer was his Regent. So and Robert the third dies in
14 O 6. So what does Robert kingslayer
do? He's like, I'm just going to
keep ruling as the region. I'm not going to This James
doesn't matter. And indeed, James was raised in
France for his safety. He was almost abducted by Earl
Archibald the 4th. His men came for him, but he
escaped. He instead was abducted by the
English. He escaped captivity from his
Scots allies or erstwhile allies or opponents, whatever other
Scots to only be captured by the English and delivered by the
king or to the king who was now Henry the fourth son of that
same John of God who keeps coming into the store.
So again, these are the descendants.
These are the the Lancastrians in this Yorks eventually.
Now this is a really good captivity as far as captivities
go. He was given a great education,
like a lot of Royals are. Even though he's in captivity.
They brought him on campaign. Henry the fifth took him on
campaign. Henry the fifth was a great
military leader. He had a lot of success in
France, but this is a problem because who is who are the
English campaigning against in France when they're fighting
against the French, the Scots? So the king of Scotland in
captivity is bringing brought on campaign against his own people.
So he learned a lot about military, but his reputation
wasn't great because he was constantly on the side of the
English as they fought against Scottish forces in France.
Think Neon as a ward of Winterfell.
The Greyjoy didn't trust him when he came back.
Like Nah. You were raised as a wolf.
You're not you. We were raised in our culture,
you were raised in theirs. You're not one of us.
You have the name, but not the, not the, not the education, not
the life. You don't.
You're not one of us. Similar vibe here.
Not the culture. Not the yeah, very much.
You're are, you're, are you more French or English than you are
Scottish? Not French, Scottish English.
So he'd also been imprisoned alongside Murdoch Stewart, which
was Robert the Kinslayer's sons. So even though Robert the
Kinslayer wanted to rule through James, James was imprisoned
alongside Murdoch's Murdoch, who was Robert's son.
Now Robert the Kinslayer arranges the release of his son
Murdoch by trading him for Hotspur's son, who had also been
captured. Hotspur was dead by this time.
This is 10 years later, but the Kinslayer just refused to
negotiate at all for James the first release.
He just didn't want James out of prison because he wanted to keep
ruling. So Robert does that.
Robert the Kinslayer continues to rule and and claim more power
and just bring more power to himself and gets it all going.
At one point he forces a claim on a place called Ross, which is
a territory in Scotland, tries to give it to his second son,
which ends in the Battle of Harlow, which was nicknamed Red
Harlow because of how bloody it was.
This was against a guy called Lord of the Isles, a very
familiar name from A Song of Ice and Fire.
The Lord of the Isles is a constant thorn in the side of
many Scottish monarchs because their territory was so far
north, a lot of it was those same islands that used to be
ruled by the north. So it was kind of hard to exert
authority over them because they're just like, like hundreds
of little 900 Scottish Isles, 900.
So like, yeah, it's hard to like collect taxes from every
individual. Not people don't live on all of
them. But still, it's hard to exert
power over that. So in 1420, the kinslayer just
dies. He's up, heat up and dies not of
anything strange. He was 80, so it was his time, I
guess. But Murdoch and his sons, the
same Murdoch that was let negotiated for release by Robert
was later found guilty of treason along with his sons and
they were executed. This line of the Stewarts was
called the Albany Stewarts and they were very powerful and they
were basically pushed aside now. And all that did was open up
more power for the Douglass. So it's like you move take power
from the Stewarts. It goes back to the Douglass.
It's like they can't seem to distribute power anywhere else
but Stewart and Douglass even get rid of 1 Stewart and Douglas
takes it. Get rid of a Douglass, the
different Douglass takes it. It just keeps happening.
So now we have James and the Black Douglas.
Not to be confused with James and the Giant Peach.
The fall of the Albany Stewarts did indeed make Archibald
Douglas, 4th Earl, the most powerful man in Scotland, even
more powerful than he had been. So arguably this made the
problem worse. But he actually shored this up
by working towards James's release.
He actually wanted James to get out, and he was helping do this
when Robert Kinsler was still in charge, because he wanted to be
rewarded. He could see what's happening.
