Tain Ross-shire United Kingdom

Pictland had previously been described as the home of the Caledonii.

Other tribes said to have lived in the area included the Verturiones, Taexali and Venicones.

Except for the Caledonians, the names may be second- or third-hand: perhaps as reported to the Romans by speakers of Brythonic or Gaulish languages.

Pictish recorded history begins in the Dark Ages.

Fortriu, cognate with the Verturiones of the Romans; was recently shown to be centered around Moray.

The means by which the Pictish confederation formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes is unknown, although there is speculation that reaction to the growth of the Roman Empire was a factor.

The Picts by the sixth century organized at least two kingdoms north of the River Forth.

De Situ Albanie, a late document, the Pictish Chronicle, the Duan Albanach, along with Irish legends, have been used to argue the existence of seven Pictish kingdoms.

More small kingdoms may have existed.

Some evidence suggests that a Pictish kingdom also existed in Orkney.

De Situ Albanie is not the most reliable of sources, and the number of kingdoms, one for each of the seven sons of Cruithne, the eponymous founder of the Picts, may well be grounds enough for disbelief.

The Pictish nation, regardless of the exact number of kingdoms and their names, was not a united one.

The Picts in the seventh century recognize a single king, Bridei III, who halts the encroachment of the Scots from the kingdom of Dalriada (Argyll).

His claim to the Fortrean Kingship comes through his paternal grandfather, King Nechtan of the Picts.

Nennius' Historia Brittonum tells us that Bridei was King Ecgfrith's fratruelis, i.e., maternal first cousin.

Bridei's mother was probably a daughter of King Edwin of Deira.

Bridei is one of the more expansionary and active of Fortrean monarchs.

He had attacked Dunnottar in 680/681, and had campaigned against the Orcadian sub-kingdom in 682, a campaign so violent that the Annals of Ulster said that the Orkney Islands were "destroyed" by Bridei ("Orcades deletae sunt la Bruide").

It is also recorded that, in the following year, in 683, war broke out between Bridei and the Scots of Dál Riata under Máel Dúin mac Conaill and Bridei's Picts.

The Scots attacked Dundurn in Strathearn.

Dundurn was Bridei's main power base in the south, a great 'nuclear' hilltop fortress.

The Scots apparently did not take Dundurn, and Bridei backed up with an attack on Dunadd, the capital of Dal Riata.

We do not know if Bridei took Dunadd, but the presence of Pictish-style carvings of that time period in Dunadd may mean that he took and occupied Dunadd.

The lack of reputable contemporary sources of this conflict means that not much is known about the Scottish-Pict war of 683, but it is clear that, Bridei, from his base in Fortriu (or Moray), was establishing his overlordship of the lands to the north, and those to the south, perhaps putting himself in a position to attack the Anglian possessions (or overlordship) which existed in the far south.

It is very possible then that Bridei was regarded by Ecgfrith as his sub-king.

The traditional interpretation is that Bridei severed this relationship, causing the invervention of Ecgfrith.

This led in 685 to the famous Battle of Dun Nechtain, in which the Anglo-Saxon army of Ecgfrith was annihilated.

One Irish source reports that Bridei was "fighting for his grandfather's inheritance,” suggesting that either Ecgfrith was challenging Bridei's kingship, or more likely given Bridei's earlier campaigns, that Bridei was seeking to recover the territories ruled by his grandfather in Fife and Circinn, but since taken by the English.

The consequences of this battle were the expulsion of Northumbrians from southern Pictland (established through, for instance, the Anglian "Bishopric of the Picts" at Abercorn) and permanent Fortrean domination of the southern Pictish zone.

Kenneth MacAlpin unites the Scots and Picts to form a kingdom in central Scotland, ruling as Kenneth I. Kenneth's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or Dál Riata.

Compared with the many questions on his origins, Kenneth's ascent to power and subsequent reign can be dealt with simply.

Kenneth's rise can be placed in the context of the recent end of the previous dynasty, which had dominated Fortriu for two or four generations.

This followed the death in 839 of king Uen son of Óengus of Fortriu, his brother Bran, Áed mac Boanta "and others almost innumerable" in battle against the Vikings.

The resulting succession crisis seems, if the Pictish Chronicle king-lists have any validity, to have resulted in at least four would-be kings warring for supreme power.

Kenneth's reign is dated from 843, but it is probably not until 848 that he defeated the last of his rivals for power.

Edward had marched north again in the spring; on his way, he had granted the Scottish estates of Bruce and his adherents to his own followers and published a bill excommunicating Bruce.

Bruce's queen, Elizabeth, his daughter Marjorie, and his sister Mary had been captured in a sanctuary at Tain, while his brother Niall had been executed., but the death of the sixty-eight-year-old English monarch on July 7 leaves Scotland only half-conquered and leaves Bruce opposed by the king’s twenty-three-year-old son, the feeble Edward II.

The odds now turn in Bruce's favor.