MORE than three years ago – yes this column’s been going that long and more – I wrote about the history of the Scottish links with Norway in the 13th century.

That column briefly featured the final two Queen Consorts in this series of women from outside Scotland who made a huge impact on this country in the latter half of the 13th century. They were the two wives of Alexander III, King of Scots, and rather to my disgust, I see I did not give them their due in that column in March, 2016.

For Margaret of England and Yolande de Dreux were important characters in their own right and as Queen Consorts they had a major influence on Scottish history, not least because the tragedies they suffered in childbirth marked Scotland as an unlucky land at that time, and would lead indirectly to the Wars of Independence.

As we saw last week, there had been a tradition of Scottish kings marrying aristocratic women of England stretching back to St Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore. Ermengarde de Beaumont hailed from France, and she broke the mould of Queen Consorts of Scotland, becoming a very important figure at the court of her son King Alexander II.

That did not endear her to Alexander’s wife, Joan of England, who I can deal with in a few paragraphs because she made little impact on Scotland. The daughter of King John of England, Joan Plantagenet had first been promised in marriage to King Philip II of France and then to Count Hugh IX of Lusignan, but even though King John died in 1216, the English decided to keep to his word as proclaimed by Alexander II, King of Scots – that John had agreed to marry off his daughter to Alexander. The wedding took place at York Minster on June 21, 1221, when Alexander was 22 and Joan not quite 11, a circumstance not unusual in those days. Joan did not like life in Scotland, she and Alexander were probably never in love and certainly they had no children.

The chief outcome of the marriage was peace with England, even though there were constant disputes over territories in the north of England which Scotland claimed.

From all accounts Joan was also dominated by her mother-in-law Ermengarde, the real power behind the throne. Joan was also sickly, and her brother Henry III of England gave her some of his manors and land so she could come south for better weather. In 1237 she went south with her husband as he signed the Treaty of York to define the Scottish border with England, and then she duly set off on a pilgrimage to Canterbury accompanied by her sister-in-law Queen Eleanor of Provence, perhaps to seek divine intercession for her ailments. She never recovered her health and died at Havering in Essex on March 4, 1238, aged just 27.

Alexander waited a decent time – in those days 14 months was a long time – before marrying again, this time to Marie de Coucy, a beautiful and very wealthy French aristocrat, who made much more of a mark on Scotland than her predecessor. The royal marriage in May, 1239, was seen as sparking a Franco-Scottish alliance and Marie encouraged French nobles to come to Scotland to serve at court. Several became senior figures in government, especially after Marie gave birth to Alexander’s long-awaited heir, the future Alexander III, in 1241.

When Alexander II died of a fever in 1249, Marie insisted that her son be crowned king at Scone quickly. Scotland was now in one of those regular periods of having a monarch who was a minor, and a regency council was established, though of course the various nobles fought each other for primacy in the land.

Marie was the driving force in Scotland behind the marriage of her son Alexander III to Margaret of England, daughter of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, which took place in York Minster on December 26, 1251. Alexander was 10 and Margaret was 11, and it is recorded that there was great pageantry and feasting while Marie brought a large retinue of French and Scottish nobles.

In 1256, Marie married the King of Acre in Palestine, Jean de Brienne, the Grand Butler of France, but they separated in 1268 no doubt due to the fact that Marie spent a lot of time in Scotland where she was made a member of the regency council for the last two years of her son’s minority that ended in 1262.

Marie will reappear in our story later, but first let’s deal with Margaret of England and her marriage to Alexander III.

The greatest achievement of Alexander’s early reign was the Treaty of Perth in 1266 in which the King of Norway, Magnus VI, gave up any claim to sovereignty over the Western Isles, the Isle of Man, Kintyre and Caithness. Some 4000 merks of silver and an annual payment of 100 merks helped smooth that deal which had been inevitable ever since the Scots won the Battle of Largs three years previously.

Norway retained Orkney and Shetland, but Alexander III now controlled all the mainland of Scotland plus the Western Isles. Scotland’s wars with Norway were over, and most important of all, there was lasting peace with England.

That peace had been sealed by Alexander’s marriage to Princess Margaret, and theirs was something of a personal tragedy because all the chronicles emphasise that Margaret was very fond of her husband but she absolutely loathed their home, Edinburgh Castle, and the Scottish climate appears to have made her depressed, so much so that her mother sent physicians from the English court to treat her, just in time for the consummation of their marriage which had been agreed would happen when both reached the age of 14.

