Macbeth, King of Scotland
Macbeth (Medieval Gaelic: ; Modern ; English: "Macbeth son of Findlay", nicknamed "", "the Red King"; – 15 August 1057) was King of Scots from 1040 until his death. He ruled over the Kingdom of Alba. Little is known about Macbeth's early life, however modern historians state he was the son of Findláech of Moray and may have been a grandson of Malcolm II. The 17th century historian, Frederic van Bossen, who collected various historical accounts from all over Europe, stated Macbeth was the son of Sigell, the Thane of Angus and Glamis and "Princes Daboada, the second and  youngest daughter to King Malcolm 2nd". The existence of the Macbeth who was the son of Finalch is known from an undated agreement that transferred various lands to the Culdees of Lochleven. However, there are two problems with this document that argue against this Macbeth being King Macbeth. The first problem is the Lochleven agreement mentions King Malcolm the son of Duncan, who Earl Siward of Northumberland placed on the Strathclyde Throne (King Malcolm only became king after the death of King Macbeth), and the second problem is the title "king" is only given to "Macbeth the son of Finlach  in latter 19th century transcripts of this agreement. In the two earliest known transcripts of the Lochleven agreement, which date to 1714 and 1726, the text differs from the 19th century transcripts in stating Queen Gruoch was the Queen of Scots and she was the daughter of King Bodhe [the King of Scots]. In contrast, the latter 19th century transcripts add an extra comma, which then made Queen Gruoch the daughter of an untitled Bodhe, and the comma transferred the king title to Macbeth. Based on the latter Lochleven transcripts, it is said that Macbeth the son of Finlach became 	Macbeth, King of Scotland
17932517	Mormaer of Moray – a semi-autonomous province – in 1032 and was probably responsible for the death of the previous mormaer, Gille Coemgáin. He subsequently married Gille Coemgáin's widow, Gruoch, but they had no children together. In the Frederic Van Bossen 1688 review, which was based on a study of early documents and historical reviews held in various libraries throughout Europe, King Macbeth was married to Sinill, the daughter of Godreth the King of Mann and Isles who was surnamed Crowban, who was the son of Harrall, the Black prince of Ireland. Sinill's mother was Astrida, the daughter of  Donald Grahame, the thane of Montrose. They had one son called "Luctews" or "Lutlar" who reigned for three months after the death of Macbeth. In 1040, Duncan I launched an attack into Moray and was killed in action by Macbeth's troops. Macbeth succeeded him as King of Alba, apparently with little opposition. His 17-year reign was mostly peaceful, although in 1054 he was faced with an English invasion, led by Siward, Earl of Northumbria, on behalf of Edward the Confessor. Macbeth was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan in 1057 by forces loyal to the future Malcolm III . He was buried on Iona, the traditional resting place of Scottish kings. Macbeth was initially succeeded by his stepson Lulach, the son of Gruoch, but Lulach ruled for only a few months before also being killed by Malcolm III, whose descendants would rule Scotland until the late 13th century. Macbeth is today best known as the main character of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" and the many works that it has inspired. However, Shakespeare's Macbeth is based on "Holinshed's Chronicles" (published in 1577) and is not historically accurate. Name. Macbeth's full name in Medieval Gaelic was '. This  is realised as ' in Modern Gaelic, and anglicised as Macbeth MacFinlay (also spelled Findlay, Findley, or Finley). The name "Mac Bethad", from which the anglicised "MacBeth" is derived, means "son of life". Although it has the appearance of a Gaelic patronymic it does not have any meaning of filiation but instead carries an implication of "righteous man" or "religious man". An alternative proposed derivation is that it is a corruption of "macc-bethad" meaning "one of the elect". Royal ancestry. Some sources make Macbeth a grandson of King Malcolm II and thus a cousin to Duncan I, whom he succeeded . He was possibly also a cousin to Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney and Caithness. Nigel Tranter, in his novel "Macbeth the King", went so far as to portray Macbeth as Thorfinn's half-brother, and Dorothy Dunnett portrays Macbeth and Thorfinn as a single individual (Macbeth being a baptismal name) in the novel ""King Hereafter". However, this is speculation arising from the lack of historical certainty regarding the number of daughters that Malcolm had. Mormaer and "dux". When Cnut the Great came north in 1031 to accept the submission of King Malcolm II, Macbeth too submitted to him: Malcolm  II's grandson Duncan (Donnchad mac Crínáin), later King Duncan I, was acclaimed as king of Alba on 30 November 1034, apparently without opposition. Duncan appears to have been "tánaise ríg", the king in waiting, so that far from being an abandonment of tanistry, as has sometimes been argued, his kingship was a vindication of the practice. Previous successions had involved strife between various "rígdomna" men of royal blood. Far from being the aged King Duncan of Shakespeare's play, the real King Duncan was a young man in 1034, and even at his death in 1040 his youthfulness is  remarked upon. Duncan's early reign was apparently uneventful. His later reign, in line with his description as "the man of many sorrows" in the "Prophecy of Berchán", was not successful. In 1039, Strathclyde was attacked by the Northumbrians, and a retaliatory raid led by Duncan against Durham turned into a disaster. Duncan survived the defeat, but the following year he led an army north into Moray, Macbeth's domain, apparently on a punitive expedition against Moray. There he was killed in action, at Bothnagowan, now Pitgaveny, near Elgin, by the men of Moray led by Macbeth, probably on 14  August 1040. King of Alba. On Duncan's death, Macbeth became king. Had his reign not been universally accepted, resistance would have been expected but none is known to have occurred. In 1045, Duncan's father Crínán of Dunkeld (a scion of the Scottish branch of the Cenél Conaill and Hereditary Abbot of Iona) was killed in a battle between two Scottish armies. Duncan's younger brother Maldred of Allerdale is believed to have died in the same battle, the family fighting Macbeth in defense of Duncan I's young son Malcolm III. John of Fordun wrote that Duncan's  wife fled Scotland, taking her children, including the future kings Malcolm III (Máel Coluim mac Donnchada) and Donald III (Domnall Bán mac Donnchada, or Donalbane) with her. On the basis of the author's beliefs as to whom Duncan married, various places of exile, Northumbria and Orkney among them, have been proposed. However, E. William Robertson proposes the safest place for Duncan's widow and her children would be with her or Duncan's kin and supporters in Atholl. After the defeat of Crínán, Macbeth was evidently unchallenged. Marianus Scotus tells how the king made a pilgrimage to Rome in  1050, where, Marianus says, he gave money to the poor as if it were seed. Karl Hundason. The "Orkneyinga Saga" says that a dispute between Thorfinn Sigurdsson, Earl of Orkney, and Karl Hundason began when Karl Hundason became "King of Scots" and claimed Caithness. The identity of Karl Hundason, unknown to Scots and Irish sources, has long been a matter of dispute, and it is far from clear that the matter is settled. The most common assumption is that Karl Hundason was an insulting byname (Old Norse for "Churl, son of a Dog") given to Macbeth by his enemies. William  Forbes Skene's suggestion that he was Duncan I of Scotland has been revived in recent years. Lastly, the idea that the whole affair is a poetic invention has been raised. According to the "Orkneyinga Saga", in the war which followed, Thorfinn defeated Karl in a sea-battle off Deerness at the east end of the Orkney Mainland. Then Karl's nephew Mutatan or Muddan, appointed to rule Caithness for him, was killed at Thurso by Thorkel the Fosterer. Finally, a great battle at Tarbat Ness on the south side of the Dornoch Firth ended with Karl defeated and fugitive  or dead. Thorfinn, the saga says, then marched south through Scotland as far as Fife, burning and plundering as he passed. A later note in the saga claims that Thorfinn won nine Scottish earldoms. Whoever Karl Hundason may have been, it appears that the saga is reporting a local conflict with a Scots ruler of Moray or Ross: Final years. In 1052, Macbeth was involved indirectly in the strife in the Kingdom of England between Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Edward the Confessor when he received a number of Norman exiles from England in his court, perhaps becoming the first  king of Scots to introduce feudalism to Scotland. In 1054, Edward's Earl of Northumbria, Siward, led a very large invasion of Scotland (Duncan's widow and Malcolm's mother, Suthed, was Northumbrian-born; it is probable but not proven that there was a family tie between Siward and Malcolm). The campaign led to a bloody battle at Dunsinnan, in which the "Annals of Ulster" reported 3,000 Scots and 1,500 English dead; which can be taken as meaning very many on both sides. One of Siward's sons and a son-in-law were among the dead. The result of  the invasion was that one Máel Coluim, "son of the king of the Cumbrians" (not to be confused with Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, the future Malcolm III of Scotland) was restored to his throne, i.e., as ruler of the kingdom of Strathclyde. It may be that the