Many centuries ago,
much of Scotland was a law unto itself...
..beyond the reach of any king.
Here, it's not the king who's the lawgiver,
it's the clan chiefs.
Like Mafia godfathers,
they control the people, wield the power.
They lead armies,
scheme,
slaughter,
use any means to expand their territories.
It's clan against clan.
Blood will be spilt.
But the clan's violent struggle for dominance...
Mary, you forget yourself. You think you can talk to me!
You forget yourself! Forget myself?! You are just a woman!
..is more than just gang warfare -
it will determine the fate of a nation.
Rebels and rogues will become heroes,
freedom fighters,
even kingmakers...
Raibeart! CROWD: Ar righ!
..and breakers.
Things can only get medieval!
Once, there was a great clan chief
who rose above all the others
to take Scotland's throne.
His name was Robert Stewart.
To control Scotland and the unruly clans,
Robert gave each of his four sons
a portion of his kingdom and royal powers to rule.
A vicious contest between the brothers,
who each thought he should be king.
So which of the four will emerge victorious?
Whose bloodline will become the Royal Stewarts?
In a field just outside Perth, two clans,
the Camerons and the Chattans,
have come to settle a bitter feud over land.
They're going to sort it the clan way.
No armour, helmets or shields.
Each clansman is armed only with a broadsword and axe.
It's a fight to the death.
But things aren't going well.
Clan Chattan are a man down.
The Highlander in question,
well, he's either run away
or maybe he's just sleeping off a hangover somewhere.
The problem is that Clan Cameron
won't surrender one of their men to level the numbers.
The man judging the contest is the current King of Scots,
eldest of the four Stewart brothers,
Robert III.
You, you, you, you.
While the argument rages,
Robert looks on helplessly,
watching the two clans have a fight about how to have a fight.
But the clan feud is the least of Robert's problems.
Standing next to him are his three younger brothers.
They've all got their eyes on one thing...
..Robert's throne.
I'll do it.
Good news...
Grant me a pension for life, and I'll do it.
Pray for me if I die.
..a local blacksmith volunteers to fight
in place of the missing clansman.
Robert gives him the royal nod.
There he is, presiding like a little emperor,
but while this gladiator-style clash
might bring to mind the Colosseum in Rome,
Robert III is no Julius Caesar.
YELLING
This fight to the death is Robert's idea -
a PR exercise.
A demonstration to his critics that he can control the clans.
He can control his kingdom.
That Robert, King of Scots, is the boss.
After all the butchery,
there's only one Cameron left standing.
Rightly judging his chance of survival as nil,
he makes a run for it.
38 clansmen now lie dead.
Justice has been done.
But it's clan justice, not royal justice,
and Robert's PR stunt in Perth fooled no-one...
..least of all Robert's brothers.
Discontent with the King is running high.
The King's brothers are circling,
ready to swoop in for the kill.
But Robert's wife, Annabella,
has a plan to make the boys kiss and make up.
Son David has come of age.
She presses Robert.
"It is time to let the boy fly.
"He's so clever.
"He can help you outwit your devious brothers."
David is every inch a prince -
handsome and charming,
wild, spirited and precocious.
He leads from the heart, and also from the groin.
Annabella's plan is to use David to unite the feuding Stewart family
by having them focus on a different target -
their common enemy - the MacDonalds.
They shall be their prey.
Clan MacDonald is the biggest single threat
to the Stewarts.
The heart of their power is Islay.
From here, they dominate the west coast,
providing protection to dozens of clans scattered across the Hebrides.
With an army of over 10,000 men,
Donald MacDonald
is one of the most powerful clan chiefs
in the kingdom.
Domhnall Ileach, Donald of Islay,
was the head of Clan Donald.
In English, he was Lord of the Isles.
In Gaelic, he's Ri Innse Gall.
He's the leader and indeed the King of the Hebrides.
They also held by now extensive areas
of mainland Gaelic Scotland as well.
Clan Donald had split
into various branches,
and those branches were planted
around the various parts of the lordship
that they controlled.
One of the things that often gets forgotten
about the MacDonald family
is that they are intermarried with the Stewarts.
Donald's mother is a daughter of King Robert II,
and so they are cousins of the Crown.
They are part of the blood royal.
The MacDonalds are also a clan on the make.
They've advanced up the Great Glen,
through Loch Linnhe,
through Loch Ness,
and now their eyes are set on
one of the greatest prizes of them all -
the Earldom of Ross,
the largest in the kingdom.