He's like this Robert Stewart is keeping our king imprisoned
rather than me, but he didn't make an ideological issue out of
it. He's like opportunity.
Yes, if I free the king, I can be second in command to get
rewards, which means more lands and titles and all that.
In 1424, James married Joan Beaufort.
Yes, those Beaufort's, the same ones that were all over the Wars
of the Roses. And then he was released for
ransom, of course, after 18 years in prison or in sort of
prison, just in captivity, house arrest, whatever you want to
call it. He wasn't behind bars.
This is the time of Henry the 6th, which is our Henry Baylor.
But remember, Henry Baylor was a baby when he took the throne.
So he didn't really take the throne.
He was ruled by the nobles around him.
And those nobles were like, it's time to do away with us having
this Scottish king on our we, we got too much going on.
We also want that money. So he was finally let out in
1424. When he's released, he
immediately starts undermining Black Douglas Estates through
legalese. He starts looking up old
charters and saying hey, this, this sentence is wrong.
It makes your all claim invalid. So this is how he's undermining
the black Douglass doesn't go great, but it it's pretty
effective. And the reason it's effective is
because the 100 years war is still going on.
And Archibald, 4th Earl Douglas, most powerful Lord in Scotland,
would normally be able to like push back against these legal
claims. But he's in France fighting the
100 years War as a commander, of course, as a commander, a losing
commander, he loses the battle of Vernule Vernuh.
I don't know how to say it. He was killed there and his son
Archibald inherits. So we've got Archibald
inheriting from Archibald. But let's not forget the first
Archibald wasn't the son of the second Archibald.
So that the the Douglas land shift amongst cousins.
And again, this is setting up the pattern that leads to the
black dinner where they don't always have to just pass it
down. They can kill each other or push
each other aside to claim those very powerful lands, lands that
are getting increasingly more powerful.
This title is getting more and more valuable with every passing
year. In 1427, James the 1st just
invites a bunch of Lords to parley and just has a bunch of
them killed or in prison, including that Lord of the
Isles. So like, you can see all this
time, Sean, we've been talking about how there's pretty good
behavior. You got people get let out of
prison and they're just going right back.
You got nobles not being executed when it would seem to
be politically expedient. Yet this guy is kind of taking
advantage of that. He's like, well, they're they're
just, they're willing to believe that I'm going to give them safe
passes. Then he doesn't.
So it's like things are backsliding in terms of culture.
You know, arguably it's still pretty bad.
They're all fighting over power, which is not the most, you know,
civilized thing to do, but you can see there was some semblance
of honor and agreements and truces, but this seems to be
falling. Apart that's one thing one
reason to follow rules to to have morality or whatever is
it's about precedent setting. It's like I don't want someone
else to do this to me, so I'm not going to do it to anyone
else. Agree agree right.
You won't kill me. I won't kill you.
We're all going to not kill each other.
Cool got it. That's the that's the the rule
now. But once someone starts breaking
a rule and it pays off well, now other people were motivated to
do it and eventually it'll come around and no one will be safe
anymore. But but it it that seems to be
and and I can't help but wonder if one reason for this might
have been Sure, there's a number of reasons, but because of the
100 years war and also the black plague was like in the the same
era, I wonder if life literally just had less value.
People were just more accustomed to death, less mood by it.
It was more common. I, I, it seems so odd to me that
all these killings started happening.
Just trying to find some way in my mind to understand what why
it wasn't happening before and it stopped happening later, but
it happened a whole lot in this little era.
Here, Yeah. Meanwhile, like it just started
to fall apart in England, too, like during the 100 years, the
wars, the Roses, like Richard the Third started to like or
rumor or things that were pinned on him, depending on your view.
The things were happening, whether Richard did them or not.
People were getting murdered, prince's disappearing, usurping,
kings dying in prison, all sorts of stuff that hadn't been
happened like they they had. They had gone through a time
where that wasn't happening. It seemed to be like, ostensibly
they wanted to be following the rules, right?
Yeah, it wasn't as blatant open murder as what started happening
in the Scotland. Absolutely.
There's also some like prophecies around this time,
like 1370 is when prophecy started to be more important in
England or in Scotland. And it's like this is, it's an
interesting thing I read shared to me by Minotaur that Macbeth
is not a Scottish play. It's about Scotland.
