00:16:04.620and Margaret and Christina spend a fair amount of time hanging out in the West Country
00:16:10.640or Wessex as it was once called which is where I am and even though their kind of family situation
00:16:16.560is kind of precarious they would have still had kind of a privileged nice upbringing their royal
00:16:23.140status was clearly recognized but none of them like Edgar or the girls they're not given like
00:16:29.260any lands and so they don't really have much economic power or independent means. Catherine
00:16:36.080Keene reckons that Margaret and Christina were educated at Wilton Abbey and Edward the Confessor's
00:16:41.820wife Edith of Wessex had been educated there and she had had the abbey it was built in wood and
00:16:47.360she had it rebuilt into stone. Edith of Wessex is she was quite controversial like she kept beefing0.98
00:16:54.440with people there was she had a disagreement with a monastery because she kept kind of relieving
00:17:00.580various religious houses of like their most important relics so she was a lot more controversial
00:17:06.660but Wilton Abbey was part there was like a really large network of female religious
00:17:11.500centers in this part of the world in this era and I definitely like I'd love to see more research
00:17:16.420into that so there's Wilton Shaftesbury Abbey which is now in ruins and then Amesbury Abbey
00:17:22.780and romsey abbey romsey abbey comes up again later most of these haven't survived romsey does have
00:17:30.100it's like a there is a parish church which is still there and you can go visit but all of like
00:17:35.080the abbey buildings are gone and then wilson abbey is also gone i think there's like a few bricks
00:17:41.500left but there's like a huge stately home was built on top of it but also built on top of it
00:17:48.900was an adventure playground not at the time obviously this is a recent thing okay okay
00:17:55.020so i mean like sorry about the reformation and all that henry the eighth you got your divorce
00:18:01.500and i got entire afternoons of my childhood careening about so i'm not too i will allow
00:18:08.680them to have will and abby well and i like that she was there as a child being educated and you
00:18:14.060were there as a child playing you know it's got a really youthful youthful energy yeah she was
00:18:19.940looking down being like oh this random girl she i great things are in her future my biggest memory
00:18:27.960of that adventure playground is they had um like stepping stones but the stepping stones were
00:18:33.500turned really fast and me and my sister were there with our grandmother and she wasn't quite looking
00:18:41.200while we were on these and like I have no idea how we survived it it was so dangerous
00:18:45.300and we had to agree not to tell our grandmother because if she found out she'd be crossed with
00:18:49.380us so they were too dangerous so we kind of had to just like play it off like oh it was fine
00:18:53.960it wasn't fine it was scary so but yeah Margaret was not she wasn't doing too much of that but
00:19:02.220she was definitely spending kind of her formative years in these religious houses that were very
00:19:07.740much associated or like patronized or founded by royal and noble women i'm assuming based on your
00:19:15.360knowledge of saints and things how long had christianity been there in england so in england
00:19:24.500i absolutely should know this i'm gonna say i'm gonna guess something like 500 years i'm just
00:19:30.540looking at my handy chart i mean i know yeah probably brunhild of austrasia was the person
00:19:36.840who funded the first missionary and that was somewhere around the year like 600 so yeah the
00:19:43.280my only like the gap in my knowledge is that margaret is like the earliest i've studied
00:19:49.600so i i risk sometimes coming at it from this like of somebody who's mainly in kind of 15th
00:19:55.920and 16th century scotland yeah um but yeah so england is is like a christian country at this
00:20:01.740point um so is scotland and ireland ireland's christianity predates slightly um england and
00:20:09.440then in uh scottish christianity at this point was a little bit more of like the irish flavor
00:20:16.060but that comes up later actually because margaret um she had ideas and some of the controversy
00:20:21.520around her is about those ideas but um i mean and there were like royal female saints at this point
00:20:27.900so edith of wessex was obviously like a matriarch in margaret's life but then there's edith of
00:20:34.700wilton who was a few hundred years before um who was at wilton abbey and then edith of wessex was
00:20:42.200quite a big fan of edith of wilton who was a princess so there's kind of the it's like this
00:20:49.180um not like a legend but like this is how royal women act in terms of their religious devotion
00:20:55.680that's being kind of passed down through the like centuries and generations and now Margaret is kind
00:21:01.900of receiving that as well so like Keane uh Catherine Keane talks about like what language
00:21:07.320languages she might have learned in this period because the royal family of England was very
00:21:12.040multilingual at this point so Edith of Wessex she spoke English but also French and Danish
00:21:16.980and Edward the Confessor he spent a lot of his childhood in Normandy and so he was fluent in
00:21:22.700Norman French and might have had like a little bit of a Norman French accent. So Margaret might
00:21:27.520have known, like, I mean, she certainly would have known what was then Old English and almost
00:21:32.400certainly knew Latin, but she might have spoken a bit of Danish and French as well. So that's
00:21:38.400exciting for her. She's living her best life. She's educated. She's learning about piety. She's
00:21:44.000learning from all these other women. And then in 1066, Edward the Confessor dies. So Margaret's
00:21:50.660younger brother edgar had been given the title etheling which is one of the a e words and it
00:21:57.540just means like king worthy and there were some nobles in england who were like we want you to
00:22:03.300succeed edward the confessor but at this point edgar is like a teenager which puts you at kind
00:22:08.260of a disadvantage when you are trying to seize a kingdom so the kind of real contenders for the
00:22:13.900throne at this point is edith of wessex's brother harold godwinson and duke william of normandy and
00:22:21.280obviously william defeats harold at the battle of hastings in 1066 and william is then crowned
00:22:27.300on christmas day of that year oh wait wait so this is i'm putting pieces together william the
00:22:33.180conqueror yes yes yeah that's this okay the norman invasion this is this is okay okay this is the
00:22:40.460these are phrases i've heard and you're putting them in context thank you yeah like i mean 1066
00:22:45.520is something that most like children and maybe not children but like teenagers you learn about
00:22:51.500it at school over here for 1066 is like the big the big year and i'm sure you've seen bits of the
00:22:57.420biotapestry and when i was in secondary school we did a trip to france and we went and saw the
00:23:03.640biotapestry and i was like 13 and did not i did not understand how important it was i did not
00:23:09.740appreciate it in any way and so now as the person I am today I'm like yelling at 13 year old EK and
00:23:16.320being like show it some respect it's really important whereas at the time I was just like oh
00:23:21.520this is so boring but there we are so William his like he's come he sees the throne he's and he has
00:23:31.120kind of a complicated relationship with Margaret and her siblings they are treated well and like
00:23:37.040they're brought into the king's peace but it's very clear that William is aware that Edgar
00:23:42.820potentially has a claim and there's a point the next year in 1067 William kind of nips over to
00:23:49.540Normandy and Edgar is one of the nobles kind of chosen or perhaps compelled to accompany him like
00:23:55.960Edgar still could be a bit of a threat William is kind of in a difficult situation he can't really
00:24:01.820dismiss edgar's claim because edgar's claim comes from the house of wessex and comes from the fact
00:24:08.920that edgar is related to the previous king edward the confessor because even though william you know
00:24:15.280he is william the conqueror he has established his right to the throne by conquest william is
00:24:21.380also kind of bolstering his claim to the throne by the fact that he is also kind of related to
00:24:27.540Edward the Confessor so Edward the Confessor's mother was William's great aunt so if William
00:24:34.600kind of diminishes and dismisses the importance of like Edgar and Margaret and Christina's
00:24:40.900relationship to Edward the Confessor it risks kind of discrediting his own like it will be
00:24:47.180cutting off his nose just by his face somewhat and so initially there is kind of there's a peace
00:24:53.460and William is treating certainly the children and Agatha, I assume, with respect.
00:24:59.900But the Norman conquest, it happens very, it can seem from like the south of England
00:25:05.140to have happened very quickly, but actually there was huge opposition to the Normans in the north
00:25:11.260and eventually Edgar becomes involved in this resistance.
