Saint Margaret of Scotland (c. 1045 – 16 November 1093), also known as Margaret of Wessex and Queen Margaret of Scotland, is an English princess of the House of Wessex.
Margaret is sometimes called “The Pearl of Scotland”.
Born in exile in Hungary, she is the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the short-ruling and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England.
Margaret and her family return to England in 1057, but flee to the Kingdom of Scotland following the Norman conquest of England of 1066.
Around 1070, Margaret marries Malcolm III of Scotland, becoming his queen consort.
She is a pious woman, and among many charitable works she establishes a ferry across the Firth of Forth for pilgrims traveling to Dunfermline Abbey, which gives the towns of South Queensferry and North Queensferry their names.
Margaret is the mother of three kings of Scotland and a queen consort of England.
According to the Life of Saint Margaret, attributed to Turgot of Durham, she dies at Edinburgh Castle in 1093, just days after receiving the news of her husband's death in battle.
In 1250, she is canonized by Pope Innocent IV, and her remains are reinterred in a shrine at Dunfermline Abbey.
Her relics are dispersed after the Scottish Reformation and subsequently lost.
