Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214-c.1543: Ritual, Ceremony and Power (St. Andrews Studies in Scottish History)

Illuminates how the ceremonial dimension of death and the succession reflected both Scottish royal identity and a broader culture of ceremony.

To date, scholarly attention to royal ceremony in Scotland from the Middle Ages into the early modern period has been rather haphazard, with few attempts to explore these crucial moments for the representation of royal authority. This monograph provides a long durée analysis of the ceremonial cycle of death and succession associated with Scottish kingship from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including the final century of the Canmore dynasty, the crisis of the Bruce-Balliol conflict, and the emergence and consolidation of the Stewart family up to the funeral of last monarch buried in Scotland, James V, in 1543.