events of 1054 are responsible for the idea, which appears in Shakespeare's play, that Malcolm III was put in power by the English. Macbeth did not survive the English invasion for long, for he was defeated and mortally wounded or killed by the future Malcolm III ("King Malcolm "Ceann-mor"", son of  Duncan I) on the north side of the Mounth in 1057, after retreating with his men over the Cairnamounth Pass to take his last stand at the battle at Lumphanan. "The Prophecy of Berchán" has it that he was wounded and died at Scone, sixty miles to the south, some days later. Macbeth's stepson Lulach was installed as king soon after. Unlike later writers, no near-contemporary source remarks on Macbeth as a tyrant. The "Duan Albanach," which survives in a form dating to the reign of Malcolm III, calls him "Mac Bethad the renowned". "The Prophecy of Berchán , a verse history which purports to be a prophecy, describes him as the generous king of Fortriu", and says: Life to legend. Macbeth's life, like that of King Duncan I, had progressed far towards legend by the end of the 14th century, when John of Fordun and Andrew of Wyntoun wrote their histories. Hector Boece, Walter Bower, and George Buchanan all contributed to the legend. William Shakespeare's depiction and its influence. In Shakespeare's play, which is based mainly upon Raphael Holinshed's account, Macbeth is initially a valiant and loyal general to the elderly King Duncan. After  being manipulated by Three Witches and his wife, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth murders Duncan and usurps the throne. Ultimately, the prophecies of the witches prove misleading, and Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant. Duncan's son Malcolm stages a revolt against Macbeth, during which a guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth commits suicide. During battle, Macbeth encounters Macduff, a refugee nobleman whose wife and children had earlier been murdered on Macbeth's orders. Upon realising that he will die if he duels with Macduff, Macbeth at first refuses to do so. But when Macduff explains that if Macbeth surrenders he will be subjected to  ridicule by his former subjects, Macbeth vows, "I will not yield to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, to be baited by a rabble's curse." He chooses instead to fight Macduff to the death. Macduff kills and beheads Macbeth, and the play ends with Prince Malcolm becoming king. The likely reason for Shakespeare's unflattering depiction of Macbeth is that King James VI and I was descended from Malcolm III via the House of Bruce and his own House of Stewart, whereas Macbeth's line died out with the death of Lulach six months after his step -father. King James was also thought to be a descendant of Banquo through Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland. In a 1959 essay, Boris Pasternak compared Shakespeare's characterisation of Macbeth to Raskolnikov, the protagonist of "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pasternak explained that neither character begins as a murderer, but becomes one by a set of faulty rationalisations and a belief that he is above the law. Lady Macbeth has also become famous in her own right. In his 1865 novel "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", Nikolai Leskov updated "The Tragedy of Macbeth" so that it  takes place among the Imperial Russian merchant class. In an ironic twist, however, Leskov reverses the gender roles – the woman is the murderer and the man is the instigator. Leskov's novel was the basis for Dmitri Shostakovich's 1936 opera of the same name. Other depictions. In modern times, Dorothy Dunnett's novel "King Hereafter" aims to portray a historical Macbeth, but proposes that Macbeth and his rival and sometime ally, Thorfinn of Orkney, are one and the same (Thorfinn is his birth name and Macbeth his baptismal name). John Cargill Thompson's play "Macbeth Speaks 1997", a reworking  of his earlier "Macbeth Speaks", is a monologue delivered by the historical Macbeth, aware of what Shakespeare and posterity have done to him. Scottish author Nigel Tranter based one of his historical novels, "MacBeth the King", on the historical figure. David Greig's 2010 play "Dunsinane" takes Macbeth's downfall at Dunsinane as its starting point, with his reign portrayed as long and stable, in contrast to Malcolm's. British Touring Shakespeare also produced in 2010 "A Season Before the Tragedy of Macbeth" by dramatist Gloria Carreño describing events from the murder of "Lord Gillecomgain", Gruoch Macbeth's first husband , to the fateful letter in the first act of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth appears as a character in the television series "Gargoyles" with the Gargoyle Demona playing a crucial role in both his rise and fall as King of Scotland. He was voiced by John Rhys-Davies.