It's about Scottish characters, but it was written by the
English. It's Shakespeare wrote that he
was an Englishman, not a Scotsman, right?
And this is part of so in the same way that Macbeth was
popularized by England, we've got George R Martin and HBO
popularizing the black dinner much later much, you know, kind
of after the fact. And Macbeth is a story about
prophecy. Like Macbeth has a he has a
prophecy and it's like there's all this fulfilling and conflict
around that prophecy and the deaths and all this other
business. There were prophecies around
James's death too. So that's kind of neat that
well, well, James is going to die.
Of course he dies but, and some of these maybe were post mortem,
some of them but maybe not. I don't know.
Probably they were written after the fact, but they're written as
if they didn't. That's usually how it happens.
But anyway, it's neat to see that that was part of the story.
By the way, they're so setting themselves up for failure
because if there's some prophecy about James dying, 40 different
people like, Oh no. Yep, that's right.
So I, I see this, this like going real briefly back to this
conquest of the aisles. It's sort of like James trying
to conquer the Free Folk. It's like you can't do that.
They, they can't be, they, they won't kneel.
I mean, that's just not going to happen.
So yeah, it didn't, it didn't work so well.
Here we have the next section, the changing of the James, or
the James of Thrones maybe should have been what I called
it anyway. His political problems.
They might have said the reason James was such a jerk in the way
he was breaking these codes was because he was raised by the
English. That's not if he is a proper
Scotsman, he wouldn't have done all this anyway.
An assassination plot was launched against him because of
his policies and other stuff. His own Chamberlain, a different
Robert Stewart, assisted 30 men in getting inside the castle.
James found out while it was happening and tries to flee
through a secret tunnel. Catherine Douglas, lady in
waiting to the Queen. I've got a Douglas and a Stewart
just on the inside here. 1's A1's a heel, one's a hero, and
Catherine's the hero. She earned the nickname Bar Last
not because she served drinks at a bar, because she behaved like
a bar. And again, not like a bar that
serves drinks, but like an actual wooden bar.
You know, we'll see medieval shows and movies where you bar
the door. Well, she didn't have a bar, so
she used her arm. She put her arm in the bar.
They did eventually break her arm.
She survived, but she's heroic for that action.
It didn't work. This little anecdote here is so
crazy to me. It's totally the makings of a
right, I don't know, an episode of Game of Thrones or something.
It reminds me of Alice Anne was Queen.
Alice Anne was set upon by some assassins at Maiden Pool and one
of her ladies in waiting died defending her.
Another one was wounded and survive but survive.
So it's a little similar to that.
Unfortunately, Alice and survived.
Well, that's not unfortunate. Alice and survived, fortunately.
Unfortunately, Catherine Barlass's maneuver didn't work
for the silliest reason. James was going to flee through
the secret tunnel, but it had been closed off because of
tennis. The tennis balls kept going into
the tunnel and become they were difficult to get.
But this tunnel, it's a sewer. It's like a underwater water
underground waterway. And the king like went down in
there to escape these sail ants and he he hit a dead end and
they just killed him, just killed the king in a tunnel like
man. Yeah, A.
Yeah. A tennis ball?
Sewer. Yep, his heart was also carried
to the Holy Land, but it wasn't Braveheart and it was apparently
only for a visit. There was no crusade.
It was just bring your heart to the Holy Land, say you went
there and then bring it back and bury it.
And it's just super hearts. Yeah, just super heart.
Not Braveheart. Tennis hearts visit heart, You
know, the the wandering heart. Lots of hearts wander.
Yeah. So 6 year old James the Second
ascends to the throne with the red Douglas sort of taking
charge and his mother taking charge or trying to or his
mother, the he tried to become Regent.
Now she had remarried to the Black Knight of Lorne.
She real quick, she was also in that keep.
Yeah, she was wounded during the.
And she she escaped, but not without injury.
But yeah, just adding to the excitement around the you know,
I, I often you think of kings and nobles, all these courtly
people, they're just in some palace in some throne room with
tapestries and wine and grapes. But the I just trying to imagine
him like jumping out the window or running into the sewer is
such. A out of.
