Among the many peculiarities of the United Kingdom (and by golly there’s no shortage of those), it has a combined monarchy. This has been the case since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when Scotland’s King James ascended to the English throne.
The two nations were still separate back then, so it was quite reasonable to refer to His Majesty as both James VI of Scotland and James I of England. A potential issue arose in 1707, when the Union of the Parliaments brought the countries closer together, and it became more sensible to use a single title.
Because of the way monarchs happened to be named for the next two and a half centuries, along with an apparent lack of concern regarding William III, no one thought much about it until 1952, when Queen Elizabeth succeeded her father, George VI. She became Elizabeth II, which made sense from an English perspective because England had already been ruled by an Elizabeth. Scotland, however, had not, and some Scots complained that the new queen could not possibly be their second Elizabeth since they had never had a first.
In fact, they became really rather antsy about it. A public mailbox in Edinburgh bearing the cypher EIIR (‘Elizabeth II Regina’) was vandalised, and eventually destroyed, for this very reason. I’m not kidding.
In an attempt to ensure that public mailboxes could sleep soundly in their beds, a new protocol was established. Henceforth, the regnal number of a UK monarch would be one higher than the previous highest regnal number borne by a king or queen of either Scotland or England.
This handily justified the title of Elizabeth II, but it did not affect the naming of our current Charles III, since Charles I and II both reigned after the Union of the Crowns, and were therefore kings of both countries. If the succession goes as planned, Charles will be succeeded by William V, and there won’t be any argument about that either, even though the first two Williams had nothing to do with Scotland, because the protocol covers it.
Likewise, future monarchs might be called Eadred II, Edmund III or Henry IX, despite a complete lack of Scottish kings with those names. For the opposite reason, we could also have a Constantine IV, a David III or a Mary II.
Similarly, it’s possible (though, I admit, spectacularly unlikely) that a future head of state will be called Lulach II. Yes, Scotland once had a king called Lulach. He was part of the Macbeth story, but you didn’t hear that from William Shakespeare, who either didn’t know he existed or decided, for artistic reasons, not to include him in his play.
By Shakespeare’s account, Macbeth was murdered, and his rival was crowned Malcolm III. These things did happen, but not one after the other. Macbeth was actually succeeded, in 1057, by his stepson Lulach, who was assassinated in the following year. Only after that did Malcolm become king.
Years ago, I visited the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to find out as much as I could, for a project which came to nothing, about Lulach. It took about twenty minutes. Very little is known of him or his reign, though one interesting detail is that he was the first king to be crowned on the Stone of Destiny, which in those days lay at Scone (pronounced ‘skoon’) Palace in Perthshire.
How good he was at ruling might be judged from his derogatory nicknames, the most damning of which was surely Lulach Fatuus: Lulach the Fool. It has been suggested, though, that these may have been spread around by Malcolm in an attempt to smear his opponent. Eleventh century politics, huh? So uncivilised. Thank goodness that sort of thing doesn’t happen today.
Maybe he was a good king, maybe he wasn’t. We’re never going to know, and it doesn’t really matter. His only significance now is that, if another Lulach becomes king, he will have to be named Lulach II, because our guy got there first.
That probably won’t happen, but I like to think it might. Charles and Edward and Elizabeth and George and Victoria and William are all perfectly good names for British monarchs, but . . . well, you know. Maybe we could do with a break from them, at least for a while. Adding another Lulach to the list would mix things up nicely.
Painting of Lulach photographed by Brobra694.
Public domain.
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Lulach is one of those figures that could have proven a good monarch, I have the suspicion that Macbethad put a lot of effort into his stepson's training but the trouble is the losers had to have their memory smeared. A shame.
But weird as it is I always kind of viewed the coronation of the Hanovers as a dark moment in British history, and the Highland clearances and the lack of Scottish names for British monarchs a sign that Scotland had in a sense been conquered. No English King or English raised German monarch will ever 'lower' themselves and take up Scottish names.
Sad as I'd love to see another James, Robert or Constantine or even Cinaed.