User:A.A.Hale/Edward of Scotland

Edward of Scotland
Edward (Èideard mac Maíl Coluim or Eadweard Margotsson) was the eldest son of Malcolm III of Scotland and his second wife Margaret of Wessex.

Born around 1070, shortly after his parents' marriage, Edward was likely designated his father's chosen heir at a relatively young age. He had at least two older half-brothers named Duncan and Donald, and possibly a third named Malcolm who died of unknown causes as an adolescent. Edward's elder siblings were the children of Malcolm and Queen Ingebjørg, a niece of the Norwegian kings Olaf the Saint and Harald Hardråde.

Perhaps in an effort to pave the way for a possible West Saxon restoration down south, Edward and a number of his younger siblings were given traditional Anglo-Saxon names: Edward, Edmund, Ethelred, Edgar and Edith, with others being given classical and Biblical names: Alexander, Mary and David. Alexander, the first of Malcolm and Margaret's children not given an English name, was born in 1078, and so it is possible that by this point King Malcolm had given up any realistic hope of installing his brother-in-law Edgar Ætheling on the English throne. Regardless, it is a testament to Margaret's influence on her husband and their court that none of Malcolm's children from his second marriage were given Gaelic names, with the emphasis on his wife's ancient West Saxon royal heritage being clear from the outset.

Despite being his father's chosen heir at the time of his death, relatively little is known of Edward's life, perhaps because he had so many siblings that the life of a particular prince in what was essentially still a small, fractured kingdom with the traditional Gaelic law of succession meant that there was little reason to document such lives in detail. This is reinforced by the fact that when Edward's eldest half-brother Duncan was requested by William the Conqueror as a hostage, his father made no discernible efforts to obtain his release because he viewed his younger children by Margaret as far more prestigious heirs. An unfortunate side-effect of this policy was that Duncan was raised as a Norman in England and later died a foreigner in Scotland because he could not muster the support of the Gaelic clans.

Prince Edward of Scotland was killed alongside his father at the battle of Alnwick on 13 November, 1093. The battle began as an ambush by a Norman army led by the earl of Northumbria in retaliation for the latest of the Scots' numerous devastating raids into Northern England. The news of the death of both her husband and eldest son was conveyed to Queen Margaret by either Edmund or Edgar, with sources varying as to which. Margaret, already prematurely frail from illness and intermittent periods of religious fasting, died three days later.

Malcolm III was succeeded by his brother Donald Bane (supported by Edmund, Margaret's eldest surviving son) in competition with Duncan, his eldest son from his first marriage. In total, four of Edward's brothers and half-brothers would rule Scotland between 1093 and 1153.