Stewart's moment? I know it's wild.
The stories are amazing. So she tries to become Regent,
she tries to use this as an opportunity to become powerful.
And again, like I said, she remarried to a guy named the
Black Knight of Lorne, who was a descendant of Alexander Stewart,
the 4th High Stewart who all the way back when they defeated the
Norse, he's a Direct Line descendant from that guy.
So more Stewart's getting involved here.
So this was actually incestuous. But hey, it's OK, they got a
papal dispensation because everybody knows with the wave of
his hand, the Pope can just remove any possible chance of
incest damage, right? There's no, there's no genetic
liability here. The Pope said so.
There was also a certain William Crichton.
I don't know if he's related to Michael Crichton, the author for
a few 100 years ahead of that. This guy's also trying to win
power throughout this, this new regime of James the Second here.
But Robert Stewart confessed to his part in the assassination
and the truth coming out changed a lot of things that had a
domino effect. Queen Joan is kind of pushed
aside. She's not able to do anything
anymore. The Black Knight of Lorne is
they're they're pushed aside. And who becomes protector of the
realm? And Lieutenant General Archibald
Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas, Martha Archibald back in the
game. Yeah.
Archibald had three children, William, then Margaret, called
the Fair Lady of Galloway, and another, David.
Now Archibald was only Lieutenant General for two
years. He had been the Earl for a
while, but he died of a fever only two years into his
protectorship of the realm. His son William becomes 6th
Earl. And when, right after he becomes
6th Earl, he's invited to a meal.
A meal, you know, the one that you eat later in the day.
Not breakfast, not lunch, not brunch.
What's that final meal called? Second lunch.
No, not that one. No, a little farther.
Leonard. Leonard.
Not Leonard. We're getting there.
Yeah. So dinner, supper, supper.
He was invited to supper. That's right, at Edinburgh
Castle. William, 6th Earl.
Pretty happy with his new position.
He's only 16 years old. He and his brother were invited,
his brother the David that we just mentioned.
So William and David bring their dudes.
They go to the Black Dinner, the event that brought us here in
the 1st place. With Archibald the 5th's death,
an opportunity came for James Douglas to usurp the power that
had belonged to his father, Archibald.
Now this James was the son of Archibald the Grim, who was the
3rd Earl and the first Archibald of this group.
This is the third Archibald who was Archibald the 5th.
So he wants the the lands that just passed to William to come
back to his corner of the family.
Those are his nephews, his great nephews, the William and David
who were invited to the black dinner.
So it's a family struggle. It's a it's a family in it's
infighting for power. That same William Crichton guy
that I just mentioned, who may or may not be related to Michael
Crichton, who had. Become the Royal Chancellor and
he was the primary architect along with this guy, the
Justiciar, Sir Alexander Livingston.
So he's kind of like the the new region, like the Hand of the
King, this William Crichton guy. By the way, the date of this
event, this dinner, was November 24th, 1440.
Some of you astute listeners may realize that the original date
we planned for this episode was November 24th, 2024.
But I was too scared. I say I was too scared of the
the omens. Yeah, yeah.
Also, we were going to Spain and that kind of threw things off.
But really we were having our own Thanksgiving, which we did
not want to associate with the black dinner.
You can't have the black friends giving.
You can't have that. No, we did not have that.
We avoided all such curses. So what happens?
You got William, 6th Earl of Douglas, with his brother David.
They show up again. He's only 16 years old.
Maybe, you know, he inherits a whole lot of power.
Maybe he's a little naive because he's only 16.
Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't know what's
coming. Maybe.
Regardless, like Sean said at the beginning, we don't know a
lot of the details that happened.
Legend says while they're eating, a black bull's head is
placed in front of them. This is the Rains of Castamere
starting to play during the Red Wedding.
It's the same thing. Of course, George, because it's
a story and his version added a heck of a lot more literary
foreshadowing. Well, before that, there was
also the drums, the rain, the breaking of the, the, you know,
hurting Walder Frey's pride, all sorts of things that were there.
Some of these things were probably present, too.
We're just not as aware of them because history doesn't record
them. But they're probably wear some
other clothes to this. By the way, I've got a couple
things to add here which might come into play as we get a
little deeper. But fire away.