If he acquires Ross, this brings him in from the western fringes,
right into the very heart of Scottish politics.
He will no longer be regarded
as this island lord.
He will be one of the leading magnates within Scotland.
Annabella's plan is to end Stewart feuding
by mounting a military campaign against the MacDonalds.
The man to lead it will be their son, David.
But Annabella knows she has to keep the King's brothers on side.
They'll see David's promotion as a threat.
Of the three, Robert, Duke of Albany, is the most devious.
It's an old saying -
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
So Annabella makes him David's right-hand man...
..and packs the pair off to the Highlands,
to deal with the MacDonalds.
Supported by clans loyal to the Stewarts,
their crusade against the MacDonalds is less a campaign...
..more a show of force.
There's no pitched battle.
No loss or victory.
But the show of Stewart muscle seems to work.
Donald MacDonald, King of the Hebrides, submits.
He's not prepared to take on the Stewarts...just yet.
Job done.
Now the MacDonalds are out of the way,
Uncle Robert can get back to his day job -
plotting against his family.
Well, well, dear nephew,
how did you find the campaign?
Well, I thought.
I thought we fared well. And you?
Yes, very good indeed.
You have any wenches waiting for you when you get back?
I suppose there'll be a few.
Maybe you can send some my way.
Uncle Robert is playing the long game.
What he wants is to become king.
But to do that,
he needs to eliminate his brother's bloodline.
Robert can't play the assassin,
but can he turn David's success against the MacDonalds
into a stick to beat his brother, the old king?
By the time they return home,
Robert Albany is spinning hard,
and the tales of David's shining campaign against the MacDonalds
have grown very tall indeed.
Now the boy wonder has returned a war hero,
his father, the old king, is looking rather feeble.
This is Scotland,
where the clan chiefs can break kings as well as make them.
Just three months after the campaign against the MacDonalds,
the chiefs retire the old king on health grounds.
But don't think he went willingly.
Robert was stripped of his ruling power,
and that power was given
in the shape of a three-year lieutenancy of Scotland
to the 21-year-old Prince David.
With Dad forced into early retirement,
David is very much the young man
of the moment, the rising star destined to be king.
Well, we all know what happens to rising stars.
At this point, the youngest of the four Stewart brothers, Walter,
starts to make his presence felt.
Growing up, Walter experienced
all the frustrations of being the youngest.
He had to stand by and watch his siblings be showered
with gifts by their father, Robert II,
the first Stewart King of Scotland.
But now Walter's 40,
and he feels short-changed.
All he got from Dad...
..was Caithness!
Bleak, barren and bog-ridden -
not exactly what Walter had in mind.
No wonder he spends little time here.
Instead, Walter hangs around court, pestering his nephew David
for more profitable lands and titles.
But David has bigger fish to fry -
the King of England!
Henry IV has been watching developments in Scotland
with growing interest.
Now a 21-year-old rookie is running the kingdom,
Scotland is ripe for attack.
In the summer of 1400,
Henry marches north with an army of 10,000 men.
He heads straight to Edinburgh and demands David pay him homage.
But David's hiding in Edinburgh Castle, and he's not coming out.
Thankfully, help is at hand.
Uncle Robert's clan army is mustering 15 miles to the east.
But rather than come to David's rescue,
Uncle Robert stays put.
Henry has no-one to fight.
A week passes...
..then two.
Henry's 10,000 hungry stomachs start to rumble.
So, like the grand old Duke of York,
he marches his men back down to England.
We might expect that David's reputation would rise
as a result of the English having turned back, but in actual fact,
because he was holed up in Edinburgh Castle during the invasion,
refusing to go out and defend the realm,
it looks like he rather lost face
as a result of this botched invasion.
The following year,
a great comet is spotted hovering above the kingdom.
Always an ill omen,
the comet is so bright, it can be seen during the day.
David's cowardly behaviour in the face of the English king looks bad.
The chiefs and nobles begin to grumble.
Perhaps promoting the young prince had been rash.
David's failure plays right into the hands of his uncles.
With his father absent and his mother Annabella's recent death,
David was dangerously isolated.
Walter turned to his brother,
"Let's remove David from power,
"and I'll help you become what you've always wanted to be - king.
"In return, you grant me the lands I want."
David's fall was as quick as his promotion.
