Malcolm III of Scotland

Malcolm III (Middle Irish: Máel Coluim mac Donnchada; Scottish Gaelic: Maol Chaluim mac Dhonnchaidh; c. 1031–13 November 1093) was King of Alba from 1058 to 1093. He was later nicknamed "Canmore" (Scottish Gaelic: ceann mòr, lit. 'big head'", understood as "great chief").^[1][2] Malcolm's long reign of 35 years preceded the beginning of the Scoto-Norman age. Henry I of England and Eustace III, Count of Boulogne were his sons-in-law, making him the maternal grandfather of Empress Matilda, William Adelin and Matilda I, Countess of Boulogne. All three of them were prominent in English politics during the 12th century.

Malcolm's kingdom did not extend over the full territory of modern Scotland: many of the islands and the land north of the River Oykel were Scandinavian, and south of the Firth of Forth there were numerous independent or semi-independent realms, including the kingdom of Strathclyde and Bamburgh, and it is not certain what if any power the Scots exerted there on Malcolm's accession.^[3] Over the course of his reign Malcolm III led at least five invasions into English territory. One of Malcolm's primary achievements was to secure the position of the lineage that ruled Scotland until the late thirteenth century,^[4] although his role as founder of a dynasty has more to do with the propaganda of his descendants than with history.^[5] He appears as a major character in William Shakespeare's Macbeth,^[6] while his second wife, Margaret, was canonised as a saint in the thirteenth century.