The kid you know he was he was only quote UN quote only 16.
But remember some other kid that was only 17 was king.
Lots of 16 year olds right off into battle and have.
Rob Stark was 16. Ambition.
And so, you know, not a lot is known about him, but, you know,
I again, digging into this just to try to figure out, you know,
what was going on here. There is this possibility that
he was ambitious. He had an entourage of dozens of
armed soldiers that he rode around with all the time.
And that might have come off as a threat, at least to some
people, whether he meant it to be or not, you know, whether you
had some intention of recruiting more or attacking towns.
But you could see how some people might feel threatened,
especially when this Douglas family is so powerful already.
Also, he was invited to the Scottish Parliament and didn't
go now, maybe didn't go because there was a storm or he's a kid
or maybe because he was. It was like a stance like he was
not acknowledging the authority of the parliament and even if
that wasn't the case, some people in parliament might have
perceived it that way or might be convinced that that was it.
However, they did perceive it. So before the actual dinner, he
actually spent a few days at the estate there and got to know the
young king, the 10 year old King James.
They were like him and the Dave brother.
They were all like friends and playing games and getting to
know each other. And when it was time for the
actual dinner, he left his entourage behind at the estate
to go to the actual dining hall and was warned not to.
There was this one other guy with him.
It's like it might not be safe. Don't take a chance, just bring
a few guards with you. Nah, the King's my friend.
I don't need to. And just went on his own with
his little brother and his one other guardian.
That other guardian was killed also.
Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point, Sean,
because, yes, the King James the Second was there, but he was
only 10 years old. So yeah, they're they're
friends, but he doesn't actually have authority.
It's this Crichton guy and the red Douglas, some of these other
and James Douglas who was conniving at all this.
Those are the guys that were behind the scenes here.
So the charge is treason. They bring out the Black Bull's
head. Maybe, maybe that didn't happen.
I, I did some research. I cannot find anything about the
Black Bull's head. I don't have any other examples
of it happening. I couldn't find anything.
Maybe it's so obscure that it's not on the Internet, but I
couldn't find any. Some tellings it's a black
boar's head, and in either case it's supposed to be a symbol of
death. And it's like when it came out,
it was a whoa. That's why it's the rains of
cast me are perfect. Like parallel there.
Yeah. So the charge was treason.
They were given a mock trial and then their heads were cut off,
both William and David. So James Douglas, son of
Archibald the Grim, becomes Earl Douglas and he becomes the most
powerful Lord in Scotland. So he's killed his own grand
nephews. He becomes nicknamed James the
Gross. So there's that because, you
know, he's was kind of a gross thing to do.
He would eventually pass the Earlham to William, 8th Earl of
Douglas only three years later because he he didn't live very
long. And it becomes a becomes a case
of what goes around, comes around.
Like we, we started to show this, these these types of
violence was escalating. And here at the Black Dinner
1440, it's almost immediately after, very soon after there's
there's similar atrocities or violations of guest right or
whatever you want to call it and more examples of kinsling.
So it's almost straightforward. Like there's not a lot of
reasons that I complained at the beginning of this episode that
there's, there's not great analysis on this out there
that's out there, unlike the wars of the road, there's lots
of great analysis out there. This is like people are like, I
don't know, I don't know why he did this.
It's easy to see why he did this.
These are just heirs of the original Black Douglas fighting
over the insanely powerful Douglas titles.
It's just that simple. There's really like, oh, it was
an idea like, no, they killed this guy for power or this this
kid for power. It's very straightforward.
I think you. Know it's interesting as easy as
you say, but you know that there's not a lot of a ton of
talk about it, Dornish Jame in the chat said.
Shockingly, given how interesting all of this is,
Scottish history is not taught in any detail in Scottish
school. There's.
One of the other eras and more European history in general.
So even in their schools. Bit of a shame they should teach
that maybe not this to young people.
This is a little, little R rated for the kids, but still you
know, and the teenagers could learn this maybe the college
students. I think some of the mystery is
why this Crichton guy did it because he didn't stand to
directly gain anything. Exactly.