He was arrested on false charges of debauchery and wicked living.
He was imprisoned in his Uncle Robert's castle.
A prince in a tower -
David was locked away, hidden from public view.
Now that Robert and Walter have David in captivity,
they have to decide what to do with him,
because as long as David is alive, as the rightful heir to the throne,
people will hold a torch for him and they will come looking for him.
They'll expect answers. "Why have you not given us our king back?"
And a simple solution presents itself -
that the heir to the throne,
the young prince...
..should not emerge
from the dungeons of Falkland Castle.
Grief-stricken, Robert reported David's tragic death to Parliament.
The cause, he said, was dysentery.
Crocodile tears.
Robert starved his nephew to death.
He was just 24.
BELLS CHIME
Parliament absolves Robert of all blame
and gives him David's job.
Now he's in charge.
Meanwhile, the redundant old king remains alive.
He may have lost his throne, but he hasn't lost his wits.
He knows his scheming brothers all too well.
The old king begins promoting masses for his dead son
as a royal martyr.
But as the masses multiply,
so do the stories of the horror of David's end.
The rumours, the suspicions gnaw away
at Robert Albany's newly won authority,
and the old king is scared.
He has another son.
A spare.
11-year-old James.
Brother to the martyred prince.
Now heir to Scotland's throne.
Robert knows that the only way to protect James is to get him
as far away from Scotland as possible.
If he doesn't, there's always that possibility
that Robert and Walter
will do the same thing to James as they did to David.
TREMBLING SOBS
The King decides
that young James should be sent to his ally, the King of France,
and should remain there until he reaches adulthood.
The old king acts quickly.
Young James is rowed out to the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth...
..home to Scotland's most impregnable castle.
James has to sit
and wait for a little over a month, er,
before a passing ship will grant him passage to France, erm,
and then, on the way,
erm, the ship is seized by English pirates
and poor James is handed over, as a prisoner,
to Henry IV of England.
James does time in the Tower of London,
where he's forced to share a cell with another Scot -
his cousin.
Murdac Stewart is Robert Albany's eldest son and heir.
He was captured and taken prisoner during a border raid
a few years previously.
A generation apart,
Murdac is 44, James is 12.
You have to wonder what they talked about.
Two cousins...
..one the sole and rightful heir of old King Robert...
..the other the eldest son of the man
who starved his brother, David, to death.
Awkward.
The pair are left to reflect on their uncertain futures
as the English king's bargaining chips.
But Uncle Robert had no intention
of paying so much as a penny for either.
"No, thanks, we're doing just fine without a king."
Robert would prefer James dead,
but imprisoned in an English jail was the next best thing.
ROBERT SOBS
When the old king hears of his son's capture,
he collapses with grief.
Rejecting all food, he dies like his son, David,
from starvation.
Robert declined to be buried among the other kings at Scone
and wrote his last wishes.
"Let those men who strive in this world for the pleasures
"of honour have shining monuments.
"I, on the other hand, should prefer to be buried
"at the bottom of a midden.
"Bury me, therefore, I beg you,
"and write for my epitaph,
" 'Here lies the worst of kings and the most wretched of men
" 'in the whole kingdom.' "
Robert Albany buried his brother in Paisley Abbey.
A midden just wouldn't do for a Stewart -
not even for the worst of them.
With David dead
and the passing of the fourth Stewart brother, Alexander,
only James now stands between Robert Albany
and his claim to the throne.
For now, Robert must be content with ruling the kingdom as Regent...
..with grateful Walter, newly promoted to Earl of Atholl,
at his side.
But it's not all plain sailing. They soon have a problem -
a supersize MacDonald problem,
who's demanding the return of James,
right now.
Donald MacDonald can never forgive Robert Albany
for challenging his status as King of the Hebrides...
..and he sees, in the captivity of young James,
a chance to take revenge.
He sends an ambassador on a secret mission
to negotiate with James.
They cut a deal.
It's not necessarily that Donald is particularly blown away
by the prospect of springing James from his captivity
down in England.
This is just a useful mechanism
that can actually bring him closer to power.
It gives him, erm, a reason,
an excuse, if you like, for challenging Albany.
In the summer of 1411,
Chief MacDonald sets sail
on a military campaign in the name of the captive king.
In return for backing James,
Donald plans to take what he believes is rightfully his...
..the Earldom of Ross.
