Even in his
early boyhood the young King displayed a wisdom, an energy, and a
forcefulness in his management of affairs that marked him for a great
ruler, and made his royal father-in-law's fond vision of gradually
gaining such an ascendancy over Scotland, that he might in time be able
to claim that kingdom as an appanage of England, fade altogether away.
Alexander had only recently come of age when he had to defend his
country against her old enemies, the Norsemen, and his complete victory
was a triumph for him and for his people. Nineteen years later, his only
daughter, Margaret, married Eric, King of Norway, and the Scots saw
peace for them and for their children smiling on them from every side.
But if prosperity as a monarch was his, misfortune overshadowed King
Alexander's private life. His wife died; his children died. His eldest
son, born at Jedburgh, and married, as a lad, to a daughter of the Count
of Flanders, died childless. His daughter, the young Queen of Norway,
died the year after her marriage, leaving behind her the baby who has
come down to us, even through chilly history, as a pitiful little
figure, known as "The Maid of Norway."
In 1285 King Alexander was wifeless and childless, and the heir to the
Scottish crown was his two-year-old grandchild in "Norroway ower the
faem.
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