It doesn't seem like James the Gross, who stood to gain the
most, was actively involved in it.
Yeah, but maybe they expected to get favor from him.
And you know, you can imagine all the kind of.
Pressure from him? Yeah, maybe he promised them
rewards that we're not that history isn't Privy to.
But yeah, you're right. Because it's a little odd,
because Crichton got away with it.
Yeah. The only thing that happens in
the rest of his life of note and that we could find like
Wikipedia or elsewhere was just he eventually loaned James the
second a bunch of money. Maybe This is Money that the
Douglass has paid him as part of this.
But regardless, that's, that's it.
That's like the only like he just kind of got away with it
and retired and died normally. Now, when James reached
adulthood in 1449, he had Douglas assistance in getting
rid of this Livingston guy that was another conniver, another
conspirator. So it appears like so two of the
conspirators turned on each other.
Shocking, right? That never happens.
People who are willing to do murders and and theft and all
this sort of thing, they would never do that to each other.
That's another sort of speculation, by the way.
The fact that these two guys did, at least for years and
years and years, seemingly got away with this, it makes people
wonder who else might have been involved or gained from it or
condoned it or whatever. The fact that they weren't
immediately punished makes it seem like there were probably
more people in on the conspiracy, you know?
Yeah. Now we have the next event, the
Black Fire Dinner. Again, just think of these
Douglas's. They're just, they're very
Tyrell ish, Frey ish, or or Lannister.
You kill a few of them, but there's just always someone else
to replace them. There's always more Douglas's to
come out of the woodwork. Doug lie.
Is that the plural of Douglas's? No, Douglas.
Anyway, the Black Dinner didn't really break the power of Clan
Douglas at all. That was I've seen that floated
as a reason, but that's just kind of silly.
Of course it wasn't going to do that.
It just moved the power to a different Douglas, an older,
more dangerous Douglas. That James the Gross that got
most of those titles, someone got divvied around, but I think
he just died like a year later. Three years later, yeah.
Very quickly after, yeah. But still, that wasn't the end
either. It just went to some other
Douglas, right? Like.
Or some Doug Ladd? Some Doug Last.
Yeah, Doug. Last and Doug Last.
Before you continue, even though I know this next part is so
interesting, I just have to go. I I I love this episode and this
topic but I have something I have to do now.
We're running a bit long. We're going to finish.
It'll take us about 15 minutes to finish.
So folks, stick with us, but we'll say goodbye to Sean for
now. Thank you for your great input,
your great takes, and we'll, we'll see you next time.
The rest of you, let's do the Black Fire dinner.
That's just my own name for it. We got the black dinner followed
up by the Black Fire dinner. And it's because it's a Black
Fire parallel. That's why now James the second,
when he came of age, he, he leveraged that same Douglas
power that had been shifted around so much times to help
himself get established. So he invites that 8th Earl of
Douglas, the son of James the Gross, who only ruled for three
years, and promises him safe conduct.
Now he promises him safe conduct because, well, you can see why
in this era, there's a lot of murderers going on.
People couldn't trust each other that much.
Black Dinner was only 12 years old, but he did not give him
safe conduct. So we got a real a nice
Blackfyre Bloodraven situation here.
He accused William of Southron ambitions, basically saying, hey
you, you're allying with all these people, you need to not do
that. And he's like, I'm going to do
that. And so despite the promise of
safe conduct, he stabbed him 26 times.
That is the king himself. James the Second stabbed
William, the 8th Earl of Douglas, 26 times, then threw
his body out the window just for good measure.
And then more people just started hacking away at him.
One dude, like, slammed an axe into his face.
Like that was kind of unnecessary, but you know, they
did it. All right, you got me.
That was that wasn't a dinner, but it was black fire ish cause
of Anis and Bloodraven. Now to complete the parallel,
the new Earl of Douglas, the 9th Earl of Douglas, who is the last
Earl of Douglas, the last black Douglas Earl, he now takes the
earldom and he should be described because he's part of
the picture here. He's got the look.
And by the look, I mean he had a red birthmark on his cheek like
Bloodraven did. His nickname was Fiery Face
because he had a temper and because of that birthmark on his
face, which was red like Blood Ravens, also red birthmark.
