Fourteenth-century Scottish royal women 1306-1371: pawns, players and prisoners

The kings of Scotland in the fourteenth century, with the exception of David II, did not initially marry the daughters of kings. Their wives were Scottish and were drawn in the main from the level of earls and lairds. Furthermore, unlike most Scottish princesses in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, who went out of the realm to marry, those in the fourteenth century were on the whole stay at home princesses. These women were married into the ranks of the nobility thereby strengthening the political position of any given monarch within the realm. However, the possible claims to the throne through the highly fertile female lines proliferated. After the crown had passed to the house of Stewart through a female, Marjory, daughter of Robert the Bruce, the possibility of such claims probably served to maintain the royal status as primus inter pares or 'first among equals'. This paper will attempt to examine the nature of the royal court to which queens came and at which their daughters were brought up.