After capturing Inverness,
the clans, bound by ties of loyalty to the MacDonalds,
rally in support.
Meanwhile, Robert Albany's army marches north.
In support are his clan allies.
The two armies meet at Harlaw.
The stage is set for the mother of all clan battles.
Cath Gairbheach in Gaelic -
was not a victory for the Highlanders.
We know that because Donald retreats immediately
back to the west.
The MacDonalds' challenge to Robert Albany's rule has failed.
For James, the MacDonalds' setback
means his captivity has dragged on, year after year.
He's now 21.
At least, his living conditions have improved,
trading his cell in the Tower of London for rooms in Windsor Castle
and an English garden.
Because he's royal, because he's valuable,
James is pretty much free to indulge his passions,
which include women and tennis, gardening and poetry.
In The Kingis Quair,
James wrote about gazing upon his beloved
across a beautiful rose garden.
And there-with kest I doun myn eye ageyne
Quhare as I sawe, walking under the toure
Full secretly, new cummyn hir to pleyne
The fairest or the freschest yonge floure
That ever I sawe, me thoght, before that houre
For quhich sodayn abate, anon astert
The blude of all my body to my hert.
The girl James is writing about is Joan Beaufort.
And there's talk of a possible match.
Joan's no romantic wallflower.
A rose, maybe, but with thorns attached -
heiress to the prickly Beauforts,
the most acquisitive family in England.
They're used to power, and they know how to wield it.
But for James's cellmate, cousin Murdac,
captivity has been a bitter pill to swallow.
Murdac carries less value,
so his privileges don't extend to furnished rooms or rose gardens.
Murdac wrote home, begging his father to pay up,
complaining that his mattress and blankets
hadn't been changed for two years.
They were all worn out, he moaned.
Robert Albany paid the ransom and Murdac is now heading home,
but Robert doesn't care about his son's bedding.
Robert's getting old,
and his son, Murdac,
is the Albany Stewarts' future.
But James must stay.
The English are keen for him to head home too.
But no-one in Scotland will pay up.
Everyone knows what's going on.
James's return will spell the end of Albany Stewart rule.
In 1420, Robert Albany dies.
And now his son, Murdac, will rule the kingdom.
Father like son,
Murdac fully intends James to stay in captivity...
..preferably till he rots.
It's too simplistic to just present
what's going on at this time as a straightforward conflict
between the Albany Stewarts, on the one hand,
and James I, in prison down in England, on the other.
There are other Stewarts
who are dabbling their fingers in the pot here
and really beginning to stir things up.
There is the King's surviving uncle, Walter.
He is somebody who has generally been left out
of the big dishing-outs of real estate
that have taken place throughout this period.
He's been looking at what the opportunities are.
Not content with the Earldom of Atholl,
Walter's been busy expanding his power base.
After the death of Alexander,
Walter started to muscle in on his brother's lands.
Like a Mafia godfather,
Walter won the loyalty of the local clan chiefs.
Now his eyes turn south
to Strathearn,
the richest estate in Scotland.
In medieval Scotland, land really equals power,
and Walter knows this.
He's spent his entire career
trying to build up his territorial portfolio
because he knows that
if he wants to be taken seriously on a political stage
as a kind of player in the big leagues, if you like,
then he needs the land and really,
the Earldom of Strathearn would provide that status for him.
And he realises that his nephew, Murdac,
he's not going to help him.
He needs to cut a deal with James -
start to leverage for James's release.
Walter writes secretly to James.
He's a worried man.
He fears for the future of the Stewarts.
Murdac is proving a hopeless guardian, he says,
a pale imitation of his brother, Robert.
Walter wants James to return and help him secure the kingdom.
He offers his loyalty and assistance.
Walter wants very little in return.
He has his eye on a little land in Strathearn.
Perhaps James will help him with that,
once he's back on the throne.
So, what's next?
Reply to the letters from the English and pay up.
A king's ransom was never going to be cheap.
£40,000.
That's around £30 million in today's money,
paid in instalments.
For that, the Scots get James back
and seven years' peace with the English.
Walter agreed.
In February 1424, James marries Joan Beaufort.
They're an unusual royal couple.
It's a relationship built on love as well as politics.
This would be a partnership of equals -
The James And Joan Show.
Joan expects equal billing.
As James prepares for his return,
the new king has much on his mind.
He's spent more than half his life in England,
where the orders of the English king are obeyed.