The relationship between the teenagers was strained, but they did succeed in producing children, Margaret giving birth to a daughter, also called Margaret, in 1261 – she had been allowed to go to Windsor Castle to be with her family for her confinement, which in those days was an almost terrifying ritual involving the expectant mother being virtually locked up.

Margaret had two more children, Alexander, the heir to the throne, and another son David, and she appears to have cheered up a lot, acting as a proper consort to Alexander, though she was devastated by the death of her father in 1272, especially as she was unable to attend his funeral as she was pregnant with David. Her brother Edward I, Longshanks, ascended the throne and at first he and Alexander were friends.

A couple of strange incidents from her life are testified to by the chronicles of the time. The mighty Comyn family broke out in one of their occasional rebellions and seized both Alexander and Margaret, demanding the expulsion of all foreigners from Scotland which presumably meant Margaret as well. They were eventually pacified but the Comyn family had made a mark that would see them come to prominence later in the century.

Margaret was also staying at Kinclaven Castle in Perthshire in the summer of 1273 when, according to the Lanercost Chronicle, she and her ladies-in-waiting went for a walk by the River Tay. Described by the the Chronicle as “a pompous esquire”, one of the young men of her retinue was fooling around on the river bank when the Queen motioned to one of her ladies to play a trick on him and push him into the river. The esquire took it in good heart but then suddenly was sucked away by the river. His young page jumped in to save his master and both were drowned “swallowed up in a moment before the sight of all” as Lanercost puts it.

Margaret herself became ill and refusing to see anyone but the King and her confessor, she took to her bed in Cupar Castle and died there on February 26, 1275. She was just 34 and had been Queen for 23 years.

Alexander was deeply affected and with three children including an "heir and a spare" he was in no mood to marry again.

It all started to go very wrong for Alexander at the start of the 1280s.

Magnus of Norway and Alexander had something of a distant bromance going, and it was agreed Alexander’s only daughter Margaret would marry Magnus’s son Erik, even though she was seven years older than the boy.

They were betrothed in 1281, the year after King Magnus died, and with Erik already on the Norwegian throne at the age of 12, a regency council ruled in his name until he came of age.

In June of that year, Alexander’s younger son David died at Stirling Castle. He was just eight.

Alexander attended the wedding of his daughter to Erik II of Norway just two months after David’s death, and though he was barely 13 at the time, Erik managed to get Margaret pregnant.

Tragically, Margaret herself died in childbirth at the age of just 22 in April, 1283. The child was called Margaret and we know her as the Maid of Norway.

Even greater tragedy struck the royal family when the crown prince Alexander became gravely ill and died at Lindores Abbey in Fife on January 17, 1284, four days short of his 20th birthday,

Only the previous year he had married another Margaret, the daughter of the Count of Flanders, but there were no children from the marriage.

Alexander now had no male heirs, and the Maid of Norway was next in line to the throne. But the king was only 44 and with a swift marriage he would have plenty time to produce a legitimate heir.

Enter Marie de Coucy again. The Queen Mother of the day knew just about every marriageable woman in Europe and recommended to Alexander that he wed Yolande De Dreux, the 21-year-old daughter of Robert, Count of Freux, and Beatrice, Countess of Montfort, and thus closely connected to the French royal family. Yolande also just happened to be Marie’s stepdaughter ...

It was a very brave thing for Alexander to do as any link with France was a provocation to Edward of England who was making noises about overlording Scotland again as well as fighting with the French.

The royal couple were married at Jedburgh Abbey in November, 1285, and it appears to have been love at first sight for both of them. Certainly all the Chronicles say that Alexander was quite besotted with his young, beautiful and graceful wife.

Alexander simply could not get enough of the glamorous Yolande, and on March 19, 1286, the king enjoyed a meal with his council in Edinburgh before deciding to surprise Yolande who was at a royal manor at Kinghorn in Fife.

The weather was so bad that the ferryman at Queensferry at first refused to carry the King across the Forth, but eventually he did so and with plenty wine taken and no doubt lust beckoning him onwards, the lure of Yolande proved too much and Alexander III charged off into Fife.

His body was found the following morning on the shore between Burntisland and Kinghorn Ness near to Pettycur. The cliff down which he fell is known still as King’s Crag.

Yolande was pregnant but the child was stillborn. The Maid of Norway was declared queen, though we all know that she never made it to Scotland with the Wars of Independence duly following.

In 1294 Yolande de Dreux married Arthur, Duke of Brittany. She never lost touch with Scotland and retained her dower lands her until she died on August 2, 1330, by which time Scotland had won its independence. It’s time we got it back.