and the place where his hero encountered the three witches on the blasted heath.ĭuncan’s son, Malcolm Canmore (Big Head), still only a boy, fled into exile with his uncle, Earl Siward of Northumbria.
Shakespeare later made Forres the principal setting of Macbeth. Macbeth and Thorfinn seem to have joined forces against him and in 1040 Duncan was either defeated and killed in battle by Macbeth in Moray, perhaps at Elgin or Forres, or else, according to a contemporary chronicler, he was waylaid and murdered. (One of the odder speculations of the many the subject has inspired was that Macbeth and Thorfinn were the same man.)ĭuncan failed in an expedition into England against Durham and in campaigns against Thorfinn, which did not inspire confidence in him. Another with an interest, and a fleet of war-galleys to back it, was the redoubtable Viking jarl of Orkney, Thorfinn the Mighty, who was the son of a younger daughter of Malcolm II. Far from being a greybeard, as in Shakespeare, he was about the same age as Macbeth. Malcolm himself was killed at Glamis the following year and Duncan succeeded. In 1033, presumably to clear the way for Duncan, Malcolm killed one of his cousins, a nephew (or possibly brother) of Gruoch, which gave her a motive for revenge.
Considered ruthless even by the standards of the time, he had no son and he made his heir his daughter’s son, Duncan. The current high king of Scots was Malcolm II, son of Kenneth II. Apparently, he caught his usurping cousin and his war-band in a building and burned them all alive, and then appropriated his cousin’s wife, Gruoch. Macbeth’s father was murdered by other members of the family in 1020 and Macbeth grew up to avenge and succeed him.
Macbeth himself was the son of the mormaer, or under-king, of Moray by a daughter of one or other of the Scots kings. Gruoch was a granddaughter of King Kenneth II who had been murdered in 995, or perhaps of Kenneth III, who was killed in 1005. The evidence is sparse and confused, and attempts to whitewash Macbeth look to have been pressed too far.Įven less is known about his wife, Gruoch, the original of Lady Macbeth, but they were both closely involved with the succession to the bloodily disputed kingdom. Macbeth lived to about 50, which was longer than many, but how much he had in common with the central character of Shakespeare’s tragedy is uncertain. Kings of Scots had a short life expectancy.
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