KENNETH MACALPIN

Picts and Scots. One throne.

Around 843 AD, Kenneth mac Ailpín became king of both the Picts (the dominant people of eastern and northern Scotland) and the Dál Riata Scots (the Gaelic settlers of western Scotland, originally from Ireland). How he achieved this unification is unclear — he may have inherited the Pictish throne through his mother’s line, or he may have seized it by force.

One medieval tradition holds that Kenneth invited the Pictish nobles to a feast and slaughtered them — a “treachery at a banquet” that eliminated the rival dynasty in a single night.

The kingdom he built became Scotland.

Kenneth’s united kingdom was called Alba — and it would eventually become Scotland. He moved his capital from the west to Scone in Perthshire, bringing with him the Stone of Destiny (Lia Fáil) on which Scottish kings would be crowned for centuries.

Every Scottish king descends from him.

Kenneth’s dynasty — the House of Ailpín — ruled Scotland until 1034, when Duncan I (the same Duncan murdered by Macbeth) took the throne. Through intermarriage, Kenneth’s blood runs through every subsequent Scottish royal line.