Child rulers feature prominently in medieval Scottish history. Mary, queen of Scots (r.1542-67), who inherited the throne at just six days old following her father’s death in December 1542, is perhaps the most well-known.
Yet Mary was by no means the first child to occupy the royal seat, even if we can safely assume she was the youngest to do so. Two centuries earlier, the five-yearold son of Robert I (r.1306-29) and Elizabeth de Burgh had succeeded his father as King David II (r.1329-71). David was seven years old at his coronation at Scone in November 1331, and his ten-year-old wife, Joan, became queen alongside him. These well-known stories illustrate how even very young children could claim significant roles in the ‘making of ’ what we now call Scotland. In 1290, the death of a seven-year-old Norwegian princess while en route to Scotland for her royal inauguration precipitated the succession crisis known as the ‘Great Cause’. Margaret, later dubbed the ‘maid of Norway’, had been recognised as the rightful successor to her grandfather, Alexander III (r.1249-86), who had himself succeeded to the kingship as a seven-year-old child in 1249. Cases such as these, as well as others like them, place children at the centre of some of the most critical political moments of late medieval Scotland. But how far back into the kingdom’s early history can we trace this tradition of child rulership? Were boy kings and infant queens an exclusively late-medieval occurrence? Or is there evidence for similarly young rulers prior to the 12th century?