We've got James versus James. James responded to the stabbing
of his father by attaching the false letter of safe conduct to
a horse and having that horse ride through town to sort of
show everybody what King James had done to show how he had, you
know, violated this order of safe conduct.
Despite this James Douglas being kind of in the right here, he
didn't end up doing so well. So now we have our last section,
the Black Douglas death. James kept on warring against
the Earl of Douglas. He kept fighting against this
same James was James versus James game of James.
And for about 3 years, James Douglas was winning.
He kept winning in these battles, but there was a
marriage to Margaret Douglas, the Fair Maid of Galloway, and
she had inherited Galloway after the black dinner.
She actually inherited land because her brother had both
those titles and one passed to her.
Real Marjorie Tyrell vibes with the fair Maid of Galloway.
So she had been married to the 8th Earl, The 8th Earl was
killed and she married the 9th Earl.
And then when the 9th Earl was eventually lost his lands and
later died, she married Jon Stewart.
So it just go Douglas Douglas Stewart.
Yeah. It actually looked this war was
going so well in James Douglas favor that it might look like
James the Second would lose the throne.
But he was finally able to win enough support from the other
nobles to put down James Douglas, 9th Earl.
James escaped, but his three brothers, who were all Lords
were killed or executed in this final battle of Arcanholm.
Not to be confused with the Arcan Stone of Lord of the Rings
fame or Ian Holm of Lord of the Rings fame.
Arcanholm, the commander in the final battle against this black
Douglass's George Douglas, 4th Earl of the Red Douglas line.
So this final battle had Red Douglas versus Black Douglas,
and then James the Second had done so well.
His defeat of the Black Douglases was powerful enough
and secure enough that he was actually able to have Parliament
forfeit all Black Douglas lands. The Black Douglases were
completely purged as nobles. Their lands were seized and
redistributed. Now, James the Second died only
5, about five years later in 1460, trying to retake that same
Roxbrook Castle that the English still held from the Wars of
Independence. Even though they won those wars,
the English still had Roxbrook Castle.
But I'm sad Sean missed this little anecdote 'cause we talked
about this before as a thing that could happen.
How did he die? He stood too close to one of his
own cannons and it backfired and it killed him just like that.
Simple as that. Just the most ignominious death.
Who finished the siege of Roxbrook Castle in his place
though? The Red Douglas.
He did the job. So who ascends after James the
Second? James the Third, his mother
handled Scotland for a little while because James the Third
was young. The Wars the Roses were getting
started and James the Third later in his life was opposed by
a guy named Archibald Bell the cat with hyphens, Bell Dash the
Dash cat, who was a red Douglas, now the 9th Earl.
Even though he lost, he still survived until 1484, where he
and Alexander Stewart of the disenfranchised Albany Stewart's
teamed up. This is also the second son of
King James the Second. So you got an Alexander Stewart
who's son of the king. This is James the Third's
brother. So the the King's brother teams
up with the last Earl of the Black Douglases to fight one
last try, but their ally backed out at the last minute.
And who was their ally? Everything comes together here
at the end. It was Richard the Third, our
main subject of the Wars of the Roses episode.
Instead of supporting them, he just gave them permission like
they needed it, but they So their invasion backfired really
badly. This is why the final battle.
I said it already happened because there was no battle here
really not much of one. They invaded.
They were hoping for local support.
Instead the locals turned on them.
The locals attacked them. Rather than waiting for an army,
they just attacked them. So Douglas was captured, never a
factor again. Prince Alexander escaped to
France where he was killed the following year in a duel.
He challenged the Duke of Orlean.
The Duke of Orlean killed him because of a splinter from his
Lance got him. It was maybe like Gregor
fighting Hue of the Veil, except that the Duke of Orlean probably
wasn't nearly as large as Gregor Clegane, but same result.
The Duke of Orlean eventually became King of France.
So this was not just some random Duke.
Not that any Duke is really that random.
So with the end of both the Albany Stewarts and the Black
Douglases, royal power in Scotland entered an entirely new
phase. The Red Douglases stuck around,
but they had learned their lesson in this new era.
They maintained their power without getting too close to the
top. They never got burned.