00:25:15.360And so in 1068, her family, so Margaret, Christina, Edgar and Agatha,
00:25:20.360they flee north and they end up in scotland where they meet with malcolm the third who was the king
00:25:26.580of scots and then malcolm has a very interesting background uh his father duncan was killed by
00:25:33.900mcbeth oh my god i was just saying those are the names of the from mcbeth duncan literally
00:25:39.780okay like the shakespeare play is i don't think it's pretty much devoid of historical accuracy
00:25:45.820but it was one of my favorites at school so i was really excited about this i was like it's
00:25:52.580that duncan like that actual duncan um so because duncan so because macbeth has killed uh malcolm's
00:26:00.460father duncan malcolm spent some of his kind of adolescence also in exile at the english royal
00:26:08.040court when edward the confessor was still alive so he might have met either uh margaret christina
00:26:14.160or edgar but i don't think it's like i don't think anyone suggests they did me but they may
00:26:19.180well have done like they were both in england at the same time but in 1054 when edward the professor
00:26:25.100is still alive obviously he funds a campaign to invade scotland led by an earl from northumbria
00:26:32.240and the plan is to kind of overthrow macbeth and install malcolm as a king i can't believe that
00:26:38.820Macbeth as a person I know I know sorry there's some there are some elements of like the the way
00:26:47.720Macbeth was defeated in battle like you can see where Shakespeare was taking inspiration from
00:26:53.480where you're like oh yeah I guess that that kind of makes sense but having knowledge of the plot
00:26:58.700of Macbeth did not help me to understand unfortunately all of the stuff that happened
00:27:03.080and so Malcolm and his his mate the Earl of Northumbria defeat Macbeth militarily but he
00:27:09.900kind of stays on the scene until 1057 Malcolm then kills Macbeth Macbeth has a stepson who
00:27:16.260rules for like five minutes Malcolm then kills the stepson so finally in 1058 Malcolm has now
00:27:23.920been crowned king so you know love that for him and then in 1068 Margaret and her family turn up
00:27:32.440And there's some debate about whether Margaret and her family were trying to get to Scotland or if they were possibly trying to return to continental Europe that ended up being kind of wrecked off the Scottish coast.
00:27:44.180Either way, you know, however they get there, they get there. And it is agreed that Margaret will marry Malcolm.
00:27:51.440and her biographer Catherine Keane says I think sums up quite well as this is where Margaret
00:27:58.160firmly enters the historical record through her marriage to Malcolm King of the Scots and we kind
00:28:03.880of have to take a step back and momentarily consider what that historical record means
00:28:10.020because one of the key texts we have that focuses on Margaret's life is written by a monk named
00:28:17.480turgo just after she dies so she dies in 1093 and then in the early 1100s he writes this biography
00:28:25.600of her and turgo is when i was going through my notes for this i was like slagging turgo off
00:28:32.260about how boring he was and how annoying i found him but then i was going over like his biography
00:28:37.400and i was like oh sorry babes like you did actually you were quite interesting um so sorry
00:28:42.720to him uh he's from lincolnshire in england and like at some point he gets held hostage at lincoln
00:28:50.220castle by the normans he then bribes somebody to escape ends up in norway for a bit and just like
00:28:57.640hangs out with the royal court in norway and he's been interested in like oh maybe i should become
00:29:03.240a monk but nothing have really happened and then when he's coming back from norway to england
00:29:08.020his ship sinks and he like loses all his stuff and he's like oh yes this is a sign i better become a
00:29:15.160monk which is like okay you you had i bet you had some stories to tell um he actually beefs a little
00:29:23.220bit with malcolm the third of an early point in this because turgo is trying to set up a religious
00:29:29.020community at melrose in scotland and malcolm like doesn't want to allow them to do this
00:29:34.280um because turgo and kind of his mates won't swear fealty to malcolm so there's that kind
00:29:39.500of like friction but then in the 1080s turgo becomes part of the community at durham and
00:29:47.080malcolm is a big fan of durham and margaret is a big fan um so they you know patch things up
00:29:52.520eventually but the the text that turgo writes about margaret is a spiritual biography that's
00:29:58.900called a vita which is just latin for life so sometimes you will hear the book called like the
00:30:04.560life of uh saint margaret and these texts are explicitly written to promote a case for
00:30:13.260canonization it's emphasizing how pious she is how holy and oh she's like she's got sanctity coming
00:30:20.960out of her ears this is it's a whole genre called hagiography um that is preparing someone's legacy
00:30:28.420for hopefully they will be venerated and then eventually canonized and turgo's work isn't the
00:30:34.240only source that we have for margaret so there's like some charters there's a few letters that
00:30:39.520margaret wrote and she also appears in some of the versions of the anglo-saxon chronicle
00:30:44.780which like you ain't special everybody was so it's lucky for margaret that she had turgo because
00:30:51.420like the anglo-saxon chronicle is so full of stuff that i would understand if she slipped
00:30:56.700through the cracks but turgos is definitely it's the it's very detailed and is apparently taken
00:31:02.480from first-hand experience he's always hyping up about like oh the the fun we had together like i
00:31:08.000remember when she told me about this and oh wasn't she amazing when i saw her do this um and as a
00:31:13.720result her his work is like the most influential on kind of her her legacy and how her life um
00:31:20.420her afterlife and how that shapes out but like we have to take as we do with all historical sources
00:31:27.020but with turgo's work we have to take it with like a wheelbarrow of salt because he wants margaret to
00:31:34.820be canonized like that is his that is the entire reason for this so he spends a long time kind of
00:31:40.980like pages and pages outlining the ancestry of margaret um her paternal ancestry the maternal
00:31:47.860ancestry stuff is as we've said very complicated because we don't know who agatha is and then
00:31:53.160turgo mentions about edward the exile he's invited over to england and then finally margaret kind of
00:31:58.380appears the center stage when she is married to malcolm and in this scene turgo says that mal
00:32:05.440uh that margaret did not want to marry malcolm and that she didn't want to marry anyone and he says
00:32:11.300that her brother edgar only consented to the match because he was kind of harangued into it
00:32:16.440he writes that Edgar was quote surrendering her more by the will of his people than by his own
00:32:22.200or rather by the decree of God and it may be that that's how it happened but I think like a good
00:32:30.400the a good jumping off point of how you need to be suspicious of Tergo is he wants her to be
00:32:37.240canonized and what better way to hype up her holiness than by portraying her as like oh she
00:32:43.020didn't want to get married she wanted to be a nun and then the other kind of more practical
00:32:48.920skepticism on this kind of incident is even though obviously the fortunes of her family
00:32:55.400had been really up and down Margaret had been raised in royal courts as a princess
00:33:00.880you know she was the daughter and the sister of would-be kings even even though none of that0.73
00:33:07.060really panned out but I think she would have known that her like she would be expected to marry
00:33:11.660according to her status and also kind of the political strategies of her family so even though
00:33:18.880Malcolm had kind of been installed on the throne of Scotland by Edward the Confessor and Edward
00:33:24.440the Confessor at that point wanted Malcolm to kind of rule according to English interests that
00:33:30.760didn't that didn't last that didn't stick Malcolm kind of said no I'm not going to do that anymore
00:33:36.160and so malcolm is constantly beefing with england and after the norman conquest when it's the the
00:33:41.980norm the um william the conqueror it makes sense for edgar and for malcolm that the two would want
00:33:49.000to ally because edgar's family are now in opposition to the current english king malcolm
00:33:55.080is just in opposition to england when it suits him so that alliance makes like it makes complete
00:34:01.340sense like I would understand why they would why that marriage would happen and as I said we don't
00:34:08.320we can't say oh Margaret was definitely really happy to marry if Tergo is kind of protesting too