But in Scotland, royal authority is challenged
by the great clan chiefs...
..a patchwork of rival godfathers
who behave like kings in their own right...
..paying lip service to the man they call King of Scots.
Two months after they tie the knot,
James and Joan head north.
First stop, Melrose,
where cousin Murdac waits to surrender the reins of power.
The regime change from Murdac to James
is actually quite smooth, but it's also tense.
There are underlying tensions here.
The nobles and the clan chiefs aren't actually sure
what kind of king James is going to be.
First item on the King's agenda -
a well-earned holiday.
James and Joan travel to Perthshire,
to spend a couple of weeks with Uncle Walter.
They have a lot to discuss.
James knows nothing of his homeland.
He needs advice.
A falconer covers the bird's head
to trick it into thinking it's night-time.
It calms the bird down,
lets the falconer free the prey from its talons.
Just like the young hawk, you might say James is hoodwinked...
..blind to his uncle's involvement
in his brother's murder 22 years ago,
also blind to Walter's endgame.
James's eyes are firmly fixed on his other uncle,
dead Uncle Robert.
When James comes back,
he doesn't immediately show his hand.
James knows he needs to solidify his position in Scotland first.
He can't go after the family that had a hand in killing his brother.
He needs to bide his time.
James waits a year.
And then, guess who finds himself on trial?
Murdac Albany Stewart.
It's the whole of the family that is being targeted.
They are going to be picked off.
And James, of course, is going to keep the cream of their lands
once he has executed and removed the Albanys from the land.
The charges hardly matter.
One thing we can be sure of is that, for this jury,
a not-guilty verdict is not an option.
Your sentence for this crime
is death...
by beheading.
This is meant to send a very clear message to the chiefs
and to the nobles of the Realm of Scotland
that James I is a new broom
and he's not going to tolerate any dissent.
Among the chiefs enraged by the execution is Robert Graham.
With land all across the Lowlands,
Clan Graham is tied to the Albany Stewarts.
The Grahams fought shoulder to shoulder
with the Albany Stewarts against the MacDonalds.
Graham is Murdac Stewart's man.
He has faithfully served his master for many years.
In Graham's eyes,
the trial and execution by the King isn't royal justice,
it's just a revenge killing,
no different than any other clan feud.
Graham can never forget, or ever forgive,
the King's actions.
Now the Albany Stewarts are out of the way,
the biggest problem facing James is cash, and fast.
And that's because James has grand designs.
James is a king on the make,
a king with a burning urge to make a name for himself,
a catwalk king,
a king who has learned from the English court,
who understands the power of image.
James is a mirror man,
acutely self-conscious.
Pleased with what he sees -
Scotland's first Renaissance king.
James, with his long upbringing in England,
has seen a new way of conducting kingship,
and a lot of it is around, you know,
the physical real estate, the trappings of kingship.
So it's palaces, it's endowments of major new monastic institutions.
It's all about the glitz, the glamour, the show, the bling.
His spending spree includes a palace at Linlithgow,
a magnificent new priory in Perth...
...and the very latest in military hardware -
the most expensive cannon money can buy.
And guess who's going to pay for it?
Think not so much Bank of Mum and Dad -
think Bank of Uncle Walter.
James cost a king's ransom,
now he's bankrupting the kingdom.
To pay for all this Renaissance bling,
James begins to eye up the most profitable of Walter's lands...
..Strathearn.
Walter fizzes.
Strathearn is going to be drawn into royal hands,
become a source of revenue for the King,
and that really does not please Uncle Walter.
Walter's not the only clan chief incensed by the King's spending.
Robert Graham is, too.
Graham is an educated man,
and he has developed views
about the way kingships should work,
about the possibility
that kings can slip into tyranny.
So you have this mixture of political principle
and the quest for personal revenge,
and in 1436, Robert Graham attempts to arrest him.
Can you tell us, Your Majesty,
why you persist in spending money we don't have?
James has summoned his council to plead poverty yet again.
While you're pissing money away on fine palaces and tapestries,
we are up to our necks in taxes.
What about your ransom to the English King
that still hasn't been paid?
Does this not trouble Your Majesty?
Tempers reach boiling point.
Sir Robert Graham loses his cool.
You are spending our money!
This is about Murdac, isn't it?
Get off!
No-one says a word.
Everyone is scandalised.
Everyone, that is, except Walter.
In Robert Graham's violent protest, Walter begins to hatch a plan.
