Charles Edward Stuart

Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, was the grandson of the deposed James II and the Stuart claimant who led the Jacobite rising of 1745. Landing in Scotland with limited support, he captured Edinburgh and advanced into England before retreating. The Jacobite army was decisively defeated at Culloden in April 1746, and Charles escaped after months in hiding. His later life in exile was marked by disappointment, heavy drinking and failed political schemes.

D. K. Broster’s The Flight of the Heron and Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber both use the rising and Charles’s leadership as major elements. He appears in many Scottish historical novels, sometimes as a romantic lost prince and sometimes as an inexperienced commander whose choices contributed to disaster. Modern fiction often contrasts the legend of his escape with the suffering inflicted on Highland communities after Culloden.

Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley places Charles Edward Stuart within a narrative shaped by family, marriage and personal loyalty, political ambition and government, and military command and battlefield decision-making. Diana Gabaldon’s Voyager is set after surviving the Battle of Culloden, Jamie Fraser endures imprisonment, hiding and years of separation from his family.