Royal Scottish

Royal Scottish

The monarch of Scotland was the head of state of the Kingdom of Scotland. According to tradition, the first King of Scots was Kenneth MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín), who founded the state in 843. The distinction between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of the Picts is rather the product of later medieval myth and confusion from a change in nomenclature, i.e. Rex Pictorum (King of the Picts) becomes ri Alban (King of Alba) under Donald II when annals switched from Latin to vernacular around the end of the 9th century, by which time the word Alba in Gaelic had come to refer to the Kingdom of the Picts rather than Britain (its older meaning).

The Kingdom of the Picts just became known as Kingdom of Alba in Gaelic, which later became known in English as Scotland; the terms are retained in both languages to this day. By the late 11th century at the very latest, Scottish kings were using the term rex Scottorum, or King of Scots, to refer to themselves in Latin. The title of King of Scots fell out of use in 1707 when the Kingdom of Scotland merged with the Kingdom of England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. Thus Queen Anne became the last monarch of Scotland (and concurrently, the last monarch of England) and the first monarch of Great Britain. The two kingdoms had shared a monarch since 1603 (see Union of the Crowns), and Charles II was the last Scottish monarch to actually be crowned in Scotland, at Scone in 1651.

Read more about Royal Scottish:  Heraldry, Coronation Oath, Jacobite Claimants, Other Claimants, Timeline of Scottish Monarchs, Acts of Union

Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or scottish:

    Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.
    Mary Arrigo (20th century)

    Better wear out shoes than sheets.
    —18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in J. Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs (1721)