Once, there were four competing Stewart bloodlines.
Now there are two.
But while Walter has only one surviving grandson...
..James has a burgeoning family
and a son and heir.
Walter's line, his lands, everything he's worked for is finished...
..unless he can be rid of the whole family.
Graham has shown his mettle,
how far he's prepared to go.
Will he do it again?
Will he go further?
Is he prepared to kill the King?
Clan Graham is still bound by ties of loyalty
to the Albany Stewarts.
Bound to avenge their murders.
Walter offers Graham the opportunity to exact clan justice on the King.
Of course, not just James -
Joan, his queen, must die too.
And then Walter will rule Scotland as guardian.
Like Robert's guardianship of James's dead brother, David,
Walter will look after the orphaned royal children too.
He might even feed them this time.
But Robert Graham cannot do the deed by himself.
He'll need help.
Walter had an inside man,
a man who wouldn't have a penny to inherit
if James's cash demands couldn't be curtailed.
Meet Walter's grandson and heir, Robert Atholl.
Robert cuts a dash,
has proven himself in jousting tournaments
and at tennis, the latest fad from Renaissance Europe.
He's become the King's favourite.
With a little help from his grandfather,
Robert has landed the top job of chamberlain of the royal household.
He organises the King and Queen's domestic household,
supervises their security.
James has a weak backhand,
and therefore a habit of losing balls
down the drainage holes in the corners of the court.
So Robert has thoughtfully had the royal sewers blocked up
so that servants can recover the rogue balls.
Faithful Robert is Walter's perfect Trojan horse.
Now Walter has two accomplices -
Robert Graham, a man hate-filled enough to kill,
and his grandson, Robert Atholl,
who knows the movements of the King, day and night.
The stage is set.
# Nam faiceadh tu Griogal Cridhe
# 'S e na shuidhe air tom... #
After months of plotting, Walter is given the perfect opportunity
to put his plans into action by the arrival of a papal emissary,
who James and Joan intend to host
in the royal residence at Perth -
an unfortified and open residence,
the ideal spot to kill a king.
# Is chan eil duine chi mo leanabh
# Nach canadh ba ba... #
After all the entertaining,
James and his party return to the royal residence.
Exhausted from the revelry,
Joan soon retires to her bedchamber...
..leaving James, Walter and grandson Robert playing chess.
As midnight approaches, Walter makes his move...
..the signal to Robert that Graham and his men are ready.
# Nach canadh ba ba. #
After James has retired for the night,
Robert waits for everyone else to go to bed,
and then, when all is quiet...
..he makes his way to a side door and unlocks it.
Outside, Robert Graham and the rest of the assassins are waiting.
Robert beckons them inside and leaves them to their work.
As Graham and his accomplices climb the stairs to the bedchamber,
they encounter a page fetching wine and strike him down.
PAGE GROANS
The cries of the page give warning to Joan and James inside.
I have to go.
With the assassins outside the door,
James searches for a way out, but there is none,
so frantically he smashes a hole through the wooden floor
with the fire tongs and drops into the stone sewer below.
The conspirators burst in through the door.
Where the hell has James gone?
He's now found himself stuck in the dark, in the latrine pit.
He'd ordered that exit to be blocked up
because he kept on losing his tennis balls down there.
He can hear all this commotion.
He can hear the screams.
And he is holding on quietly,
desperately praying it's all going to go away.
Joan and her ladies are terrified,
but they do stand their ground,
although some of them are wounded,
the Queen included.
And I think she would have been killed had Graham's son
not actually come in and chided the group and said,
"For shame, she is but a woman."
So they want to leave her alive.
They have a conscience, almost.
At this last gasp, they decide to leave her alive.
And that act of mercy is, in the end,
the act that will seal the fate
of those who are looking to kill the King.
They also start to give their thought to where the King might be,
and this is where the remembrance
that there is the privy.
With nowhere to run, James faces his foes.
As James fights off his assailants, he recognises Graham,
the man who had attacked him
so publically in Parliament.
He begs for mercy.
For God's sake, bring me a confessor!
But Graham replies, "Thou shalt never have other confessor
"but this same sword."
Then he strikes James with the weapon.
And there, in the filth and the darkness...
..the King is stabbed to death.
Clan justice has been done.
To his dying breath,
James has no idea
that good old Uncle Walter is the real assassin.
