Traitor, Outlaw, King Part One: the Making of Robert Bruce

Winners write history. But they don't just embellish their life stories; sometimes they make sure they get away with murder.In the first part of her ground-breaking biography of Robert the Bruce, historian Dr Fiona Watson tells the shocking true story of a man who would stop at nothing to wear the Scottish crown. Descended from Norman stock but educated partly in the Gaelic world, Bruce inherited great estates in Scotland, England and Ireland, as well as an unswerving belief in his family's claim to the throne. Every move he made in the turbulent times that followed the outbreak of war between Scotland and England was designed to bring him closer to that goal and, in his desire to seize an opportunity, he was little different from his ancestors and many of the men he grew up with. It was the lengths to which Robert Bruce was prepared to go to fulfil what he saw as his destiny that stood him apart.But he was not the only one with ambitions. John Comyn of Badenoch not only had more influence, more military experience and better leadership credentials, he too had a claim to the Scottish throne. If Bruce wanted to be king, then Comyn had to die. But in murdering his rival and seizing the crown, King Robert unleashed a bloody desire for vengeance not just among the English but many of his own people. Defeated and all but deserted, he vanished into the Western Isles. Few expected him to return and fewer still that he would come back a changed man, a king reborn.