00:34:15.240much but I think Margaret would have kind of been reconciled to it eventually. Do you know how old
00:34:21.680she was when she was married? So they probably got married around 1070 and if she's probably born
00:34:27.880around 10 45 then she would have been about 25 okay so like an adult aged person yeah yeah so
00:34:34.860she um and malcolm was possibly slightly older than her but i don't think obviously she was 25
00:34:40.380so she um was considered very much of the age to marry and the fact that she was a little bit older
00:34:47.500you might be like well why hadn't she been married sooner but i think because things were just so up
00:34:53.060and down for her family like an alliance that they made at one point might not stick to the next
00:35:01.480so I think it was quite um like an eventful and unsettled time so if obviously she wasn't married
00:35:10.500until she was 25 maybe that did mean that she wanted to enter the church but I just think
00:35:15.580it's it's always kind of given as if it's like 100 century like oh no she never wanted to get
00:35:20.740married and she may not have but I just think Tergo I'm like hmm do I trust you even though
00:35:28.700you had an exciting life and bribed your way out of captivity I can be impressed by him but that
00:35:33.880doesn't mean I have to believe him that's that's life advice my goodness yeah um so now we kind of
00:35:41.040can think about Tergo's role in all of this um and kind of apply that skepticism to his wider
00:35:46.900portrayal of Margaret obviously describing her as really pious and there's that kind of classical
00:35:53.340medieval hyperbole where it's like so extreme everything she does um but the way Tergo presents
00:36:01.840like the way he chooses to represent her religious devotion is very interesting so he bigs up her
00:36:08.720involvement massively in the reform of the Scottish church so as we said earlier the Scottish
00:36:16.000church had it just had like developed on a slightly different line to in england and was
00:36:21.300more influenced by kind of irish christianity and the way turgo tells it margaret is pushing the
00:36:29.640church of scotland more towards like the way the papacy wants you to do it so she says like oh
00:36:37.380you're not fasting long enough for lent oh why aren't you taking the eucharist at easter like
00:36:42.400you're meant to do this you're meant to do that and she's almost quite she's quite bossy I would
00:36:47.300say in this and she like does not brook any opposition and sometimes you will get criticisms
00:36:53.200of her written like today as her being kind of quite tyrannical but then you also get the opposite1.00
00:36:59.300where people are like oh well she wouldn't surely she wouldn't have been that aggressive and bossy
00:37:04.660so it must be that she wasn't actually that involved I would say as is often the case the
00:37:10.060truth is probably somewhere down the middle but when you're thinking about how turgo is presenting
00:37:15.320it turgo himself was very keen on reform of the church and so he's quite happy to portray margaret
00:37:24.520as basically agreeing with how turgo thinks it should be done like how convenient is that
00:37:30.800that margaret just happens to agree with all kind of like the the changes that you think should
00:37:36.620happen to the church is also how you think they should happen like it's very convenient
00:37:40.840and then taco's portrayal which kind of ties into all of this the way he portrays malcolm
00:37:48.580because he portrays malcolm and i i would put serious money betting that no one could come up
00:37:55.780with a more accurate description of malcolm as he's a himbo he is full-on golden retriever
00:38:04.180boyfriend like apparently he can't read but because margaret loves books he loves the books
00:38:10.460and the books i think she write uh tergo writes that which she had rejected he likewise rejected
00:38:17.980and that which she had loved he loved for the love of her love wherefore the books with which
00:38:22.680she was accustomed either to pray or to read this man although illiterate was accustomed to
00:38:27.420lead through by hand and to inspect and when he had heard from her which of them was dearer
00:38:32.040this he chose to consider more dearly and often kissed and handled which like there's a few
00:38:38.000modern illustrations of Malcolm and Margaret in like this romantic kind of forest galen
00:38:44.240and she's reading to him and he might as well just have like big heart eyes like he's it's
00:38:50.520it's I don't want to say like oh it's an emasculating uh portrayal it's I think the
00:38:56.880motivation behind turgo showing malcolm as just like a big himbo who is just a golden retriever
00:39:04.720is i think that turgo struggled to fit margaret into existing models of what saint sainthood
00:39:14.500among women should look like i think he had he had kind of a couple of models to consider
00:39:20.020and he tried to cobble together a few of them so the kind of big the big example of female
00:39:28.940sanctity in this era is the virgin martyr model it was incredibly popular in the medieval period
00:39:35.000especially in the later medieval but most of the stories about it were from the early medieval
00:39:41.360period and basically virgin martyr saints do what they say on the tin christianity is kind of
00:39:47.320overflowing with these stories of young women and they are always beautiful they're always young
00:39:53.000they're always super super christian and they love jesus and then there will be like another figure
00:39:58.620who is um always male often non-christian and sometimes it's the girl's father or their husband
00:40:05.320or like a potential spouse who really fancies her and this like pagan spouse or whatever says no you
00:40:12.700can't be christian anymore you need to convert she says no and then they're kind of too long
00:40:16.680didn't read is that she is then executed usually in an incredibly gory manner usually doing a few
00:40:22.500miracles before or during her execution and this was the most popular model for female saints in
00:40:29.380this period but margaret isn't a martyr and she isn't a virgin so i think turgo is like well what
00:40:35.600do i do and so the way he portrays malcolm is to kind of try if turgo can't make margaret a virgin
00:40:43.960or a martyr he can at least make Malcolm one of these kind of pagan spouses except he's struggling
00:40:51.260with that too because Malcolm is a Christian so and he's not asking Margaret to convert from
00:40:57.480Christianity so I think Tergo adopts kind of a dynamic where Malcolm's Christianity was less
00:41:04.160refined than Margaret's and that instead of Margaret like converting her husband she is0.70
00:41:10.420reforming and refining the church as it was um in scotland that is why i think malcolm is a himbo
00:41:18.860he needed to be less sophisticated and he needed to need margaret's kind of evangelizing presence
00:41:25.420so we get this emphasis on like oh he's a literary he's not educated turgo kind of forces
00:41:32.600malcolm into this pagan spouse role so that margaret's sanctity is easier to swallow and
00:41:38.940another kind of element of the virgin martyr legend is where the woman the woman in question
00:41:43.980speaks like so eloquently and so persuasively in defense of her faith that she ends up converting
00:41:49.840some people and when you look at the passages that Tergo has of Margaret um speaking to the
00:41:56.060clergy about like you know we're not celebrating Lent properly and you need to do this and you
00:41:59.760need to do that she is arguing really persuasively and all of the like clergy that she's speaking to
00:42:06.000were like oh my god she's amazing and that's something you get in virgin martyr stories as
00:42:11.020well Catherine of Alexandria is the big one where like the emperor assembles 50 of the wisest
00:42:17.640scholars and to argue with her and she manages to persuade them all that she's actually right
00:42:23.620like it's very like extreme there's lots of hyperbole like it's very it's it is very and
00:42:30.260then everybody clapped that is like the vibe and so I think Margaret is getting that treatment as
00:42:35.620well and you also see targo kind of struggling to show how margaret existed in relation to secular
00:42:44.500power so we've got lots of royal women in europe who chose to enter a life of religious seclusion
00:42:51.140especially after being widowed so edith wessex ella who was the countess of salisbury and then
00:42:57.880there's radigan of quatias which is like sixth century um but we know we know but radigan on
00:43:04.620this podcast don't worry about it which radigan there's a few radigans is this the radigan who
00:43:09.120um like became well yeah she became a nun even though her husband was still alive yeah and then
00:43:15.680she was sort of like the queen but like from the convent yes yeah iconic she's so fun i did an0.96
