Hello and welcome to Home School History. I'm Greg Jenner, the historian behind TV's

Horrible Histories, and the host of the BBC podcast, You're Dead To Me. I'm here to

deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family, who says that

home schooling can't be fun. Today we are journeying back over 700 years to find out how

Scotland was shaped by rebellion, betrayal, and a very determined spider. Today we are learning

all about Scotland's medieval wars of independence. During the reign of Scottish King Alexander III,

Scotland and England got on quite well, apart from the occasional argument about where to put

the border. They were like neighbours who got grumpy about the garden fence, but never went as far

as kicking over each other's bins. Alexander III was a good king, but sadly none of his children lived

longer than him, so when he fell off his horse in 1286 and died, Scotland was left with a pretty

big problem. Who should rule next? There was only one obvious air, Alexander's granddaughter,

Margaret, but she was only a little girl and she lived in Norway, and she was quite poorly. In fact,

before she could even make it to Scotland, she sadly died. Poor Margaret. So now the crown of

Scotland was well and truly up for grabs, meaning lots of posh people were basically scouring the

medieval version of ancestry.com to see if they had a legal claim to the throne. I'm 5% Scottish

King. Some of the applicants were Scottish, as you'd expect. Hello! Some were English. Hello.

And weirdly, one of them was Dutch. Hello. Meanwhile, Scotland put together a team of people to

run the country, called the Guardians of Scotland, a bit like the Guardians of the Galaxy, but with

fewer talking recoups. And much like the Guardians of the Galaxy in their movies, they couldn't agree on much.

So the Guardians turned to King Edward I of England for help in choosing the next king.

Sneaky Edward agreed to help, but saw it as an opportunity to control Scotland by controlling

whoever he chose. Naughty. On his short list were John Baleel and Robert Bruce, who were both

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