Did the Normans ever conquer Scotland? Part I

 Short answer: No.

But there is another longer, more complicated answer about how and why so many people of Norman ancestry ended up in Scotland and as Scottish nobility. But first, let us deal with the complicated part. 

We have to go back to King Malcolm III, who ruled after King Macbeth. He and his second wife, Margaret of Wessex, daughter of Edgar Ætheling and better known as Saint Margaret of Scotland, were firmly on the throne of Scotland in 1093. Whether or not their marriage was a love match, and there are hints that it might have been, it was a long and seemingly happy one. Malcolm had a son with his first wife, but he and Margaret had seven children. 

Then it ended in horrible tragedy.

After some initial hostilities, King Malcolm made a lasting peace treaty with King William, who had recently conquered England. However, when King William died, his son and heir to the English throne, William Rufus, tried to seize Cumbia, which his father had granted to the Scottish king. William gathered his army, including two of his sons, Edward and Edgar, and marched on England. Ambushed by Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, the Scots suffered a crushing defeat. King Malcolm and Edward were killed in battle. 

Edgar escaped the slaughter to carry the news home to his mother at Edinburgh Castle. Queen Margaret died a few days later of grief. 

Shortly after the queen's death, their uncle, Donald III, attacked Edinburgh. He forced the brothers Edgar, Alexander, and David, then 9 years old, into exile, and had himself crowned King of Scots. A civil war ensued (of course, it did 😜).  King William Rufus backed Malcolm's son by his first wife, Duncan. That backing included lending him Norman knights. After Duncan was assassinated, he backed Edgar. Tradition, very possibly true, has it that Edgar had Donald blinded and confined to a monastery, and the brothers were able to return to Scotland.

William Rufus was killed in what may have been but probably was not an accident when out hunting in 1100. His brother Henry I immediately seized the throne and married Edgar and David's sister, Matilda. From that point on, David seems to have been mostly in the English court of King Henry I although Edgar had granted him substantial lands below the Forth.

David may have already been childhood friends with Norman knights such as Robert de Brus, Hugh de Morville, and Walter Fitzalan. But they were no longer children, and those friendships would eventually change the fate of both Scotland and England forever.

That is only the start. I'll write about what happened then next time.