Kings in Scotland before Kenneth Mac Alpin
So a while ago I wondered about the dark ages before countries unified, and the first example that came to mind was Scotland. According to the later stories, the first king, Kenneth Max Alpin, was a descendant of both the Kings of the Picts, and of the Kings of Dál Riata. And since I could not find any actual family trees... I fell down that rabbit hole myself.
And it was a RIGHT mess!
"Kingdoms" being nothing more than a branch of a family that ruled over one place or another, branches fighting each other, then ruling together, then fighting other families or going back to Ireland...
Entire inheritance systems which never really were codified and thus were only sometimes adhered to... maybe...
New people showing up out of nowhere, who should, logically, have some sort of connection to the earlier rulers to explain the people accepting their power... but NOTHING written down to explain the how or why...
And then the original sources which were... how to put it?... were each providing only a few puzzle pieces, with each writer trying to make their pieces fit their specific idea of the overall picture, resulting in some kings only existing in one source (annoying), or ruling in both the 700's as well as the 900's (impressive), or some kings being the son of a guy who in other sources is named as their son! (VERY impressive!).
In short:
- I'm both relieved and happy to be done with this.
- yes, I've taken up drinking whiskey and I now FULLY understand that being the national pastime.
- I'm looking forward to your comments and hope this will be helpful in some ways.
- link to the file on Google drive is in the comments.
Tìoraidh an-dràsta!