As Joan raises the alarm,
Graham and his men head straight to Walter's castle to report back.
And you can just imagine how he feels when he's told,
"Actually, we only did half the job,"
because, yes, they've killed the King...
..and the new King is now a child,
but they haven't killed the Queen.
She is going to come looking for two things -
one is revenge...
..the other, the reins of power.
While Scotland holds her breath,
Joan plots her revenge.
Word of warning -
what the Queen does next
is not for the squeamish or the faint-hearted.
She has to act swiftly and she has to act decisively.
She has to identify those who have been involved
in James I's death,
and she has to make their execution,
their dispatch, exemplary.
Joan hunts down the assassin, Robert Graham.
This is personal.
He'd killed her husband,
wounded her.
She's going to make him pay.
He's tried. To the last,
he denies he has done anything wrong
and suggests that he's rid the kingdom
of a great tyrant.
Erm, he's then executed in a prolonged and inventive way.
You've got all the great noblemen.
You've got the clan chieftains,
you have got the great territorial earls and lords
all sitting there.
Here is the opportunity for a spectacular piece of theatre
that will really get across messages.
And that central message is,
"You do not mess with Crown power."
His hand is severed from his arm, using the same dagger
that he used to kill King James,
and he's then paraded through the streets of Edinburgh,
where the townspeople poke at his skin with hot iron tongs,
on his back, and his legs, and his stomach.
And then they cover him with a tunic,
so they let the blood just stick itself to the material.
And then, at last gasp, they rip the material away from him
so that it opens up the wounds, all in one go,
and he faints because of the pain.
Through it all, Graham is defiant.
In his mind, clan justice has been exacted.
But Joan doesn't play by clan rules.
He's forced to watch his son disembowelled in front of him,
before then suffering the same fate, erm, that he's just witnessed.
Erm, so, you know, particularly grisly stuff.
Joan has one more treat in store -
a blunt, rusty axe takes several blows to cut off Robert's head.
When Joan discovers the role Robert Atholl played,
she dishes out similar treatment.
SCREAMING
To Joan's delight, Robert confesses to the King's murder.
"Do whatever they will do with our wretched bodies,
"for being guilty, we have deserved it, this painful death," he cries.
Joan's not finished with Robert yet.
After lying bleeding for an hour,
ropes are tied around his ankles and his armpits,
and he's pulled up high and very nearly apart.
And while the crowd wonder at his agonies,
Robert confesses every detail of the assassination,
and still Joan's not finished.
Joan takes Atholl's head,
has it sent to Perth to be spiked on the town gates.
The manner in which these men are executed
really shows a level of violence that we've not seen in Scotland,
prior to this.
She knows that she needs to demonstrate
that she can be just as strong as any male ruler.
And she will mete out the type of justice that underscores
that type of male power being exercised by her.
Like snow in spring,
support for Atholl among the clans melts away.
Walter is captured and taken to Edinburgh.
His gamble for power is over.
His heir is dead, his line is finished.
All he can do now is wait for his own end.
Walter is the starring act in Joan's theatre of cruelty.
The old man is hoisted high,
then dropped to a juddering halt just short of the ground,
creating intolerable pain.
Walter's crowned with a paper hat,
which bears the words,
"Traitor, traitor, traitor."
After he's beheaded,
the paper hat is replaced with a sizzling hot iron crown
inscribed with the words,
"King of all the Traitors..."
..and mounted on a spike in the middle of Edinburgh.
With the execution of Walter Atholl in 1437,
Queen Joan ended the Stewart civil war
that had erupted 50 years before.
Robert III is dead...
..as are his sons, David and James.
Albany, the man who would be king,
and his son, Murdac, have turned to dust.
Donald MacDonald, King of the Hebrides,
is a distant memory.
And arch plotter Walter Atholl and his heir,
they are history.
You start out with this great pride
of strutting lion Stewarts
going around the kingdom, all contending for power,
all wanting to be the big man,
gradually eliminating each other.
And right here, in 1437,
you suddenly see this whole wide connection
of family disappearing, finally unravelling,
and you're left with one strand,
the Royal Stewart strand,
represented by James's son, James II.
Mary, you forget yourself. You think you can talk to me...
You forget yourself! Forget myself?! You are just a woman!
Next time, the rise of the clans continues
as the chiefs plot to overthrow Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots.
Who will triumph?
Mary or the clans?
There's going to be no happy ending.