00:43:21.160essay about her um in terms of queer history and it was called queerism fuck you and i basically
00:43:27.880argued that radigan can be considered queer in this uh very uh elaborate structure of what that
00:43:36.340meant that i wrote and it's certainly it was the best name i came up with through all of my my time
00:43:43.200at university so but margaret doesn't really fit into like radigan and edith wessex because she
00:43:51.600wasn't she was only a widow for about three days and she was a very active queen so you kind of
00:43:56.960you you get the sense of turgo being a little bit insecure as like because he tries to picture
00:44:03.280as like oh well she only wore fine things because she had to as a queen i think he would like he's
00:44:11.240he got kind of stuck with these models and his solution was like okay well she had kids
00:44:15.660she was married she didn't disengage herself from kind of secular power how do i square
00:44:20.560this circle and I think that's why we get that portrayal but then as I mentioned earlier we kind
00:44:29.020of he spends a long time talking about her ancestry and this is kind of the second and I
00:44:34.740think the lasting importance to Margaret's story and it takes place after she dies so she dies in
00:44:43.8601093 at the age of around 53 and she dies her husband and her eldest son are killed at the
00:44:51.340battle of alnwick she is given the news um and she's like oh okay gives a lot of deathbed advice
00:44:57.660has lots of prayer understandably and then she also dies and then what happens after because
00:45:04.340it's not just her that's died the king has died and the king's son and presumable heir has also
00:45:10.480died because the problem is Malcolm had been married before he married Margaret to a woman
00:45:17.200called Ingeborg Finn's daughter whoa okay she was Scandinavian yes so she's pretty mysterious we
00:45:26.720know that she was we know she was married once and presumably by her surname Finn's daughter she
00:45:31.880was presumably the daughter of somebody with the name Finn and there's debate over whether or not
00:45:37.580Ingeborg had died by the time Malcolm married Margaret Catherine Keene says she reckons that
00:45:44.220Ingeborg was set aside and perhaps on the grounds of consanguinity which is obviously that old
00:45:51.720faithful that comes out when you don't want to be married anymore and you say oh we're related
00:45:55.600and they were related but somehow it didn't matter when you got married did it how convenient
00:46:00.300um but it could have been that Malcolm and Ingeborg's marriage was kind of like a common
00:46:05.520thing and so it wouldn't have actually mattered whether or not Ingeborg was alive or not by the
00:46:10.480time Malcolm married Margaret but Ingeborg has had sons with Malcolm who obviously older than
00:46:16.660the sons any children with Margaret the sons are called Duncan and Donald so Malcolm has a brother
00:46:23.500he has two older children with Ingeborg and he has eight children including six sons with
00:46:28.480margaret now at this time like primogeniture had begun to like settle down um but i do think that
00:46:36.500our history like with the tudors and henry the obsession with the succession has made us
00:46:41.700overestimate it a little so even though it was it was a thing that the eldest son probably had
00:46:49.560rights over the youngest might can still triumph right at this point so it's not malcolm any of
00:46:58.060Malcolm's sons that it succeeds to the throne at first. It is his brother, Donald, who comes to the
00:47:04.020throne as Donald III. Donald is then supplanted by Ingerbjörg's son, Duncan, with the assistance
00:47:10.360of one of Margaret's sons, Edmund. But then brother Donald takes the throne from Donald's
00:47:18.400nephew, Duncan. It's a lot of D names in this bit. However, three years later, Donald, the brother,0.52
00:47:25.340is overthrown by Margaret's sons with an army that is supported by the new king of England,
00:47:32.100William II, who is William the Conqueror's son. And Margaret's son, Edgar, takes the throne.
00:47:38.480He rules until his death in 1107. Edgar doesn't have any children. So the next son, Alexander,
00:47:45.080rules. He then dies in 1124 and he hasn't had any kids either. So the crown then passes to
00:47:51.800Margaret's youngest son David some of the other sons that Margaret and Malcolm had one of them
00:47:57.100who had helped one of the interlopers has we're not 100% sure what happened to him but he might
00:48:02.820have been like kind of locked in a dungeon and and the key thrown away another one of the sons
00:48:10.040became uh joined the church yeah and then the eldest son obviously died at the same time as
00:48:16.260uh malcolm so let's just keep track so like three of her sons became king of scots
00:48:21.460yeah one after the other so edgar alexander and then david edgar and alexander bless them
00:48:28.820they do stuff but david's like he's he's the most famous one but this to me is the moment
00:48:36.100when margaret is transformed from like oh she was really pious to one of the most important figures
00:48:42.280in Scottish history because her sons they then do a lot to buttress her legacy they expand um on a
00:48:50.120monastic settlement that she set up at Dunfermline which was where she was married um and they're
00:48:55.200generally just like big fans of their mother but it's Margaret's daughter who is like the fulcrum
00:49:02.080to everything we now know about Margaret so Margaret she has two daughters Edith and Mary
00:49:08.780both as children are sent to England to Romsey Abbey which I mentioned earlier because Margaret's
00:49:15.320sister Christina is the abbess there so that's nice like a little family reunion at some point
00:49:21.660Edith's name is changed to Matilda it's kind of people aren't really sure when this happened or
00:49:29.120why I think it's because they were trying to normalize her name so Edith is kind of like a
00:49:35.780slightly old Wessex name and now that the Norman conquest has happened it's like let's kind of
00:49:41.420let's change it to Matilda to make you more not necessarily appealing but to make you
00:49:47.880assimilate with what has now happened in England and it clearly works because Edith Matilda as
00:49:55.280she is usually known by people studying it from a Scottish perspective just because it gets too
00:49:59.540confusing else um in 1101 Edith Matilda marries the king of England Henry I uh Henry I is a son
00:50:07.660of William the Conqueror and she is very popular as his queen and very well loved and Edith Matilda
00:50:13.720when she is queen commissions Targo to write this biography and Targo says in the like preamble to
00:50:23.860the beater that he says that you wish not only to hear but also to view unendingly a written life
00:50:31.800of your mother the queen so that although you little knew the countenance of your mother you
00:50:36.220might have fuller notice of her virtues. Edith Matilda didn't know her mother well because she0.99
00:50:41.080was sent to England as a child so I do think like I believe that Edith Matilda would like to know
00:50:46.660her mother better and thus would commission this work but all the stuff that happened after Margaret's
00:50:52.560death with basically the civil wars between her sons and Malcolm's previous sons at this point
00:51:00.020when Tergo writes Donald and Duncan so the brother of Malcolm and his eldest son have both been
00:51:05.880defeated however the dust has only just settled and Duncan has a son he's I think he's only a
00:51:13.660child at this point but that you know that doesn't mean he's not a threat so it follows that Margaret's
00:51:20.260children would want to really hype up their maternal heritage because their paternal heritage
00:51:26.720isn't as useful for taking and keeping the crown of Scotland like so what is if Malcolm was your
00:51:33.420dad he was related to them too like that's not you're not special saying that oh well we're
00:51:38.700related to this amazing woman called Margaret they are outflanking the kind of Malcolm's other
00:51:45.040descendants. And then the other reason that Edith Matilda would have commissioned this biography
00:51:51.540is because her husband, Henry I of England, has a very vested interest in augmenting the descent
00:51:58.640via Margaret because Margaret is descended or related to Edward the Confessor. And I think
00:52:06.680this is something that Margaret understood about amping up this kind of like old Anglo-Saxon
00:52:12.300heritage because she did give her children all old English names. So Henry's marriage to Edith
00:52:19.500Matilda would unite the claims of the pre-Norman House of Wessex with the new Norman dynasty.
00:52:26.380He's kind of absorbing their line. And the historian Stephen Boardman says that Edith
00:52:32.720Matilda's commissioning of the Vita gifted her husband the legacy of the Saxon monarchy.