They stuck around. There were some disputes, of
course, back and forth, but as I said at the beginning, the Red
Douglases are still around today.
There's the Lord Douglas Hamilton that still exists.
There's the Douglases of Scotland.
I mean, Scotland, I said that the Douglases of Sweden, there's
a Swedish branch of the Red Douglases that still exists at
this day as well. So ultimately the family was
very successful despite the the fall of the Black Douglases.
As I also said at the beginning, there's no real end here, nor is
there really a beginning here. There's just our version, the
history of Westeros, version of the wars of Scottish
independence, the war against the Norse, the tales of Robert,
Bruce and all the Stewarts and Douglass's.
Our interpretation, our version, we got to stop somewhere.
Rebels with James the Sun's third, who was James tried to
pull a Rhaegar and Aries, right? They tried to like put James
down but not kill him, just sort of force him to abdicate, but
King James just died instead during this kind of work, just
he died instead of them putting him in prison.
James the 4th ascended who was followed by James the 5th who
was followed by Mary Queen of Scots.
And after that the throne, the crown of Scotland was united
with the crown of England and Ireland and Great Britain became
a thing. So as you can see, we covered a
lot, but there's endless stories.
There's so many we didn't tell. There's so many more tales of
Douglas Stewart and other families that weren't named.
Hopefully I've inspired you to check some more of this out or
at least inspire you to vote for episodes like this in Topics or
to just, you know, tweet at us or Blue sky at us or send us
messages to say, hey, I liked episodes like this.
Make more of them. Final footnote, the Stone of
Destiny. Sean alluded to some of this,
but yes, the the the British monarchs kept using it.
Some kids stole it in 1950. They stashed it in a church
where it was later found. Like Sean said, it was really
heavy. So it's kind of amazing they
pulled this off. There were four kids that stole
it. If you go to the Wikipedia
article on the Stone of Destiny, you can see there's links to
three of these kids. Who there you can read about
these three kids that stole one of them doesn't have a link.
Alan Stewart. Maybe the Stewart family doesn't
want this kid associated with all that.
But it's hilarious to me that a Stewart was involved in stealing
back the Stone of Destiny many years later in the night in
1950. Some, I don't know, seven.
Well, how many years later was that?
Still somewhere like 640 some years later.
So yeah, in 1996 it was returned for real and it's now on display
in Scotland. You can you can go see it if you
want next week. The Shadow by a Shy sort of a
long post sequel to our A Shy by the Shadow episode made many,
many years ago. I want to shout out as well our
long ago episode, The Witch Queen of Harrenhal.
It talks about Alice Rivers, but it also has the guest Shakes of
Thrones and Joe Magician. But in that episode, Shakes of
Thrones talked about witches and prophecy, a lot of which comes
from Macbeth and Shakespeare. So it's very related to some of
that little bit of prophecy we talked about.
And I also want to bring to you our cat, Xerxes, the blue eyed
Persian boy. Can you hear him?
Is he purring into the microphone?
Maybe not. He's not really happy about
being picked up like this, but we didn't have She's Cat today,
one of She's Cat, so we grabbed one of our own.
We make do. Thank you everybody.
An extra long episode today, but as you can see, we had a lot to
cover. I hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks to Nina, Congrats again on her nuptials.
To James, again, the only living James we discussed today.
Thanks as well to Joey and Jesse and Bran, those kind folks who
made our music and adapted our music and made videos for our
show to introduce it. That also goes for Michael
Klarfeld who made our original video intro.
You can check Michael out at claredox.de KLARADO x.de.
You can buy copies of his maps, just the files if you want.
Go get them printed yourself. Nice and cheap that way.
Xerxes has a Persian name, but it's a Siamese cat.
I just needed to say that yes, for him, his sake.
That is a very good point. Yes, Persian.
Persian cats are entirely different.
That's the the big fluffy ones. So.
Yeah, if anyone was confused, that's why, as he said, Persian
cat. Yeah, because he has a Persian
name. Yeah, he's not actually a
Persian cat. Yeah, he is clearly a Siamese, a
very beautiful Siamese boy with blue eyes.
And we will be back next time for more.
And you know what to do. Valar reread us.