Brice, the Bold, MacDrostan
Lived: 964-1048
Head of House MacDrostan: 970-1048
King of Scotland: 970-1048
King Consort of Lotharingia: 999-1034
Brice of Scotland is known by many names, the extraordinary length of his reign and forcefulness of his personality capturing the imagination of scholars for centuries. Living for almost 84 years, an incredible length of time for an Early Medieval monarch, Brice’s reign over Scotland, lasting some 78 years, remains the longest in the country’s history. During This almost century long period the fears of the Dark Ages were swept away, Scotland entering into the mainstream of European civilisation during a Golden Era of its history.
Inheriting the Scottish throne as a child, Brice’s royal power was wielded by a military cabal around the famed, and widely hated, figure of Annabella the Maid. It surprised no one that, despite the very recent end of the wars that sought to bring down Adam I, Scotland once again slipped into Civil War in early 971. Brice’s right to the crown was challenged by Morgan of the Isles, a scion of Donald II’s legitimised bastard of the same name, who rallied the clans of the North to around the promise to topple Brice’s despised regents.
As the Norse continued to take advantage of Scotland’s instability to continue their intense raiding activities across the Kingdom’s coastlines, and Morgan’s forces proving a much stiffer challenge than expected, Scotland was utterly shattered by its second bout of Civil War in scarcely a decade. When Morgan was finally captured and brought into captivity in Stirling in 975 the Scots economy was in tatters, the crowns’ incomes had collapsed and all progressed made over the course of nearly a century of MacDrostan rule seemed to have been reversed.
In the years after Morgan’s bid for the crown, Annabella took advantage of a power vacuum across the British Isles to vigorously re-exert the power of the Scottish monarchy through sheer force of arms. Within Scotland, the lack of a clear rallying point for rebels meant that the minor revolts of 981 and 983 failed utterly to draw widespread support – allowing the crown to dominate its opponents. Elsewhere, Austurian Mercia descended into a prolonged period of Civil War from the mid-970s, leaving no obvious contender to Scotland for the status of Britain’s dominant power. A series of border incursions saw Scotland extend its frontiers Southward whilst in Wales Annabella oversaw the conquest of the entire Duchy of Gwynedd. At home, the system of coastal fortifications and garrisons that had protected Scotland from Viking incursions earlier in the century was gradually restored – effectively bringing an end to the Viking era in Scotland.
As Brice matured into office in the early 980s he began to openly clash with the brash regime instituted by Annabella both domestically and abroad. The crucial conflict emerged in the aftermath of the revolt of 983. Desiring an end to internal instability, Brice side-lined Annabella and forced her out of his council, and shortly thereafter out of any position of power. In her place he advocated conciliation with the nobility – reaching a peaceful arrangement with the Lords of his realm in which respect for the monarchy was won through recognition of the nobility’s power over their own lands and a degree of influence at the royal court that they had been denied for decades. Abroad, Brice ended the hostility between the Spanish and Scots as he entered into an alliance with the King of Asturias. Travelling to Santiago on pilgrimage he won the hand of the King of Asturias’ eldest daughter – sealing an alliance over a King who dominated both Northern Spain and England. In the years after the marriage in 984 the Austrians would consolidate their grip over Mercia and even see the Kingdom of Wessex fall under their authority.
The rise of the power of the Spanish in England saw an alliance between Asturias and Scotland slip from being a valued guarantor of Spanish influence to a limit upon their ability to exert their authority across Britain. Despite the relative peacefulness of the decade after 984, tensions were slowly rising between the British Isles’ two most influential powers. Within King Brice’s own chambers, the alliance with Asturias was greatly soured by his failure to conceive a male heir with his Spanish wife – the Queen giving birth to three daughters and no sons. Bowing to the pressure to secure both his line and Scottish power, in 995 Brice took a dramatic turn against his Spanish allies.
Brice introduced Agnatic Law into Scotland – explicitly removing his daughters from the line of succession – he then received permission from the Papacy, on admittedly spurious grounds, to divorce his wife, the Asturians proven a thorn in the side of all efforts to expand Papal power, and finally launched an invasion of Austrian Mercia. It was a series of actions both very true to Brice’s moniker, and laced with the treachery associated with so many MacDrostan monarchs leading back to Donald II. In the event, Brice’s actions proved a masterstroke. In both Spain and England, the Asturian Empire was already starting to fracture when the Scots invaded – rather than face a mighty Spanish host Brice would see the barons of England rise in rebellion against their foreign overlords once again whilst in Spain competing Galician and Castilian factions ripped the Asturian Empire apart. In a surprisingly short and bloodless conflict from the Scottish perspective, almost the entire Duchy of Lancaster was brought into the Kingdom of Scotland – securing a valuable land link to the Scots’ holdings in Wales. Following his triumph in England, Brice marched his army into Wales – subjugating all the lands between Gwynedd and the Bristol Chanel.
Brice’s turn against the Spanish in 995 allowed Scotland to secure a long period of peace and dominance through the 11th century. Aside from a series of brief campaigns against the Norse in Orkney, Shetland and the Faroe Islands in the 1010s, between the millennium and the 1030s Scotland enjoyed a period of continuous peace. At the same time its economy flourished, whilst the fracturing of Spanish England ensured that Scotland became the centre of power in the British Isles. Brice’s marriage to Queen Charlotte of Lotharingia, one of continental Europe’s most powerful landowners, further secured his Kingdom’s influence internationally. Even the unification of Ireland (1015-1021) and its subsequent conquest on an Empire in Cornwall and Brittany failed to seriously dent the power of the Kingdom of Scotland.
During this period, Scotland witnessed the beginnings of a major cultural shift. Around the MacDrostan heartlands in the Central Belt of Scotland – focussed around the Forth, Tay and Clyde Rivers – a new ‘Scots’ culture and language began to emerge. Emerging as a melting pot culture provoked by the intercourse between English, Gaelic, Pictish, Brythonic and even Norse cultures, by Brice’s death in 1048 ‘Scots’ culture had a powerful grip over a large part of the Kingdom’s core territories – finding itself at odds with the predominantly Gaelic North and North-East, and mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norse, South and South-East of the Kingdom. Over the course of the Middle Ages this Scots culture would envelop virtually the entire Kingdom.
In 1034, Brice’s powerful wife – Charlotte of Lotharingia – passed away, clearing a path for his only son, Adam, to claim one of Europe’s great crowns. However, Adam’s succession was bitterly disputed by both a coalition of Lotharingian nobles who sought to elect King from within their own number and the Germanic King Heinrich of East Francia who sought to bring the Kingdom under his own authority. Despite investing heavily in contesting his sons’ claim to the Kingdom, Brice was unable to achieve victory over the Germans. Adam had travelled to Europe at the head of a powerful army in 1034; three years later he limped back to Scotland with just a few loyal retainers and not insignificant debts.
The final decade of Brice’s life was marked by a clear mental decline. The aptness, sound and fair judgement of old was replaced by arbitrary paranoia and lethargy. With elements of the clergy and nobility beginning to turn against him, Brice cocooned himself at his court in Stirling – slowing rotting away. His death in 1048 was a relief to many who were hopeful that his battle hardened successor, Adam II, might prove a revitalising influence.