00:52:38.580so all of all of this came from the fact that they needed to unite these two dynasties and
00:52:46.540also just amp up Margaret kind of time and time again and then Margaret is after she dies she's
00:52:53.460buried at a play at Dunfermline which then becomes kind of a royal mausoleum so Malcolm
00:52:59.300III had been buried in I think Tynemouth Priory which was closer to where he had died but one of
00:53:05.960one of his sons has him reburied at Dunfermline. Edgar, Alexander and David, they're all buried
00:53:12.020at Dunfermline. Between 1093 and 1420, 19 monarchs or their kind of close royal family
00:53:19.480members are buried at Dunfermline, which becomes kind of the central focus of devotions at that
00:53:26.500site. Miracles are said to have been performed there. But none of the miracles, they're mainly
00:53:32.980healing miracles which is kind of you know the the popular ones at this point and my favorite ones
00:53:38.960are where she yells at people like the ghost of of saint margaret yeah so there's at one point a
00:53:44.780woman turns up and she's like will you heal me and she sleeps there and margaret appears during
00:53:49.860the night and says and this was recorded and written down by the monks at dunfermline
00:53:54.420wake up wretched woman wake up thoughtless woman for through me the heavenly mercy has deigned to
00:54:02.460hear you favorably i can you imagine if you were just like oh please please heal me oh i love you0.98
00:54:10.440margaret and she appears and calls you a wretched woman i would i would not tell the monks in order
00:54:16.340for it to be written down i would be telling nobody i would be taking that to my grave no0.70
00:54:20.960exactly if you if you were like you know like please i want to get a good mark on this on this0.66
00:54:25.340paper saint margaret please help me and she's like listen up fuckwad yeah when there's another1.00
00:54:31.300one which kind of she doesn't appear as a ghost for the exciting bit there's an there's one where
00:54:37.400basically some guy's in love with one of his servants but his dad is like you can't be in a
00:54:42.940relationship with her but then the dad dies and the guy gets into a relationship with his servant
00:54:49.740and then the dad's ghost appears and like punches the servant and then she comes the servant then
00:54:57.520comes to Dunfermline and is asked to be healed so Margaret isn't the one doing the punching
00:55:01.960but the way it's written they are seemingly connected so love that for her and then one
00:55:08.800of the most famous miracles takes place in 1263 the king of Norway Hakon IV is trying to invade
00:55:15.480Scotland and a knight who is I think unwell he sleeps at Dunfermline like on the way to the
00:55:21.840battle and Margaret appears to him and she's with like other men and they're all kind of you know
00:55:27.700ghostly apparitions and the knight is like who are these people and she's like I'm Margaret blah blah
00:55:34.520blah and these people this is my husband and some of her sons and Margaret kind of promises that
00:55:40.900they will defeat the the king of Norway and his forces and neither Malcolm nor any of the sons
00:55:47.180say anything it's just Margaret who speaks and she declares that Scotland is her kingdom
00:55:52.700she says accepted from God and entrusted to me and my heirs forever Malcolm is literally just
00:55:59.980some guy in this like he's he's there he he's around but that's about it and then there is one
00:56:08.920miracle that took place before Margaret died and I don't want to be a hater though I'm great at it
00:56:16.320but do not get your hopes up okay okay so targo sets the scene by saying oh miracles are fine
00:56:24.560but they aren't as important as like good works and virtue which is probably true i believe that
00:56:30.140he believes that but i think he's also trying to manage expectations because the miracle that he
00:56:35.480relates is that margaret asks for a book to be brought to her a gospel book that she um especially
00:56:43.000favors and the messenger drops the book in a river on the way doesn't realize until he gets to
00:56:50.700Margaret and is like oh I dropped that book and they go and get it and they're like well obviously
00:56:54.980it'll be ruined because it's in a river and the book is not ruined that's the miracle that's it's
00:57:01.480not exactly water into wine is it it's it's kind of yeah I'm unimpressed with it uh Tergo does say
00:57:09.760that oh she prophesied her own death and that she foretold certain future events on her deathbed
00:57:15.260um she may have foretold her her um death but she really pushed her body to the brink with
00:57:21.540kind of her ascetic practices like it wasn't a surprise that she was dying she hadn't been able0.99
00:57:26.960to ride was she doing like too much fasting and like stuff like that yeah big on like the abstinence
00:57:33.360fasting she um used to go and pray in a cave which was like really cold it's obviously going
00:57:39.940to be cold it's a cave in scotland don't i just don't don't worship in a cave in scotland okay
00:57:45.900you will probably catch a death of cold and she's probably wearing like a hair shirt at the time and
00:57:51.000stuff yeah i'm not sure if she really went in for that kind of like the real brutal stuff
00:57:56.220but she she didn't like look after herself and it was because you know she was obviously very
00:58:02.760very devoted i'm just gonna say also well and she also had had eight children so i feel like
00:58:08.440having eight children now versus like then just in terms of medical care like her body would be
00:58:13.800affected by all that and then if you're also not caring for that body that has given birth to eight
00:58:19.040children in like medieval scotland yeah she has eight children over 14 years which is not very
00:58:25.100long and she i mean we only ever hear about the eight children that she has and they all pretty
00:58:31.020much survive to adulthood she may well have been pregnant at other times but either couldn't carry
00:58:36.320it to town or that the child died when um when it was very very young so she had eight children as a
00:58:42.140minimum kind of thing and then there is a bit when she's on her deathbed she's kind of it might be
00:58:49.500slightly before she dies but basically turgo says that margaret told him that if her sons do ever
00:58:57.380become kings turgo is allowed to tell them what to do and to kind of admonish them or argue with
00:59:03.720them if necessary now bearing in mind turgo is writing this in the early 1100s after margaret's
00:59:12.020sons have like edgar is king at that point it's very convenient that turgo is basically saying
00:59:18.820hey edgar king of scots your mom told me that i can have a go at you if i want like that's a little
00:59:27.000bit convenient to me i'm not quite convinced but after she's canonized in the 13th century
00:59:36.060and who decides that like he wrote this thing being like look at how she should be a saint
00:59:40.120like who's the person who's like checks off that box to be like yeah let's make her a saint
00:59:43.420so turgo writes this beta of her and then it has survived in kind of various like manuscript
00:59:51.480compilations and there's a couple of these compilations that are very much there's one
00:59:56.220called like the feminine combination and it's basically like a little a little pack like here
01:00:02.780mr pope this is why we want her to be canonized thank you because by the time she is canonized
01:00:10.000in the 13th century the papacy has taken on um like we're the only ones who are allowed to do
01:00:16.020this but then the miracles so the one of high yelling at people and appearing as a ghost
01:00:20.020they are put together kind of in I think it's mainly in the 12th century and that is written
01:00:28.260by the monks at Dunfermline who are like preserving her shrine so it's kind of all
01:00:34.120these little things that are then put together to be like please canonize her now appreciate that
01:00:40.360and for like the rest of the medieval period she remains a dynastic saint so she is considered
01:00:49.080the foundress of the scottish royal line arguably more than malcolm was like he it's just like he
01:00:56.860he's just ken like it's a real he's just ken fine yeah a hundred percent and like i think they
01:01:03.080probably got along well and they certainly had um a very productive uh relationship both in terms of
01:01:09.340actual children but also like what they did and the impacts they made eventually on scotland
01:01:15.360but yeah he's like he's meant to be a very good warrior and he's meant to be very noble and all
01:01:20.060that stuff but he's i the stuff that you can say about malcolm i think you could say about
01:01:25.840any other king margaret is a little bit more unique and the way she is interpreted by the
01:01:34.100subsequent generations is there's a huge emphasis on her relationship to edward the confessor
01:01:39.980because when England and Scotland are beefing as we are still want to do it kind of benefited
01:01:47.260the Scots to point out that oh well we are if you're descended from these like illustrious
01:01:52.680pre-Norman kings well guess what so are we and our dynastic go-between she's a saint like
01:01:59.660none of your monarchs are saints like Edward the Confessor was canonized but I think any of the
