Who was the greatest King of Scotland?
Robert Bruce was the only Scottish king to make the “Great Scot” television series, which aired in November 2009. Bruce would rate high on any list of Scottish kings because he helped Scotland gain independence from English rule: Scottish nobles signed the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320; and in 1328, Edward III of England signed the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, which recognized Scotland as an independent nation. Most of the Stewart kings after Bruce were rather ineffectual leaders primarily because they ascended to the throne in childhood, and thus during the early part of their reigns, Scotland was ruled by regents. The rest of their reigns, these kings tried to control domestic infighting among the nobles while Scotland served as France’s client state, exporting soldiers to fight on Continental battlefields when they weren’t defending Scotland from invading English forces. Other contenders for the “greatest king of Scotland” include James VI of Scotland, who commissioned the Kin
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 Alba/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 Scotorum, or King of Scots, to refer to themselves in Latin. The title of King of