01:02:05.640others were I have to look into that I love learning about this kind of stuff but the way
01:02:11.200you see Margaret's emphasis to Edward the Confessor because in depictions of Margaret
01:02:17.340she is often shown with the coat of arms of Edward the Confessor which is like a blue background and
01:02:23.760then it has like a yellow or a gold cross and then four little birds in kind of each quadrant of the
01:02:29.940cross these arms were like assigned to edward the confessor after the point because heraldic
01:02:36.400symbols didn't exist when he was alive but they then get to be like oh this is edward the confessor's
01:02:41.900and you see it on margaret's like most of the depictions are some depictions of her
01:02:46.440and like her dress has the shield with the little birds on so it's for it it's always edward the
01:02:54.220confessor is kind of like the the key here and in 1250 she's canonized and her remains which
01:03:00.940are at Dunfermline they are moved to a more important spot at Dunfermline and the king of
01:03:07.640Scotland at that point Alexander III and his queen who is a Margaret of England they are at
01:03:14.280this ceremony and they're children at this point but I get the sense that the reason Margaret this
01:03:20.860little Queen Margaret of England was included because it's like hey maybe you should do like
01:03:26.640this woman did and be really pious and have loads of children and then at the kind of moving moving
01:03:33.400forward in time at the turn of the 14th century Margaret finds an incredible champion in Robert
01:03:40.760the Bruce who is obsessed with so at the Battle of Bannockburn he has I think some of her relics
01:03:48.460brought out he patronizes the abbey at dunfermline he's buried at dunfermline as are most of like a
01:03:55.980huge amount of his family and his friends and she has become like a national figure at this point
01:04:01.880so when edward the first of england kind of all but conquers scotland he chooses to hear the
01:04:07.860submission of various clergymen in that chapel dedicated to sir margaret in edinburgh castle
01:04:13.220and at one point when he's kind of overwintering in Scotland he makes Dunfermline Abbey his
01:04:20.080like military base so he clearly knows how important she is and that she is a key symbol
01:04:25.440that he can then kind of co-opt and use and you also get in this period her national significance
01:04:34.160emphasized by a guy called Walter Bauer he was a monk and he wrote a chronicle called
01:04:39.920the scottic chronicon and he's basically taking a load of pre-existing work by this guy called
01:04:45.760john of fordun and he adds to it and all of the bits about margaret he adds like himself and he
01:04:53.980gives a description of the ceremony in 1250 that moved margaret's remains and he says that when
01:05:01.100they were moving her like coffin towards the high altar that when they tried to move the coffin
01:05:07.240past where her husband, Michael III, was buried, she wouldn't move. The people carrying her
01:05:14.560couldn't carry her any further. And so to Bauer, he's like, this meant that Margaret refused to
01:05:21.440be moved to a more illustrious place unless her husband was also moved there to, which is what
01:05:27.020happens. His remains are moved too. And I found this interesting because it kind of contradicts
01:05:32.560Turgo's version of events. And I think Bauer neutralizes Margaret's independence in this
01:05:40.160kind of situation. Like at one point, he says that Margaret and her husband were equal in works of
01:05:46.580charity, both outstanding in the pursuit of holiness, which is definitely not Turgo's
01:05:51.260perspective. And I think it's because Turgo and Bauer, they're at cross purposes. Turgo kind of
01:05:57.860needs margaret to be bolder and a little more pious so that she can successfully evangelize
01:06:04.300to her husband rose bower just needs like a saintly foundress with national significance you
01:06:10.960know i don't think their goals were the same and that's why we get this discordance um and margaret
01:06:17.200kind of remains popular her cult doesn't ever really drop out until the reformation um but the
01:06:22.700the kind of later Stuart monarchs are not as focused on her as like her immediate descendants
01:06:29.080than like Robert the Bruce. So after the year 1420, none of the Stuart royals are buried at
01:06:34.820Dunfermline. One of the interesting elements of her cult in this period is the use of her shirt
01:06:40.520as a relic. Her shirt. Yes. So there are several instances we hear when a queen consul of Scotland
01:06:47.780has her shirt on hand during childbirth so mary of gouders did margaret tudor did possibly elizabeth
01:06:56.160de bar who was robert the bruce's i think his second wife um so they had it to like help them
01:07:01.640through childbirth and so sometimes you'll see her like we were saying earlier she is the patron
01:07:06.620saint of scotland sometimes people will say that she is also like the patron saint for childbirth
01:07:12.480i don't think she is so obviously she's had all these kids but we never see her whether it's
01:07:19.980turgo or later we never see her as being especially regarded for kind of her for child birth and the
01:07:26.320labor of giving birth it's just about her like raising and nurturing the children as she raised
01:07:33.360and nurtured scotland i guess and so my view is that the use of this relic is another dynastic
01:07:40.220expression it's not about a queen it's not about a woman giving birth it's about a queen providing
01:07:46.060an heir for the royal dynasty because the shirt doesn't it doesn't seem to be used on every queen
01:07:52.940that we know of and it doesn't seem to have been used in every instance of childbirth so i think
01:07:58.500margaret tudor only uses it once and like joan beaufort who was james the first queen had like
01:08:04.980a million children and i don't think we ever hear of it being used um with with her so i think it's
01:08:11.140more about like ushering in the next monarch and she has another relic which was her head
01:08:17.580just her whole head and mary queen of scots had that with her mary queen of scots had the head
01:08:22.980yeah so i think it was when she gave birth and yeah so she had the head and then when the
01:08:28.800reformation happened i know the reformation happened before she gave birth so i'd have to
01:08:35.160show that but maryland scots definitely had her head and it was hidden then i guess until uh after
01:08:42.260her deposition it was hidden from like the reformist iconoclasts and then it got smuggled
01:08:47.840to the continent and ended up in france and they were like oh it's safe and then the french
01:08:52.100revolution happened so it's like oh no and I'm not I don't think we know where it where it is now
01:08:58.900and the shrine her grave at Dunfermline is now empty her remains were probably smuggled out
01:09:06.540for the reformation and they're probably in Spain Spain took like a whole bunch of relics
01:09:12.340to kind of save them from the reformation and a load of them are in Madrid in the Escorial Palace
01:09:18.320but because there's so many there I don't think it's like nobody has done um like an audit there
01:09:24.880has not been a stock take done fully so she might be there she might not there is a piece of her
01:09:30.100shoulder bone which is in Dunfermline but it's not at the abbey which is now the abbey's kind
01:09:36.580of defunct but it's still a parish church her shoulder bone is at a newer catholic church in
01:09:41.740the town and they bring it out for a parade every year so that's really nice for her like she would
01:09:47.640be scarier as a ghost now because she has no shoulder bone and no head so if she had appeared0.89
01:09:55.380to me like fully with her head I wouldn't be as scared but I think if she appeared to me which
01:10:00.840would you be more scared of I'd be most scared if she appeared to me and she was just a shoulder
01:10:05.400bone just a ghost of a shoulder bone oh my goodness yelling at me yeah I'm gonna I'm hoping
01:10:12.580at some point to be in Edinburgh when they do the parade I think they do it in in summer so maybe
01:10:18.500I'll go and ask it's obviously the um uh Scotland is now Presbyterian so they don't have any relics0.98
01:10:23.860and things um so I might go and hang out with the the Catholic Church and be like which would scare
01:10:29.460you more yeah if it was just a shoulder bone I'll do like a little vox pop thing and get and survey
01:10:35.060survey everybody but some of the other things we have of hers in the 19th century the Bodian
01:10:41.920library at Oxford acquired a gospel book and I think they thought originally that it was from
01:10:47.300the 14th century but then it turned out it was from the 11th century and it had an inscription
01:10:52.440that the book was once owned by a king and queen and the inscription mentioned the thing about the
01:10:58.780river miracle and the pages themselves were consistent with if they'd had a slight amount
01:11:05.860of water damage so like this is it this is her gospel book so we found it so that's nice and
01:11:13.000then the other kind of parts of her legacy that i think most scottish people would uh have some
01:11:18.540familiarity with is there is a bridge called the queensberry bridge and it refers to the queensberry
01:11:25.260crossing across the fourth that she set up she was like when pilgrims want to go from like the
01:11:31.820south bank of the fourth to st andrews which is like across the river and all the way up
01:11:36.240we should set up like a free ferry for them to go and do that and so queen's ferry she is the queen
01:11:42.580for which it is named and then another mary queen of scots associated thing so obviously there's
01:11:49.320dumb firmland abbey which is uh related to her but hollyrood abbey probably exists and hollyrood
01:11:56.320house because of her so she was said to have brought to scotland a piece of the true cross
01:12:02.740or holy rude which you know is a bit of the crucifix upon which jesus allegedly met his end
01:12:09.760i say allegedly because if you gathered together all of the fragments of the true cross
01:12:14.400that were meant to be hanging about christendom you would have enough materials for a tea bed
01:12:19.000log cabin like there was a lot of it there was a lot of it about but she apparently had one
01:12:25.200and we're not kind of central where it might have come from so it might come from england or it
01:12:29.740might have come from eastern europe but she brings it with her and then after her after her death and
01:12:34.840when her youngest son david is king he founds an abbey which is kind of just north of arthur's seat
01:12:42.260at the what is now the western most end of the royal mile this abbey is dedicated to this piece
01:12:49.760of the Holyrood. That's where we get Holyrood from. And the Abbey is in ruins now, but it was
01:12:58.480very important. So James II and his Queen Mary of Gelders were buried there. Margaret Tudor was
01:13:05.020married there. And also, I think after the Reformation, everything kind of became defunct
01:13:13.520with it but the abbey was briefly reconsecrated as a catholic place of worship by the brother of
01:13:19.980charles ii james he was duke of york at the time and he basically was like the king's lieutenant
01:13:26.600in scotland for a bit and he was catholic so he had it reconsecrated as a catholic place of worship
01:13:32.160but then obviously that didn't last and then obviously hollywood house the pleasure palace
01:13:37.320in contrast to Edinburgh Castle which of course hosted among other things a murder of which Mary
01:13:45.800Queen of Scots was witness so it's funny to think even though St Margaret you know had nothing to do
01:13:52.320with it it does all get traced back to her and then as I mentioned at the top of the show there
01:13:59.400is the chapel this was probably built under David and is in Edinburgh Castle dedicated to
01:14:06.300st margaret it is beautiful i highly recommend anybody like do not skip it if you're going to
01:14:12.060the castle it's very small it's very peaceful and it has um a set of like stained glass windows from
01:14:18.180the 20th century which shows various uh figures from scottish history and you will love this okay
01:14:25.500the best bit about the chapel it is looked after today by the st margaret's chapel guild and they
01:14:31.500put flowers in like every week and I think in 1993 they like commissioned a new altar cloth
01:14:38.820to commemorate kind of the millennium of her death but if you want to be a part of the guild
01:14:43.780you have to have as your first or middle name Margaret oh I know you can if you're you can
01:14:51.480have institutional membership if your organization has been named for a Margaret like it doesn't
01:14:57.440have to be that margaret margaret's only okay yeah i know and when it this is just oh it's so
01:15:04.140adorable when i wrote my term paper on her i emailed the chapel guild and was like uh because
01:15:10.780they have like a little booklet leaflet that you can buy in the chapel and i was like would you be
01:15:14.900able to send me one and when the woman replied to me in like her email signature had her first name
01:15:21.380and then in brackets middle Margaret and then her surname like is that not just the cutest thing
01:15:29.600she was so nice as well she came and posted me that she was very interested in what I was uh
01:15:36.060what I was writing about but like it's so random no but just like first of all I'm just like I
01:15:42.140love this I love this like league of Margaret's who are just like doing this but also I'm just
01:15:46.720like but my name's not Margaret I'm like can I change my name to Margaret like I'm desperate to
01:15:51.820join now I think if if you said I've changed my name to Margaret because I want to join I think
01:15:57.400they'd be like yes you can come in and like it still is um quite a popular name in Scotland
01:16:04.080like if this was in England I think you would eventually run out of of Margaret but in Scotland
01:16:09.980they're like no we will keep the tradition going and yeah I highly recommend like going into the
01:16:16.520chapel the castle generally is kind of hit and miss in terms of access I got my wheelchair stuck
01:16:23.640in a rockery outside the chapel when I was there and I just kind of had to wait for my mom to come
01:16:28.320and get me and as tourists walked past which also was quite funny to me but Scotland does not have
01:16:35.780the monopoly on Margaret so we talked about earlier about the fact that she was born in Hungary
01:16:41.040when I went to visit her now empty tomb of Dunn family there were some flowers and ribbons that
01:16:47.660had been left there by a group of Hungarian tourists like they were like oh you know one
01:16:52.940of us kind of thing which I thought was very cool but Margaret of Wessex obviously that was her OG
01:16:58.200family still very much looms large so as I said I live in the southwest of England and after I'd
01:17:05.140written my first paper on her my mom told me she was like oh in Salisbury Cathedral there is a
01:17:11.580chapel dedicated to her and I was like no there isn't like it will be Margaret of Antioch who
01:17:17.700no shade to Margaret of Antioch it's not her fault but when people say like oh you study
01:17:22.720St Margaret the one with the dragon and I'm like no the one whose book fell in a river
01:17:27.540so not to be a hater to Margaret of Antioch it's not her fault but at the same time I remain
01:17:33.380sorry about it but my mother was right and there is a chapel dedicated to St Margaret of Scotland
01:17:41.000in the south transept of Salisbury Cathedral it has occupied my every waking moment
01:17:48.320finding out how when or why this altar is there it could have been put in as earlier as early as
01:17:57.2801407 but it definitely was there before 1445 there is a text that is like guiding somebody
01:18:06.700around all of like oh when you go to the cathedral these are the chapels you need to look at
01:18:10.800and it mentions her so we know it was there then in 1407 a bishop called Richard Mitford was buried
01:18:18.000in her chapel so it could have been that he that like the chapel was put together for that burial
01:18:25.720or that it already existed um and then mitford was like oh please bury me there but like why is
01:18:33.160she there because all of the other chapels in the cathedral are dedicated to like the big bigger
01:18:39.800saints so she's next to st lawrence and i think the archangel michael i think and then it's like
01:18:47.660john the baptist it's kind of like your standard big christian saints like john the baptist yeah
01:18:53.720so like the like yeah the kind of the main ones and she's like hey i'm here too i think the only
01:19:00.420explanation even though it's quite circumstantial but the current best explanation is that she was
01:19:06.060considered like still to be part of kind of the west country and wessex and then allegedly bishop
01:19:12.040richard mayford was apparently a fan of ebb the confessor so it might be that he was like either
01:19:18.000bury me there where her altar already exists her chapel or let's put this chapel together
01:19:24.080and then bury me there when I die and every time I've been to the cathedral since finding this out
01:19:30.280I'm just like scouring the place to try and find something like looking for Edward the confessor's
01:19:36.540coat of arms or is there anything that suggests why she would be here and there's also in Gloucester
01:19:43.900which is also part of the West Country there is a church a small like village church dedicated to
01:19:49.480her and this one is more confusing because originally the church was dedicated to a
01:19:55.700different saint but they're not sure which and then it was rededicated in the I think it was
01:20:02.4401315 it was rededicated to Margrave Scotland and this was during the wars of Scottish independence
01:20:09.540so I'm like why did they change the patron saint of this church from whoever it was
01:20:15.780to like the key propaganda vehicle of the country with which we are currently at war
01:20:23.440like was it trying to kind of reclaim her from the Scots and being like no she's actually one
01:20:28.360of us was it that maybe the people in that parish were like thought that the Scots had a point
01:20:34.140and we're like we're gonna do it to show solidarity i have no idea but both of those
01:20:41.100things there was in the like the descriptions of her miracles there is a couple of people who have
01:20:47.560come from england so i'm you know there were probably english people who were like fans of her
01:20:53.080but it's just like why why was these dedications happening like quite a long time after her
01:21:00.380death and even after her canonization i have a theory my theory is that her ghost came and
01:21:06.860yelled at somebody until they did it i mean if you were being haunted by a ghost and all it wanted
01:21:13.180you to do was like can you dedicate a chapel to me it's a small price to pay to like get the ghost
01:21:19.260the ghost of the shoulder bone or person without shoulder bone or with or without head exactly
01:21:24.320you're just like i will do that if you will stop haunting and yelling at me yeah so she did have
01:21:29.880like fans in england and i know i mentioned durham earlier and there was an instance in the 14th
01:21:36.600century of allegedly durham stole some relics of her from scotland and like smuggled them back
01:21:43.960and the saint george's church in windsor castle apparently has a relic of hers too
01:21:50.420it might be i'm not 100 sure it might be the holy rude thing because i think edward the first took
01:21:57.020that um when he first like kind of conquered Scotland and then there was like debate over
01:22:03.600whether he was going to give it back but I don't think it ever was given back so it might have
01:22:08.420also been lost in the Reformation uh or it might be at St George's in in Windsor but I think it's
01:22:17.100very that the way her relics have kind of been scattered or not or possibly come back I think is
01:22:26.120exemplifies her legacy which I feel like it's not like sad but I think she's never been allowed to
01:22:35.420live her life for herself it's always about her as a dynastic intermediary her holiness is useful
01:22:42.900and her legacy is valuable for what it can do for her subsequent generations like you get the sense
01:22:50.000that she's not really in charge of her destiny. But I do think that given the depth of her
01:22:56.700religious devotion, I don't know if she'd be that bothered about it. Like she might see her role as
01:23:02.140a saint to, you know, reveal God's grace. And then her role as a queen is to kind of preserve and
01:23:07.140protect the kingdom with which she was charged by God. So even though sometimes I'm like, oh,
01:23:13.880it's kind of a lack of autonomy, she might have seen it as like, no, it's my purpose. I have been
01:23:19.700assigned but um she she definitely is not in control of of everything that happened after
01:23:25.860after she died i don't think she'd be mad about how it all went down but it's all it's stuff that
01:23:31.780has like people and monarchs and whoever has assigned this stuff to her what i find interesting
01:23:39.500obviously that's why you're on the podcast telling the story but so in terms of scottish
01:23:46.060women moving to scotland and marrying kings this is the best version of that i've ever heard like
01:23:55.220marie of guise had a really rough time margaret tudor had a really rough time like even marie
01:24:00.020of scotts who didn't marry into but she was an outsider but margaret of scotland came there and
01:24:05.060it seems like everyone's like cool you're an outsider and you're marrying our king we don't
01:24:09.340mind like yeah i just find it it's such an interesting contrast to what i'm used to hearing
01:24:14.880about people named margaret coming to scotland historically to me not doesn't do well yeah she
01:24:21.920at least the version that we have of her from targo she seems to have been quite happy i think
01:24:28.280she she was very invested in piety obviously and in the church and she did kind of all the normal
01:24:35.080things that uh pious women are meant to do she fed orphans and all that kind of thing and washed1.00
01:24:39.900people's feet and i think she ended up becoming an exemplar for later queens in the same position
01:24:47.920so obviously we said about the young margaret of england uh going to see her relics being moved
01:24:55.320and then obviously margaret tudor having her shirt and stuff so i imagine that if if i was a
01:25:03.580little english princess going up to okay you're marrying the king of scots i would look at
01:25:08.420St Margaret's story and be like oh well I hope it's like this this I could cope with this this
01:25:13.980doesn't seem too bad my dream museum exhibit if someone said right here's a load of money and
01:25:20.400you're going to set up a exhibit for a museum would be princesses of England queens of Scots
01:25:26.480and it would basically be talking about all the different English princesses that ended up being
01:25:31.740Queen of Scotland because there were loads like obviously Margaret Tudor that we've talked about
01:25:36.840and there was jones but there were two jones in the 15th century you had margaret denmark
01:25:43.360mayor of gouders he has some european ones but because of the way england and scotland like the
01:25:48.540relations and the the conflicts that have happened it was very often like oh well we've had a war and
01:25:53.060now to seal the peace here's a here's a daughter have at it kind of thing but it's also in a lot
01:26:03.000of the later examples there was always like a dynastic element like especially with Margaret
01:26:07.940Tudor because obviously her children represented the potential heirs to England whereas with
01:26:14.700Margaret and her family they were in kind of direct opposition to the king of England as kind
01:26:23.700of William the Conqueror um but yeah I think like she did okay and she's had such like such a huge
01:26:31.080impact I think I made a reel it was a while ago now I was talking about how Edgar like poor Edgar
01:26:36.900her brother like he gets cut off to England as really young his dad dies and then he spends like
01:26:45.380the rest of his life kind of beefing with the king of England because he's a potential claimant
01:26:51.360blah blah blah and then Margaret like she has those bad things happen and then she moves to
01:26:56.800scotland is scotland's only canonized royal saint and one of the most famous like in terms
01:27:03.900maybe not in outside of scotland obviously mary queen of scots is more famous but in scotland
01:27:09.460she's probably second fiddle to uh mary queen of scots in terms of the most famous and certainly
01:27:15.520the most influential queens of scots so yeah sorry edgar you didn't really you didn't really
01:27:21.600have a nice a nice time of it necessarily but Margaret certainly did and then her daughter
01:27:27.860obviously married um Henry I of England who then had they obviously had their daughter Empress
01:27:34.800Matilda and because of Edith Matilda every um monarch of England and then Scotland etc all the
01:27:44.640from then is descended from St Margaret so yes it wasn't just about her her power it was so much
01:27:52.900of it was dependent on Edward the Confessor but she was like the vehicle for that and then Edith
01:27:59.880Matilda was as well and yeah she was meant to be Edith Matilda was meant to be quite a popular
01:28:05.000queen she um was raised at Romsey Abbey um which has the saint of Romsey Abbey I don't think it's
01:28:13.660St. Ethelflaed. It's one of those names. But yeah, so she lived there for a bit. And then
01:28:19.860there was drama over whether or not she had taken vows to become a nun, because then Henry I of
01:28:25.760England wanted to marry her. And it was like debate over whether she was allowed. And then
01:28:30.860it was decided that she wasn't. So she married him. And she was good friends with a guy called
01:28:36.040William of Malmesbury, who was a chronicler and quite a prolific historian. And she patronized
01:28:43.080uh some of his stuff she actually she had another vita commissioned as well for an irish saint i
01:28:50.280think called brendan so she was she was uh interested in kind of literature and commissioning
01:28:57.780these texts so yeah i'm i'm she died relatively young she only died in um 11 18 and then uh henry
01:29:07.760the first remarried but then didn't have any children and obviously Empress Matilda's brother
01:29:13.120had died in 1120 I think in the white ship disaster and so that all obviously set off the
01:29:20.640anarchy and everything but Edith Matilda had had passed away long before any of that so
01:29:25.320even though and I think this is why it resonates I think especially like when I first started
01:29:31.200my master's like I was it was during COVID and so you know when seeing everybody who I wanted to be
01:29:37.500And so having Empress Matilda, Edith Matilda and Margaret as these three women that do resemble each other in a lot of ways, who barely knew each other, like Edith Matilda was sent off when she was a child, Empress Matilda was sent off to go and get married on the continent.
01:29:55.620so from the way their lives played out you would have assumed like oh well they knew each other
01:30:02.640really well of course you know they related they barely knew each other except obviously through
01:30:07.380um through writing and stuff so I'm I think Margaret would be proud that even without
01:30:15.680like physical contact with her like descendants that her legacy was um protected and furthered
01:30:24.340And like in Scotland, understandably, there is a lot of emphasis on what she did in Scotland.
01:30:31.280So Dunfermline is, it was just made a city to commemorate maybe the Platinum Jubilee.